How an Ultra-Zionist Rabbi Inspired Candace Owens’ Conspiracy Theories w/ Jay Michaelson
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NOTE: There's a bit of a question of whether Marvin Antelman was involved in the creation of the mood ring. Dr. Jonathan Sarna claimed this to Jay Michaelson, as detailed in the interview. But he may be confusing Antelman with Marvin Wernick. I only caught this detail after recording the episode, but wanted my listeners to know. It's my mistake for stating that claim more definitively in the intro than Michaelson did in the conversation. Again, the claim is courtesy of Dr. Jonathan Sarna in communication with Michaelson.
On this edition of Parallax Views, first time guest Jay Michaelson, author of The Heresy of Jacob Frank, joins the program to discuss the fascinating and disturbing backstory behind Candace Owens’ antisemitic grand conspiracy narrative about a Frankist-Sabbatean cabal supposedly controlling world events.
The conversation begins with an in-depth exploration of the historical figures of Sabbatai Zevi and Jacob Frank, two controversial Jewish messianic figures whose radical theological movements have, over centuries, become distorted and mythologized within conspiracy culture. Jay explains the actual history behind Sabbateanism and Frankism, what these movements really believed, and how obscure religious controversies became transformed into modern political mythology. And yes, we delve into the role of sex plays into these radical theologies.
A major focus of the conversation centers on the late Orthodox rabbi, inventor, and conspiracy theorist Marvin Antelman. Antelman is perhaps one of the strangest figures in modern conspiracy culture: a rabid anti-communist who allegedly helped invent the mood ring per Dr. Jonathan Sarna, patented a supposed “cure” for AIDS, and co-founded the self-styled Rabbinic Court of America alongside two other rabbis. The Rabbinic Court of America sought to expose Jewish public figures Antelman believed had “betrayed” the Jewish people, targeting figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to Noam Chomsky.
Jay and I examine Antelman’s bizarre worldview, including his belief that heretical Jewish sects like the Sabbateans and Frankists secretly evolved into hidden revolutionary networks tied to the Illuminati, communism, liberalism, and modern global power structures. We discuss how Antelman’s deeply illiberal nationalism, obsession with internal enemies, and conspiratorial anti-communism shaped his theories, as well as how later conspiracy figures like David Icke and Candace Owens would appropriate and twist aspects of Antelman’s ideas into narratives about occult conspiracies that could be weaponized far more broadly against Jews in openly antisemitic ways.
We also delve into the overlap between antisemitism, anti-communism, anti-globalism, religious conspiracism, and internet-age political mythology; the migration of Antelman's fringe theological and poltical ideas into evangelical and conspiracy media ecosystems as well as the extreme world of Kahanist Zionism (the followers of the ultra-Zionist Rabbi Meier Kahane); and why movements like Frankism continue to exert such a strange pull on the conspiratorial imagination.
All that and more on this edition of Parallax Views.
