40 No. 77 JUSTICE COVID vaccination, are planning a “Great Reset.”6 And, not least, they notoriously concern the Jews: as poisoners of wells, child murderers, or as an international financial elite driving the rest of the population to ruin.7 Historically and even today, resentments against ethnic or religious minorities have gone hand in hand with conspiracy narratives and defamatory rumors. This is particularly evident in the case of antisemitism. “Antisemitism is the rumor about the Jews,”8 summarized Theodor Adorno in 1951, capturing this close connection. At their core, conspiracy narratives are always about a conspiratorial collaboration of certain groups, who, by virtue of the extraordinary abilities attributed to them, act secretly to the detriment of the majority population and cause great harm. They distance themselves “from scientific verifiability and offer a refuge-like, dualistic, emotionalized, and affected conception of the world in times of crisis, which is mostly based on anti-democratic and antisemitic stereotypes and has Manichaean features.”9 Such narratives flourish in times of social crises and whenever the present is perceived as unpredictable or threatening.10 In short: the narratives that always exist beneath the surface – quiet murmurs during periods of social stability – rise to the surface when the established order begins to falter. Their increased occurrence can thus serve as a seismograph for social crises, a shaken social order, or protracted processes of social reorganization. The so-called Little Ice Age in the early modern period, which resulted in poor harvests and famines in Europe, revived belief in maleficium and witchcraft.11 The recurring plagues and cholera epidemics in Europe until the late nineteenth century repeatedly produced rumors about poisoned wells and people being buried alive.12 Likewise, the global COVID-19 pandemic from late 2019, as expected, gave rise to new antisemitic conspiracy narratives.13 As in earlier epidemics, these narratives concerned the origins of the virus, the causes of its rapid spread, or the countermeasures taken by the state. That “the Jews,” among others, were suspected of being behind the COVID-19 pandemic – referred to by adherents of such narratives in the German-speaking world as “Plandemie” (a wordplay combining Plan and Pandemie) – is hardly surprising considering the long tradition of antisemitic conspiracy narratives.14 II. Conspiracy Narratives as Communicative Precursor Acts to Violence Conspiracy narratives are alternative explanatory models that are usually science-skeptical and always help those who believe in them to reduce the complexity of the present and render it simpler and more “comprehensible.” Their potential danger arises from the fact that they consistently identify particular individuals or population groups as the sole cause and source of an evil and postulate a danger supposedly emanating from them. Even when they do not explicitly call for violence against these people or groups, they nevertheless provide a justification for violence and lower the inhibition threshold for its use.15 6. Michale Christensen and Ashli Au, “The Great Reset and the Cultural Boundaries of Conspiracy Theory,” 17 INT’L J. OF COMMUNICATION 2348 (2023). 7. Umberto Eco, VERSCHWÖRUNGEN: EINE SUCHE NACH MUSTERN 186 (Hanser Verlag 2002). 8. Supra note 1, at 200. 9. F. Birk, “Politisch motivierte Kriminalität unter dem Einfluss von Verschwörungsideologien: eine Lageauswertung verschwörungsideologisch induzierter politisch motivierter Straftaten anlässlich demonstrativer Ereignisse im Jahr 2021” [Politically Motivated Crime Under the Influence of Conspiracy Ideologies], 77 KRIMINALISTIK 59, 60 (2023). 10. Karen M. Douglas and Robbie M. Sutton, “What Are Conspiracy Theories? A Definitional Approach to Their Correlates, Consequences, and Communication,” 74 ANNUAL REVIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY 271, 274 (2023). 11. Supra note 2. 12. Richard J. Evans, “Epidemics and Revolutions: Cholera in Nineteenth Century Europe,” 120 PAST & PRESENT 123 (1988). 13. Gabriel Weimann and Natalie Masri, “The Virus of Hate. Far-Right Terrorism in Cyberspace,” INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR COUNTER-TERRORISM (2000), available at https://www.ict.org.il/images/Dark%20Hate.pdf 14. E.g., VG Karlsruhe, decision of April 9, 2021. – 10 K 1307/21 –, juris, para. 34. 15. Armin Langer, “Zusammenhänge zwischen antisemitischer Hundepfeifenpolitik und rechtsextremer Gewalt: Das Beispiel der George-Soros-Verschwörungstheorien und des QAnon-Kollektivs,” in RECHTER TERRORISMUS: INTERNATIONAL – DIGITAL – ANALOG 242 (Springer Nature Link 2023).
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