Conspiracy Theories, Holocaust Education, and Other Predictors of Antisemitic Belief

Key Findings:

Respondents who overestimated their self-assessed knowledge about Jewish people and the Jewish American population agreed with more Antisemitic tropes than those who correctly self- assessed their knowledge. 

Respondents who proved to have more factual knowledge about topics such as the American Jewish Community, the Holocaust, and Judaism, were less likely to agree with Antisemitic tropes.

On the other hand, respondents who assessed as having little to no knowledge about Jewish people, were more likely by a significant margin to also hold Antisemitic beliefs. 

Furthermore, respondents who stated they had been educated from source material or from school held less Antisemitic beliefs and answered the fact based questions more accurately, especially questions related to the Holocaust. 

Respondents who had little to no Jewish people in their personal network were more likely to agree with the Antisemitic tropes. Additionally, most respondents who did have Jewish people in their network, described their experiences with Jewish people as positive, yet still agreed with some of the anti-Jewish tropes presented in the survey.

Respondents who agreed with statements that imply that Jews experience hatred in America nowadays were less likely to agree with the Antisemitic statements. Interestingly though, respondents whose perspective implied that Jew hatred in the US is nonexistent or few, were the same respondents who agreed with a larger amount of the Antisemitic statements. This section of the study brought an observation to light — “Denying Jews experience antisemitism is a feature of contemporary antisemitism.”

When researchers tested the correlation between respondents general tendency towards conspiratorial thinking, and more specifically, The Great Replacement Theory (an-Antisemitic conspiracy) with the belief in Antisemitic tropes, a statistically high correlation was discovered. 

Finally, when analyzing the link between belief in anti-Jewish tropes and negative attitudes towards Israel, there was little to no correlation. However the study also proved that respondents felt able to condemn Israel regardless of how much they they thought they knew about Israel.