Antisemitic conspiracy narratives are experiencing a resurgence today, not only on social media but also in public discourse/s, even in some government circles. For example, many far-right politicians have blamed George Soros, the Jewish American philanthropist of Hungarian origin, for complex global and local phenomena such as migration, the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, etc. In this context, anti-Sorosism refers to the global antisemitic anti-Soros campaign by far-right activists (Wodak 2020, Richardson & Wodak 2023). Particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-vax activists repeatedly expressed world conspiracy narratives in public, using the code word “cosmopolitan” as an allusion for “The Jew”—comprehensible for all those who belonged to the same epistemic community. Not surprisingly, in 2025, we are confronted with a new world conspiracy narrative which fallaciously claims that the media, politics, science, etc. (i.e. the “elites”) are controlled by so-called “globalists” (Wodak & Ötsch 2024). In a propaganda video by the Austrian far-right party FPÖ, we can observe a dystopian scenario of a world controlled by “globalists”, which only a “Fortress Austria” could withstand. It seems as if the term “globalist” has substituted the term “cosmopolitan” in its negative and stereotypical meaning of the “Jewish World Conspiracy”. Against this backdrop, in this lecture, I argue that we are witnessing a shameless normalization of a traditional antisemitic stereotype, which I label as the “Judeus ex Machina Strategy”. In order to mount such an argument, I will first focus on the history of the “Jewish World Conspiracy” and then trace and analyze the visual symbols and discursive codes realizing this antisemitic prejudice in many genres and public spheres, specifically in the European context.

This event is generously supported by the Chaiken Dean's Fund for Antisemitism Education