Last Saturday, when an armed man took four people hostage at the Beth Israel Congregation synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, many people hearing the news might have wondered why there? Why that city? Why those people? We later learned that the man, a British national, was demanding the release of a federal prisoner, a Pakistani national named Aafia Siddiqui, who is serving a decades-long sentence on terrorism charges at nearby Fort Worth and whose imprisonment has become a cause for some in Pakistan and elsewhere.

According to statements made during the hostage standoff, the man evidently believed that a rabbi or other members of the Jewish community could make her release happen. Why does that matter? According to our next guest, that fantasy, wild as it seems, draws upon centuries-old antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories centered on the idea that Jews, a tiny portion of the world's population, secretly control the world. And he argues that those conspiracy theories aren't just at the root of violent attacks against Jews, which have proven to be dangerous in themselves but that at their core, they are also damaging to our democracy and others.