Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin, a scholar and writer, is an international political and strategic consultant. She has advised and conducted research on nine national campaigns in Israel over the past twenty years, and has provided research and advising for elections, referendums, and civil society campaigns in fifteen different countries. She is the author of The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel. 

In response to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, President Biden said just the right things: "there’s no place in America for this. We must unite as one nation to condemn it. It's sick, it's sick". And then he added something odd: “the idea that there’s political violence in America – it’s just unheard of, it’s just inappropriate.”

Joe Biden can sometimes say odd things, but this was different. Of course, we would all love to think that political violence is unheard of in America. But we also know it’s so common as to be forgettable. Alon Pinkas had it spot-on in his instant take in Haaretz this week: from a long history of political assassinations, right down to daily gun violence, this is who America is. 

Biden’s comment symbolized a quaint self-image that views America as better than it is. That self-image may be wrong, but it’s a welcome aspiration. There’s a mirror-image gap between self-perceptions and reality on the far-right, among Trump’s supporters, and it’s far more dangerous. 

In the self-perception of the Trumpist populist right-wing, America is facing multiple existential threats. For example, they believe that immigrants are destroying America,  rather than what immigrants actually do – contribute to the economy, commit fewer crimes, and bring immeasurable cultural wealth and vibrancy to the pluralistic fabric of American society. 

The misinformation behind policy positions is a waystation to full-blown conspiracy theories poisoning American society. Among Republicans, believing in certain major conspiracies is growing over time: a Washington Post poll from late December 2023 found that the portion of Americans who said Biden was legitimately elected in 2020 declined, due to an eight-point drop in the number of Republicans who believe Biden won, compared to 2021. One-third of Republicans believe the FBI “organized or encouraged” the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, and 62 percent of Republicans think there is evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 elections. 

Conspiracy theories are part of the infamous political polarization of the current age, a chasm that runs far deeper than substantive, but antiquated political disagreement. Because hard-core conspiracy theories exist in the realm of the fantastic, the worldview of conspiracists is antithetical to debate based on empirical evidence. The conclusions of this camp become zero-sum; the answer is either extinction or attack. 

Few observers wrapped up in American or Middle Eastern affairs noticed another recent assassination attempt. In May, the controversial Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico was shot (but lived). The usually-quiet central European country has become increasingly violent in recent years: in 2018, an investigative journalist who exposed corruption was murdered in his home, along with his fiancé. His death sparked a large social solidarity movement; Fico was prime minister at that time too, and he sought to slander the movement by associating it with George Soros, the classic illiberal trope established by Hungary’s Viktor Orban, carrying overtones of anti-Semitism. The ensuing tension forced Fico to resign, but analysts noted that in Slovakia at that time, “around 60 per cent of people believe in conspiracy theories, only 22 per cent trust the justice system...[which] provides fertile ground for this type of politics and further polarisation of society could be dangerous.” The analysts were right – and by 2024 the target was Fico himself. Once political violence is unleashed, no one is immune. 

The lessons should be clear: conspiratorial thinking breaks away from healthy, essential skepticism about ruling authorities. It does not seek to expose the truth to reach a conclusion; it starts with a conclusion, then injects fantastical, paranoid notions of evidence into the public minds, exploiting what are often legitimate grievances and distrust. This kind of thinking drives the collapse of any social contract, and makes a healthy relationship between state and citizens impossible; it feeds existential polarization and leaves society prone to violence.

Why does this matter for Israel?  

Donald Trump may have just won the US election, with his fist-pumping, blood-spattered martyr-warrior image seared into people’s minds. His policies of course could change this region profoundly, but he’s too erratic to know just what they will be. 

In the meantime, Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to envy Trump’s idyllic victimhood, and the likelihood that it would catapult Trump to victory. Having failed to achieve the stigmata himself, instead Netanyahu conjured up the conspiracy of a fanatical deep-state threat to his life. First, his henchman (and women) within the government insisted that anti-Netanyahu incitement is about to drive attempts on his life (without any indication at that point of what drove America’s would-be assassin). The accusations of these ministers were themselves a form of incitement against the attorney general, who, they said, protected the inciters – apparently building the case to oust her from her job. Less than 12 hours after the events in Butler, PA, Netanyahu’s staff had created a video collage of bad things protesters had said, some of which did cross a line, but do not match his histrionics. His team must have been busy all morning to be ready in time for the government meeting at midday. 

There was something pathetic about Netanyahu conjuring his own assassination to cajole back a few hypothetical votes in an election he hopes will never be held, instead of, for example, trying to get hostages released. Nevertheless, both believers and critics spent the next 24 hours expressing righteous support or fury over his accusations. 

What worries me is that this is just the latest in the country’s home-grown cultivation of conspiracy theories. One of these malignant ideas is that Oct. 7 happened because of begida m’bifnim – “betrayal from within.” In this vision, nameless high-up figures in the army and intelligence knew about the October 7th plot, but permitted the worst attack on Israeli soil and civilians in its history, so that the prime minister would be blamed and removed from office. These suggestions poured out within days of the attack, and by mid-November, only 46 percent of Israelis firmly rejected the theory that “senior security figures knew about the imminent attack but hid it from the prime minister to harm him,”  in a survey by researchers at Reichman University. The remainder, a majority of Israelis, were “open” to the conspiracies, wrote the survey authors, either because they believed it (18 percent of the total, but 29 percent of those who voted for the current coalition), or said they were neutral or didn’t know. Netanyahu certainly contributed to this notion, perhaps unwittingly, by posting that the intelligence chiefs had assured him repeatedly that Hamas was deterred and that he had not been warned of Hamas’ intentions; a post he then deleted and apologized for. But even if it was an honest mistake, planting a seed is the best way to grow a conspiracy, and the latest “incitement to assassination” claim is just the latest branch. 

Netanyahu has stooped to new lows to distract attention from what he ought to be doing: getting the hostages back, ending the war, taking responsibility, and away from what he is doing, dragging out a self-interested war with no political endpoint, that is inflicting untold horrors on Palestinians and costing Israel in blood. He may think he’s a Svengali, able to manufacture consent from an exceedingly dumb public who will forget about his failures. But according to a-Chord’s June tracking survey, the portion of Israelis who want him to resign immediately has risen from 23 percent in mid-October, to more than twice as many now – 48 percent. Together with those who want him to resign after the war, three-quarters want him to step down in total. So far, the distractions haven’t worked; but the dangers are clear.