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Louise Mensch’s New Conspiracy: It Wasn’t the Russians; It Was the Jews

Everyone’s favorite Twitter lunatic believes Bibi, the Mossad, and Chabad helped Russia steal the election for Donald Trump

by
Liel Leibovitz
August 04, 2017
Getty Images
Getty Images
Getty Images
Getty Images

You can say a lot of things about Louise Mensch, everyone’s favorite conspiracy theorist and unhinged internet troll, but you can’t accuse her of not knowing how to spin a good yarn. The author of novels like Venus Envy and A Kept Woman—the titles give you a pretty good idea of what’s inside—is a natural storyteller, a gift she’s been using lately on Twitter to convince her hundreds of thousands of followers that she is, as my friend Jamie Kirchick wrote, “perpetually on the cusp of exposing a massive conspiracy on the part of Russia, dating back decades, to make Donald Trump president of the United States.” Yesterday, Mensch introduced an unexpected plot twist to her Twitter potboiler: America wasn’t hacked by the Russians alone; the Jews helped.

One Jew in particular: Bibi Netanyahu, dark lord and, apparently, apprentice to puppet-master Putin.

Because the pleasure of indulging in lunacy lies in the minute details, here goes. The saga began last night, when Mike Cernovich, himself a fan of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, tweeted to protest the firing of Derek Harvey, a National Security Council official sacked by National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, suggesting that Harvey was let go because of his allegiance to Israel. Another Twitter user responded and accused Cernovich of being an agent of a Russian-sponsored coup d’etat. It was precisely the kind of language that summoned Mensch into the fray.

“Love you sir” she tweeted back, with all the subtlety of an oversexed British boarding school adolescent. And then, having warmed up to her subject, she continued: Obama, she tweeted, was right to despise Netanyahu. Oh, and Netanyahu was colluding with Russia to help Trump take an ax to the beating heart of American democracy.

The Israeli prime minister, she tweeted “helped @putinrf hac America. Israel always; @netanyahu however is not Israel.”

What is Netanyahu, then? And where’s the proof of his subterfuge? What’s up with the RISSAD, which used to be called the Mossad but which Mensch has renamed Russian Israeli Trolls Loyal to Moscow Over Jerusalem, suggesting Israeli intelligence, too, is in Putin’s pocket? And why rehash, as Mensch did this morning, the ridiculous canard that Chabad is secretly a vessel for connecting the Kremlin and the Knesset?

Louise, we all still love you, you crazy rockin’ Twitterbot. And we love your Jewish husband, who manages Metallica and seems very nice. But anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are far more damaging to one’s mental faculties than snorting too much coke and popping Molly. That’s how Ezra Pound, one of the great poets of the 20th century, wound up gibbering in a cage, like a monkey. You’re too good for that, I hope.

Liel Leibovitz is editor-at-large for Tablet Magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast Unorthodox and daily Talmud podcast Take One. He is the editor of Zionism: The Tablet Guide.