Memes and Memetic Complexes

The Ideological Meme Clusters Linking Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism

The protesters and anti-Israel activists are not all personally Antisemitic, but they repeat, create, and propagate Antisemitic ideas, with real impact

9 min readJun 5, 2024

In the diagram above we see “anti-Zionist” ideas and beliefs on the left, in tan or yellow colors. On the right are a closely linked set of Antisemitic ideas and beliefs.

The darker red lines in the middle help illustrate how this overall “memetic complex” exists and how each subsection reinforces the other.

Don’t be blinded by the complexity! Each meme sub-complex is a little different, and some are less hateful than others: but they are all related and linked; they all support each other. Any one activist proponent may only explicitly push one subset of the memes, but the effect is always to spread and promote the entire mess.

Memetic complexes

A memetic complex (or ecosystem), according to Daniel Schmachtenberger, refers to a set of interconnected memes, or units of cultural information, that propagate together and influence human behavior and thought patterns. These complexes include beliefs, values, cliches, and terminology that reinforce one another and create a coherent system of meaning within a society or sub-group.

(Note I’m using the word “meme” here in the original sense proposed by Richard Dawkins, not the sense of a cute picture illustrating an idea.)

It is critical to understand that these complexes survive and thrive (or spread ideologically) together, as a unit. Linked memes reinforce one another and spread as a unit: as a person adopts or accepts one meme, the next, linked meme becomes natural and sensible to them.

Also, some are “immune system” memes that help reject or protect against countering memes that could otherwise disrupt the system. For instance “Jews are manipulative” helps a person to reject sensible and true facts as “Zionist propaganda” or “hasbra.” Thus a person embedded in an anti-Zionist memetic cluster (part of this so-called memetic tribe) is expected and required to ignore information from anyone who does not already agree with them.

A memetic tribe is also a social construct — a real tribe in a sense. Adherence to the memes confer righteousness, affirmation, support, and a sense of superiority to everyone who shares the entire complex. The group will then police those who step out of line with disagreements on any single meme, making it socially painful to disagree or break away.

The anti-Zionist memetic complex

This complex on the left side of the diagram is, as with all memetic complexes, coherent and self-reinforcing, even when objectively incorrect. It includes both factual ideas as well as incorrect and irrelevant statements, bound together with made up (non-factual), ideological framing elements.

Most critically, the darker tan memes on the left are deeply reasoned, complex, and developed ideas that have been incubated in academia for decades, and have more recently migrated into media, education, big tech, and other spheres as graduates of elite schools moved into those fields. (These critical theory ideas are now called “woke” by many.)

What was inevitable, but still shocking when it happened, is that these ideas burst forth in the last eight months as both anti-Zionism and Antisemitism. How did we get from “defund the police!” to “[kill] Jewish pigs!”?

These links have now established “Zionist” as an effective code word to mean or imply “Jewish.”

Put simply, the memes are all connected, is how.

Detail showing the anti-Zionist subset of memes

Above we see that a lot of “Zionist” ideas (light tan in the middle) are supported by, and are natural conclusions of (darker tan) Academic or “woke” memes. They are linked, as all propaganda is, to some true facts, but also include misinformation and irrelevant ideas as well (top and bottom). Below we will also see the links to nakedly Antisemetic ideas.

Key points here include:

The oppressor/oppressed binary that is deeply embedded in critical theory tells this memetic tribe right from wrong, and that the only moral question to ask is who is less powerful or has darker skin. See my longer article on this.
Israeli Jews are European, white and “settlers.” All untrue, which I wrote about also.
False accusations of genocide, which has been enabled only by anti-Israel activists substantially redefining the term is a central meme, both to allow Israel to be uniquely evil and worthy of destruction, and to de-legitimize the Jewish people’s legitimate concerns stemming from real genocides in the past.

The Antisemitic meme complex

To capture the variation, mutation, and insidious nature of Antisemitism would take a book, and is well beyond this short article. From the vicious smears by the Nation of Islam, to ancient blood libels from earlier Christians, to the very idea of the Jew as powerful enough to kill Jesus Himself, there are so many facets.

But let’s look at a few memes in the diagram below that at least illustrate the link from raw Antisemitism to the anti-Zionist memetic complex.

Detail showing relation of anti-Zionist and Antisemitic memes

These links have now established “Zionist” as an effective code word to mean or imply “Jewish.” The association is linguistically and psychologically tight enough that recent pro-Palestine discourse has driven a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents (per the U.S. FBI). Factually, 80% of U.S. Jews are “Zionist” and 94% of Orthodox Jews, so it was always going to be impossible to deride all “Zionists” without harming Jews. This works to the advantage of the more explicitly Antisemitic groups who gleefully watch these memes explode and reinforce each other.

Some key meme associations:

The Nakba (red, center) was a horrible humiliation for the Arabs, as a combined force of six armies plus Palestinian irregulars were soundly defeated by a one-day-old Jewish state in 1948. The Arabs also lost territory, adding injury to insult. Nakba framing is linked to the anti-Zionist ideas that the Jews are European oppressors (left, tan) who have money (not shown, but another Antisemitic meme) and who sought to steal or take over land (left, tan). Even though they did not: Jews wanted to peacefully accept the 1947 UN partition. And that Israel is “settler colonialist” (again false, at least for many decades. Israel was run by a Labor government seeking peace until the settler movement emerged in reaction to the PLO rejecting peace in 2000).
Holocaust denialism (red, bottom) is linked to the anti-Zionist memes as well. To justify wiping Israel off the map, uniquely among nations, it must be uniquely evil. This requires that the “real genocide” is committed by the Jews, not against the Jews. This one is partially an “immune system meme” that de-legitimizes Jewish concerns for their survival, and re-casts Israel not as a necessary haven for millions of Jewish refugees and their descendants, but a manipulative (red, center-top) group who lie and rely on a false fear of genocide.
There are real, factual crimes of course (bottom of diagram in green) committed by Israelis in both Gaza and the West Bank. All propaganda and every cult has truthful kernels. It is shameful for a pluralistic democracy like Israel (or any country) to commit any crime, even though all nations do at some point. By linking the less severe, less frequent criminal acts to the rest, the core facts can be obscured and these real crimes made to support an overall “evil Israel/evil Jew” ideology and justification for violence against Jews.

Radical Islamic linkages

Over the last 20 years, Qatar has pumped $4.7B into U.S. universities alone. And more into media, primary schools, and Islamic religious schools. Still more into Europe. In fact, a leaked U.S. State Department memo outlines how Qatar funds Al Jazeera as a pro-Hamas media outlet. (Al Jazeera also does good journalism, but on topics related to the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamism it is extremely skewed). The full scope is not known, but the effort is massive, and appears to have incubated memes and ideas that are palatable to the West, but still linked to Islamist goals and ideology.

Hamas themselves are arguably purely in a PR war, masquerading as an actual war. They know their attacks on Israel cannot (currently) destroy or even severely damage Israel. But they intentionally cause Gaza civilian casualties as a nihilistic element of a PR war — a war of memes and ideas.

Today, Islamic beliefs are so nakedly and profoundly antisemitic, that it is hard to tease the categories apart, but here is an attempt to separate them:

Key points on this memetic sub-complex:

Islamists are focused on Islamic control over the area, as dictated by Allah. To this end, they promote a cluster of memes such as “Jews are not from Israel” (top right), “Jerusalem belongs to Islam” (right, center), “Arabs are paying for ‘European’ WWII crimes” (not shown). All these obscure and delegitimize the lives, citizenship and rights of Jewish Israelis to live in peace, protected by international law and common sense as they are natural-born citizens of their own country, whose ancestors immigrated legally to the area, or arrived as refugees decades ago.
Jews are hated by Islam (right, 2nd from top). While not true, Islamists do sometimes promote explicitly anti-Jewish ideas and Koranic texts. Hamas 1988 Covenant (charter) includes that “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees.”
Hamas did not rape and kill (bottom right): Hamas has denied they burned, raped, tortured and abused civilians, to cast the war as consistent with the ideals of Islam (though it is actually abhorrent to true Islam).
Israel’s peace deals offered were not good enough. (bottom pink). Of course that’s what someone says when they respond to a good (2000 Camp David) offer with 5 years of terror. And this then links to the “manipulative, lying Jew” memes and others such as the “settler colonialist” and Nakba memes.

Antisemites, anti-Zionists, Islamists, Academics

We see that the various groups we can loosely call Antisemites, anti-Zionists, Islamists and critical theory academics are somewhat separate, yet each forms a memetic tribe adopting and refining memes connected to the next meme complex over.

E.g. someone with a New Progressive, Western worldview will at least intellectually believe that Jews are OK (as long as they reject Israel and turn against the 90% of Jews who support Israel). In fact, Jews a great for “Jew-washing” where some Jews are included in anti-Israel protests. But these New Progressives still hold the tan memes that are nominally only “anti-Zionist.” Someone with an Islamic worldview will adopt ideas on the right side of the diagram, and reject the Western academic ideas on the far left.

Sadly, all groups meet in the middle, with enough overlap that anti-Zionism and Antisemitism rise and fall together, as each enables and grows the other ideology.

The anti-Israel and anti-Jewish groups and efforts are thus deeply complex and intertwined, yet also separate. The links and separation confuse the issues and make it hard to discuss or counter any of the memes. Consider:

If you try to call out anti-Semitism (as I do) people will say they are simply anti-Zionist.
Criticize violent Islamists or terror? Various academic or “woke” talking points may be brought out to establish a false equivalence between peace-seeking Jews in Israel and violent jihadists.
Even talking about the atrocities of October 7th becomes hard. In the memetic cluster of the New Progressives and academics, the brown-skinned, weaker, poorer Palestinians can do no wrong. Literally: if Oct 7 is not wrong, what would actually be wrong for the Palestinians? Nothing.