The Cycle of Libels and Conspiracy Theories Machine: An Abusive Framework

By Natasha H. Pein, PIE4ALL Research Institute

Across two millennia, societies in crisis have repeatedly resorted to a familiar psychological mechanism: the abusive scapegoating of Jews. The evolution of that pattern is from medieval libels to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to Soviet antizionism, to the resurgence of antisemitic narratives in contemporary Western societies. The “Cycle of Libels” operates as an abusive political technology: a mechanism of social distraction, emotional manipulation, and ideological control that deflects responsibility for systemic failure by weaponizing Jew-hatred.

Blame the Jews for Everything: The Origins of an Abusive Framework

“Во всех грехах жиды виноваты.” 

“The Jews are guilty of all sins.” — Russian antisemitic proverb

Growing up in the Soviet Union, I often heard this expression whispered and repeated: “Во всех грехах жиды виноваты.” In English, it roughly translates as “All the Jews are responsible for the world’s sins.” It was an old saying that had circulated through Russian antisemitic folklore for generations.

As a child, I could not grasp the absurdity of it. How could such a small people, barely a fraction of humanity, be blamed for every evil in the world? If Jews were guilty of all the world’s sins, then what, I wondered, of everyone else? Indoctrinated in the Soviet school system, I would sometimes return home in tears and tell my parents that I did not want to be Jewish anymore. I did not want to be held responsible for the world’s problems. I did not yet understand why the words “zhyd” or “zhydovka”, slurs for Jews, carried the weight of centuries of blame.

But scapegoating Jews for everything is not a modern invention; it is an ancient reflex. When a society faces internal decay, it reaches for a convenient explanation that demands no self-reflection and no structural reform. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, perhaps the most infamous antisemitic forgery in modern history, was created in the Russian Empire precisely for that purpose.

Written around 1903, the Protocols presented itself as a secret Jewish blueprint for world domination. In reality, it was an elaborate hoax, fabricated by agents of the Tsarist secret police (the Okhrana) to deflect growing anger away from the collapsing Russian Empire and toward its Jewish population. Yet the book achieved something far more enduring: it gave antisemitism a modern ideological shape. Translated into dozens of languages, it spread across continents, mutating with each era’s political vocabulary. Every time Jew-hatred evolved, its adherents adapted the Protocols to fit the ideological “trending language” of their time—Marxist, nationalist, fascist, or postcolonial.

The Protocols themselves were not an original concept. They recycled two millennia of accusations—blood libels, deicide myths, conspiracy fantasies—woven into an abusive system that weaponized lies to distract societies from their own dysfunction. Across centuries, blaming the Jews for a nation’s misfortunes became the most reliable way to redirect public anger away from failed leadership and toward a defenceless minority.

This was exactly the strategy of the Russian Empire at the turn of the twentieth century. By the late 1800s, the empire was imploding under the weight of its contradictions:

• Economic: uneven industrialization, agrarian crises, dependence on foreign capital.

• Social: widening class conflict, ethnic nationalism, mass antisemitism and pogroms, urban poverty, growing radicalization.

• Political: a weak autocracy, failed reforms, revolutionary agitation, and violent polarization.

• Military: humiliation in the Russo-Japanese War, an overstretched and outdated army.

• Administrative: endemic corruption, failed governance, and an inability to adapt.

Together, these forces rendered the empire deeply unstable. Rather than addressing its systemic failures, the regime resorted to the oldest and most toxic diversionary tactic in history: scapegoating the Jews.

Through the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and state-sanctioned propaganda, Jews were branded the “source of all problems.” This ideological abuse was soon enacted through violence, the 1903 Kishinev Pogrom shocked the world, followed by the pogrom waves of 1905–1906 that devastated hundreds of Jewish communities. For a brief moment, these outbursts of orchestrated hate succeeded in deflecting public rage away from the Tsar and toward Jewish victims. But, like all abusive coping mechanisms, it could not heal what was broken. The empire’s deep social and political fractures remained unaddressed, and within a decade, the same forces of instability gave rise to the revolutions of 1917.

The pattern was set: when societies unravel, they reach for the Cycle of Libels, which is an abusive framework that converts failure into hate and turns victims into scapegoats.

Re-branding the Protocols: From “Жид” to “Zionist”

After the Communist Revolution, the Soviet regime inherited not only the political architecture of the Russian Empire but also its antisemitic reflexes. The same abusive framework that once targeted “the Jew” (жид) was repackaged for a new ideological age. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—already proven effective as a diversionary tool—were quietly adapted and reused. This time, the scapegoat was not the “Jewish banker” or “cosmopolitan parasite,” but the Jewish nation itself. Jew-hatred was rebranded as anti-Zionism and justified in the name of “social justice” and “anti-imperialism.”

The Soviet Union engineered what became known as the Red–Green alliance, partnering with the Arab League against the newly established State of Israel. The reason was not geopolitical alone; it was ideological and psychological. The Soviets had initially hoped that Israel, built by many secular Jewish pioneers, might become a socialist satellite in the Middle East. When they realized that the Jewish state was instead becoming a vibrant liberal democracy, independent of Soviet control, the disillusionment turned to hostility.

To the USSR, Israel represented everything the Soviet system feared: freedom, individualism, meritocracy, and the success of Jews outside of state control. The Soviet Union contained one of the world’s largest Jewish populations, and the idea that its most talented and creative citizens might leave to build a thriving democracy was intolerable. So the regime did what empires in crisis always do—it reached for the Cycle of Libels, the time-tested mechanism of blaming Jews to mask failure.

Antisemitism was thus given a new name and new moral costume. Antizionism became the respectable form of Jew-hatred, which is one that could parade under banners of justice and anti-colonialism. Soviet propaganda institutions, from Pravda to state-funded cultural organizations, unleashed an “open season” on the Jewish nation. Under the pretense of “critiquing Zionism,” they legitimized the old hatred and infused it with Marxist language.

This strategy was a convenient “band-aid” for the deep wounds afflicting the USSR between the 1940s and 1960s:

• Economic: post-war destruction, agricultural crises, central planning failures, shortages of basic goods.

• Financial: chronic budget strain, inefficient enterprises, lack of market signals.

• Social: demographic catastrophe, low living standards, repression and fear, housing crises.

• Political: totalitarian control followed by destabilizing de-Stalinization, crushed uprisings, and a crisis of legitimacy.

• Ethnic: forced deportations, nationalist resistance, and state antisemitism.

• Ideological: anti-Zionist campaigns, scientific censorship, and cultural repression.

  
  

Like the Tsarist regime before it, the Soviet leadership used antisemitism as a release valve to deflect public anger from the failures of central planning onto an abstract enemy.The result was a society in which every grievance could be blamed on Jews. Supermarket shelves were empty? “The Jews must have hoarded the goods.” Couldn’t get into medical school? “The Jews took all the spots.” The absurdity of it was captured in a dark Soviet joke that rhymed in Russian:

“If there’s no water in your tap, the Jews must have drunk it.”

This bitter humour reflected a tragic truth: the libel had become normalized.

The Soviet regime’s obsession with the “Zionist threat” reached its peak after the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel’s swift victory over Soviet-backed Arab armies humiliated Moscow. The defeat was not only military but ideological—it exposed the weakness of Soviet arms and propaganda. Instead of learning from the failure, the Kremlin doubled down. It intensified antizionist campaigns, rebranded “Jew” as “Zionist,” and began exporting this rebranded hatred abroad—to Arab governments, international organizations, and eventually to Western universities. The Soviet “anti-Zionist” narrative became one of its most successful ideological exports, shaping global discourse for decades.

For Soviet Jews, the personal consequences were devastating. Despite official slogans condemning “Zionism” rather than “Jews,” everyone knew what the word really meant. At school, teachers repeated the slogans: “Zionism is imperialism.” “Zionism is evil.” “Israel is the colonizer.” To my classmates, I was not a “Zionist”; I was a “zhydovka.” The code was transparent: “Zionist” meant Jew.

When my parents applied to emigrate to Israel, the antizionist propaganda intensified. The school began holding “educational” sessions denouncing Israel. I was told that Israel was a wicked, oppressive country, and that my family was betraying the motherland. As a young student, I internalized these lies so deeply that I told my parents I did not want to go to Israel. I had been made to believe it was evil.

But the day we arrived in Israel, the veil lifted. I saw light—both literal and moral. There was freedom of speech. Shops were full. Arabs and Jews studied side by side. For the first time in my life, I could be openly Jewish without fear. Everything that the Soviets had accused Israel of being, they themselves embodied. The projection was complete: every failure of the Soviet system—economic deprivation, censorship, repression, fear—was externalized and projected onto the Jewish nation.

The USSR never fixed its core problems because blaming Jews was easier than reforming the system. By institutionalizing antisemitic propaganda under the banner of antizionism, the Soviet Union sowed the seeds of its own intellectual decay, stagnation, and eventual collapse in 1991. It was the same cycle repeated again: scapegoating as a substitute for governance, ideology as a disguise for hate.

“Die Juden sind unser Unglück!” — The Jews Are Our Misfortune

“Die Juden sind unser Unglück!” — “The Jews are our misfortune.”

 The official motto of Der Stürmer, Julius Streicher’s Nazi propaganda newspaper (1930s–1940s)

This slogan became one of the most recognizable antisemitic phrases in Nazi Germany. Like the Russian saying “Во всех грехах жиды виноваты” (“The Jews are guilty of all sins”), it served as a linguistic shortcut—a way to summarize the belief that Jews were responsible for every social, moral, and political failure. Both expressions distilled centuries of hate into a single, weaponized idea: that Jews are the universal scapegoat.

To understand how such a message could take hold, one must look at what Germany faced in the 1920s and 1930s, before its descent into Nazism. The nation was gripped by overlapping crises that shattered confidence in its institutions and created fertile ground for ideological extremism:

• Economic: hyperinflation, mass unemployment, industrial collapse, and the burden of war reparations.

• Financial: currency destruction, a crippling debt crisis, and overdependence on U.S. loans.

• Social: mass poverty, violent polarization, humiliation after World War I, and a profound identity crisis.

• Political: fragile democratic institutions, extremist movements on both sides, and a collapse of the rule of law.

  
  

Germany’s radicalization was not an accident of history, it was the predictable outcome of collective trauma and systemic failure. The defeat of 1918 and the punitive Treaty of Versailles inflicted a deep psychological wound: humiliation turned into obsession with redemption. Hyperinflation erased life savings; the Great Depression drove millions into despair; and Weimar democracy, with its constant instability, appeared weak and chaotic.

As street battles raged between communists and nationalists, and as the middle class lost its footing, Germans began searching for a simple explanation for their suffering. Into this vacuum stepped the old antisemitic myths—repackaged, modernized, and made to sound “rational.” Jews were blamed for the defeat in World War I, for the financial collapse, for the corruption of culture, for everything that ordinary citizens could not control.

Nazi propaganda did not simply “revive old prejudices”; it weaponized the ancient abusive framework, the Cycle of Libels, and embedded it into a totalitarian ideology. Every accusation was drawn from historical libels: Jews as traitors, as conspirators, as corrupters, as parasites. These myths were fused with pseudoscience, propaganda, and state power to form a self-reinforcing system of hate.

By exploiting Germany’s weakened psychological condition, the Nazis converted ancient libels into a totalizing worldview. The idea of “the Jewish problem” became not merely prejudice but policy, not merely hate but national mission. It transformed despair into mobilization, grievance into ideology, and violence into virtue.

For millions of Germans, Nazism did not initially appear as extremism, but it appeared as salvation. It promised order, pride, unity, and rebirth. The seductive simplicity of blaming Jews offered emotional relief: it replaced the exhausting complexity of real reform with a single, easy target. In this way, Germany’s overlapping crises created the perfect storm for mass radicalization and for the authoritarian takeover that followed.

Resorting to scapegoating is an addictive political reflex. It offers instant unity through shared hatred, and for weak leaders, it provides a convenient substitute for problem-solving. The Cycle of Libels is, in essence, a psychological mechanism that trades truth for emotional catharsis. Fixing real problems—economic stagnation, political fragmentation, social unrest—requires discipline, reform, and honesty. Blaming Jews, by contrast, is effortless, self-reinforcing, and intoxicating.

That is why societies with poor governance and economic decline so often relapse into the same pattern. They reach for the familiar abusive framework of Jew-hatred—because it works, at least temporarily, as a political anesthetic. It distracts from failure, unites the angry, and postpones accountability.

Both the Nazi and Soviet regimes perfected this abusive system of projection. They justified their failures through a conspiratorial worldview that blamed Jews for everything wrong with their respective empires. This convergence—the Tsarist, the Soviet, and the Nazi iterations of the same mechanism—reveals the universal danger of the Cycle of Libels: once society accepts the idea that one people is to blame for all its suffering, the path to dehumanization—and destruction—becomes inevitable.

Radicalization of Canada: The Return of the Abusive Framework

Looking closer to home, Canada today is showing symptoms disturbingly similar to the early stages of societies that once succumbed to the Cycle of Libels. Over the past decade, under successive Liberal governments, the country has been gripped by a convergence of crises that have shaken its foundations:

• Cost of Living and Economic Pressures: Rising prices, stagnant wages, and declining purchasing power have made everyday life increasingly unaffordable.

• Housing and Affordability Crisis: Home prices have doubled; ownership is now out of reach for millions, while immigration-driven demand outpaces supply, straining cities and eroding quality of life.

• Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth: Productivity has weakened, deficits have ballooned, and soaring national debt now undermines long-term stability.

• Crime, Public Safety, and Social Disorder: Violent crime, trafficking, and car theft are rising amid lenient “catch-and-release” policies that have eroded confidence in the justice system.

• Immigration, Integration, and Social Cohesion: Record-high immigration levels, paired with declining skill matching, have stretched public services and—at times—allowed extremist ideologies to take root.

• National Security and Foreign Interference: Authoritarian regimes such as Iran, China, and Qatar have exerted increasing influence in Canada, threatening democratic institutions, civic freedoms, and community safety.

• Canadian Identity and Social Unity: Shared values are eroding under rising extremism and ideological fragmentation, weakening the sense of national purpose.

• DEI and the Erosion of Meritocracy: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion frameworks—originally intended to advance fairness—are often weaponized to divide communities, dilute merit-based systems, and paradoxically exclude Jewish Canadians from minority protections.

• Antisemitism and Antizionism Across Institutions: Canada is now facing a historic surge in Jew-hatred, visible in schools, campuses, streets, and political discourse.

• Government Overreach and Censorship: Expanding online-content laws, digital surveillance proposals, and speech restrictions have raised grave concerns about freedom, privacy, and democratic integrity.

  
  

When Mark Carney replaced Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister in March 2025, many hoped for renewal. Instead, the situation deteriorated further. Canada’s major problems—affordability, crime, foreign interference, antisemitism, and a crisis of national identity—remain unsolved. Some have even worsened under continued inflationary pressures, high immigration intake, stagnant productivity, and growing extremism.

Addressing these issues requires honesty and reform. But fixing problems is hard work. It demands moral courage and policy discipline, qualities increasingly absent in political leadership. And so, history’s oldest and most effective diversion has returned: blame the Jews.

Rather than confront Canada’s systemic failures, the Liberal establishment found it easier to redirect national frustration through the language of moral posturing. Instead of addressing housing or debt, they joined the global wave of antizionist propaganda, reviving ancient libels in modern form: the genocide libel, the famine libel, the colonizer and apartheid libels. These narratives provided a ready-made outlet for public anger and a convenient distraction from domestic decline.

The federal government’s flirtation with boycotts and exclusionary rhetoric against Israel, often under the pretense of “human rights”, has not only appeased radicals but emboldened extremists. The tragic irony is that terrorist organizations such as Hamas have publicly thanked Canada for its stance. When a terrorist group celebrates your policies, it is a clear sign that you are standing on the wrong side of history.

The political effect has been catastrophic. Instead of uniting Canadians around shared values, these actions legitimized scapegoating. Antisemitism surged to levels unseen since the 1930s. Harassment, vandalism, and intimidation against Jewish schools, synagogues, and businesses have multiplied. Jewish professionals have been quietly purged from institutions. In less than a decade, the government’s rhetoric has normalized what used to be unthinkable.

This is not the Canada my parents immigrated to. This is not the country we built, contributed to, and took pride in. In just ten years, Canada, once a model of pluralism and decency, has become the fastest-radicalizing democracy in the Western world.

Canada today mirrors the same pattern that destroyed the Russian Empire, poisoned the Soviet Union, and consumed Nazi Germany: the addiction to scapegoating Jews instead of solving real problems. The abuse is the same; only the language has changed.

To break free from this abusive cycle, Canada, and the world, must undergo what can only be called national therapy. Like an abuser who cannot heal without acknowledging the addiction, a society cannot recover until it faces its failures honestly. The therapy begins with truth: admitting that the fixation on blaming the Jewish nation is not justice but projection; not moral awakening but moral decay.

Breaking the cycle will not be easy. It requires courage, repentance, and sustained effort to rebuild what has been eroded—trust, integrity, and merit. Yet if Canada refuses to confront its underlying dysfunction, it risks the same fate as the empires that preceded it. History’s warning is clear: societies that normalize Jew-hatred always collapse under the weight of their own lies.

Whether in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, or New York City, the pattern is the same. Blaming Jews for the world’s problems is not resistance—it is avoidance. It is the ancient reflex of corrupt systems to externalize their guilt.

The only cure for this collective sickness is accountability. Citizens must demand from their leaders not scapegoats, but solutions. Not slogans, but substance. Only by breaking free from the addiction to the Jew-hatred cycle of libels can Canada, and every democratic society, begin to heal.

The “Cycle of Libels” is not merely an antisemitic phenomenon—it is a mirror of societal dysfunction. Every era that succumbs to it reveals its moral exhaustion and intellectual decay. The path to renewal begins when societies stop blaming Jews for their crises and start repairing the causes of those crises themselves.

Breaking the abusive framework is not only a moral imperative; it is a civilizational necessity.