The Zionist occupation government, Zionist occupational government or Zionist-occupied government (ZOG), sometimes also called the Jewish occupational government (JOG),[1] [2] is an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming that Jews secretly control the governments of Western states.[3] [4] It is a contemporary variation on the centuries-old belief in an international Jewish conspiracy. According to believers, a secret Zionist organization actively controls international banks, and through them governments, to conspire against white, Christian, or Islamic interests.[5]
The expression is used by white supremacist, white nationalist, far-right, nativist[6] or antisemitic groups in Europe[7] and the United States, as well as by ultra-nationalists such as Pamyat in Russia and various far-right groups, including the Freemen, Identity Christians, and the Ku Klux Klan.[6]
The word Zionist in "Zionist occupation government" is used to equate being Jewish with the ideology of Zionism. As such, Zionists are depicted by the theory as conspiring for Jews and Israel to control the world as depicted in the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion.[8] [9]
The association of Jews with the control of economic forces is the modern resurgence of an old stereotype, that of the "greedy Jewish merchant", that has been present in the Christian world since the Middle Ages.[5] The conspiracy theory illustrates a specifically American far-right agrarian preoccupation, namely the vital possibility of extinction allegedly faced by the rural world, seen as the backbone of America, a danger caused by a remote, centralized and power-hungry metropolitan elite corrupted by "alien" influences.[10]
See also: International Jewish conspiracy. In late 19th-century France, the insinuation that the French government was in the power of the Jews was a commonplace claim in anti-republican discourse. The British fascist Arnold Leese already had the habit of referring to the "Jewish government" of his nation in the interwar and postwar decades. At the same time, Nazis under the Weimar Republic dismissed a so-called "Jewish" hand behind that regime.
An early appearance of the term was in a 1976 article, "Welcome to ZOG-World", attributed to an American neo-Nazi named Eric Thomson, but Canadian white nationalists also used the term.[11] It features as the main theme in the 1978 book The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce, founder of the National Alliance, a white nationalist organization. The term came to the attention of a larger audience in a 27 December 1984 article in The New York Times about robberies committed in California and Washington by a white supremacist group called The Order. According to the Times, the crimes "were conducted to raise money for a war upon the United States Government, which the group calls 'ZOG', or Zionist Occupation Government."[12] In 1985, the Oregon-based far-right group Posse Comitatus claimed: "Our nation is now completely under the control of the International Invisible government of World Jewry."[13]
The Order of the Silent Brotherhood was an offshoot of the Aryan Nations, an organization founded in the early 1970s by Richard Girnt Butler, who since the 1950s had been associated with another antisemitic group, the Church of Jesus Christ–Christian. Both these groups trace their origins to antisemitic activists such as Gerald L.K. Smith and have interacted with the Ku Klux Klan. The term appeared extensively in Aryan Nations literature. In 1985, the Anti-Defamation League reported that the Aryan Nations had set up an electronic bulletin board system called "Aryan Nation Liberty Net" to offer information for the locations of Communist Party USA offices and "ZOG informers".[14]
In 1996, the Aryan Nations posted on its website an "Aryan Declaration of Independence" saying that "the history of the present Zionist Occupied Government of the United States of America is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations [...] [all] having a direct object—the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states." Claiming that "the eradication of the White race and its culture" is "one of its foremost purposes", the ZOG is accused of relinquishing powers of government to private corporations, white traitors and ruling class Jewish families. It accused ZOG Jews of subverting the constitutional rule of law; responsibility for post-Civil War Reconstruction; subverting the monetary system with the Federal Reserve System; confiscating land and property; limiting freedoms of speech, religion and gun ownership; murdering, kidnapping and imprisoning patriots; abdicating national sovereignty to the United Nations; political repression; wasteful bureaucracy; loosening restrictions on immigration and drug trafficking; raising taxes; polluting the environment; commandeering the military, mercenaries and police; denying Aryan cultural heritage; and inciting immigrant insurrections.[15]
Since 1996, the term has spread in usage. It is now popular with many other antisemitic organizations. Swedish Neo-Nazis say that Jews—in what they call the Swedish Zionist occupied government—are importing immigrants to "dilute the blood of the white race".[16] The antisemitic website Jew Watch claims that the entire spectrum of Western nations and other countries are being ruled by "Zionist Occupation Governments".[17]
Slovak politician Marian Kotleba, whose party (People's Party Our Slovakia) won two seats in the European Parliament in the 2019 election,[18] claims that the "Z. O. G." controls Slovak politics.[19]
Activists imagined a variety of plots gravitating around the original conspiracy theory—for instance, that as many as 4,000 Jews were warned of the September 11 attacks. Believers also claim that ZOG-like forces control American foreign policy. Despite their singularities, most ZOG theories involve the idea of a Jewish power over finance or banking, including one imagining Jewish control of the Federal Reserve.[5]
Neo-Nazi David Lane developed his version of the white genocide conspiracy theory in his White Genocide Manifesto, the origin of the later use of the term.[20] [21] [22] [23] Lane claimed that the government policies of many Western countries had the intent of destroying white European culture and making white people an "extinct species".[24] Lane—a founding member of the organization The Order—criticized miscegenation, abortion, homosexuality, Jewish control of the media, "multiracial sports", the legal repercussions against those who "resist genocide", and the ZOG that he said controls the United States and the other majority-white countries, which encourages "white genocide".[24]