The American anti-Zionist movement has gone hyperactive since October 8, 2023. Before Hamas was even forcibly expelled from the Gaza envelope, social media pundits and internet influencers were celebrating the resistance to Jewish “colonialism” and prophesying the ultimate success of the Palestinian national project. Once the IDF went on the offensive and cleared Israel of the terrorist mobs in the days following the attack, however, the same folks began crying genocide. Both despicable claims have the same purpose, even if they are couched in entirely different rhetoric: isolating, undermining, and ultimately destroying the Jewish state. In the real world, over the two years since, people have set up encampments on college campuses, harassed Jews in urban areas, and vandalized and attacked Jewish spaces, from synagogues to charities.
The rhetoric and violence have accelerated in the past few months, with the genocide smear getting widespread acceptance, the famine claim becoming a popular refrain, and physical attacks on Jews ramping up. Unabashed pro-Hamas activists have been responsible for beatings, firebombings, and assassinations, all targeting people who are either visibly Jewish or involved in pro-Israel groups. The rhetoric and the reality are locked into a feedback loop that only grows more and more dangerous as time goes on. But a new talking point with oddly specific framing is threatening to make this horrifying new reality even worse.
In 2025, variations on a very precise concept and phrase—that Israelis/Zionists/Jews “occupy” the American government—have been gaining increasing prominence online. This began in the fever swamps of the right-wing social media manosphere, promulgated by anti-Semitic influencers like Dan Bilzerian and Stew Peters. These are not minor personalities; combined, they have millions of followers and far more influence than they deserve. Their statements directly use the word “occupy” or “occupied” to describe purported Jewish control of the American government and the elected representatives of the people.
This language was adopted by the radical pro-Palestinian left a few months later, which tied it to their other omnicause issues, including the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta. That anti-police effort often traffics in anti-Semitic rhetoric, accusing Israel of being behind a nefarious program to militarize American policing against black people. The linkage of that long-standing claim to the more novel suggestion that Israel “occupies” America thus launders it through an already-accepted narrative. It has since been picked up by more prominent commentators, including two lead hosts for The Young Turks channel, Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. The latter’s words were the most direct in their accusations of perfidious Zionist control of America: “Our country is occupied and controlled by the Israelis. … The jig is up. You either love America or the country occupying it.”
Once both ends of the anti-Israel political horseshoe adopted this talking point, it was off to the races. The concept has become another commonplace tool in the online pro-Palestinian toolbox, appearing across platforms like X with regularity and coming from very large accounts. It has also broken the containment zone of social media, notably in an interview between former GOP House member and current TV host Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene on the OANN TV network. In that discussion, Greene—a sitting member of Congress—stated that “it feels like our government is occupied” by Israel, given how, in her telling, Israel gets everything it wants from us. Both Gaetz and Greene have been MAGA darlings, positioning themselves as the radical vanguard of the right-wing movement. Their words matter, and it is telling that they have espoused this peculiar phraseology.
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Pernicious theories about Jewish and Israeli influence over American politics and life are nothing new. The most popular of these, the idea that AIPAC controls Congress via its lobbying and donations, has been repeated by everyone from online influencers to politicians, including by Greene and Gaetz in that same clip. So why is this particular claim of “occupation” any different? The answer lies in its origin among and past usage by a wide variety of violent anti-Semitic radicals: neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and the Nation of Islam (NOI).
The conspiracy theory that the American government is run by an evil Zionist (read: Jewish) cabal has been a mainstay of these dark corners of society for half a century. It has been embraced wholeheartedly since its earliest instantiation in the 1970s, including as a plot point in the highly influential white-supremacist novel-tract The Turner Diaries, published in 1978. Aligning against the “ZOG” (Zionist Occupied Government or Zionist Occupation Government) became a primary facet of neo-Nazi organizing in the United States and Europe from then on. The man who is perhaps America’s most infamous white supremacist, the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, has repeatedly used this trope, including in a 2019 podcast in which he praised Democratic representative Ilhan Omar for her “defiance to ZOG.” The left and right are not the only strange bedfellows to be linked by this rhetoric. The opposite side of the radical anti-Semitic horseshoe—the black nationalists of the Nation of Islam—has also adopted this phrase as their own.
Anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories about malign Jewish control of world affairs have been the foundation of Nation of Islam ideology since the middle of the 20th century. The “ZOG” phraseology was a natural next step. In the 1980s, white supremacists and black nationalists found a great deal of common ground in their desire for enforced segregation, national dissolution, and, of course, Jew-hatred. There were several direct connections between the two sides, including high-level meetings, rhetorical support, intelligence sharing, and even some low-level financial contributions. The apotheosis of this despicable lovefest came with the publication and promotion of a map detailing the proposed partition of the United States into what the map calls three sectors: a White American Bastion, the Nation of Islam, and the Zionist Occupation Government, based in New York City. The ZOG capital is referred to on the map as Hymietown, a nickname for the Big Apple used by Jesse Jackson in a conversation with the Washington Post’s Milton Coleman during Jackson’s unexpectedly successful 1984 Democratic presidential campaign, in which he used Nation of Islam militia members as his private security guards. That rhetoric of anti-Semitic racial separatism has continued ever since in Nation of Islam material, alongside that of their white-supremacist brethren.
In the meantime, other anti-Semitic hate groups, including Islamist terrorist factions, have jumped onto the bandwagon. This rhetoric allows them to push not only anti-Jewish animus but also a radical anti-Americanism that fits with their broader ideological project of throwing down Western Civilization.
And now, the language explicitly used by white supremacists, radical black nationalists, and Islamic terrorists to smear Jews and attack the American government as being their marionette has been mainstreamed.
The reasons why this peculiar framing has become more widespread are myriad. Some, particularly in the fever swamps of the online far right, likely intend to use this language as a dog whistle for their audience. In this case, the audience is quite possibly already familiar with the term’s original usage, making it a more meaningful statement of support for this noxious ideology. The politics of the wink-and-nod have been part and parcel of the online right for the past decade, so this would be a familiar approach. This dog-whistling style is less common on the left, which often espouses its radicalism as directly as possible and would surely not deliberately reference a neo-Nazi conspiracy.
It is far more likely that those on the progressive pro-Palestine left have come to the idea of the Zionist occupation of America in a different way. They might have adopted this terminology after absorbing it from Islamist or NOI sources (which themselves followed the white-supremacist playbook). This would put them at a certain remove from the original source. Alternatively, they could have formed this conception on their own, applying the pervasive language of “occupation” from the Palestinian context to one that fits their immediate needs. Israel is chronically accused of occupying every aspect of life in the Palestinian territories, even in Gaza, from which Israel withdrew entirely, both militarily and by forcibly relocating 8,000 Jewish settlers, in 2005. The facile transfer of this idea to the American context would then explain the linguistic overlap with the original white-supremacist concept.
While the rationales and motivations behind the use of ZOG rhetoric may differ based on the political ideology of the speaker, the base anti-Semitic animus is the same. Both sides of the horseshoe say they are merely attacking Israel, but in reality, they are going after Jews. The Zionists purportedly occupying the American government are not, after all, Israelis; they are American Jews, whether they are outward about that fact or acting in secret—another favorite trope of the neo-Nazi crowd.
And this rhetorical animus has dangerous real-world consequences. White-supremacist and black-nationalist violence against American Jews is not uncommon. In the 21st century, attackers have carried out mass murders at synagogues, shootings at Jewish Community Centers, assaults on Jewish schools, and even a killing at the Holocaust Museum. And just this year, we have already seen multiple attacks and murders, notably the killing of two young Israeli Embassy workers at a social event in Washington. The confluence of the noxious ZOG ideology and the radical pro-Palestinian movement can only spell trouble for Jews in America. In the minds of these radical anti-Semites, the only way to defeat an occupation is through violence and terror, in the mold of Hamas. When the occupation is of one’s own government and country, that violent response takes on an entirely more menacing valence.
This is the inevitable outcome of the rhetoric currently being adopted on the outer fringes of American politics: violence against American Jews, their supporters, and anything even tangentially related to Israel. Leaders should not hesitate to call this rhetoric out for what it is and where it came from. Let the American public see the true colors of these extremists and make their decisions accordingly.
Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr
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