(mods pls remove post if it violates rules)
TL;DR:
My 19 yo little brother who had a rough childhood (which I unfortunately contributed to) is convinced that Israel's actions and impunity is because "modern jews run the Western world". I've tried countering this with a materialist explanation of Israel's role in US imperialism to no avail. I suspect my treatment of him in the past may be an obstacle here, and that the key to changing his mind might require an emotional rather than logical approach. Please advise.
Pre-October 7th:
We live in the West and grew up in a conservative Muslim family, both male, I'm 24 and he's 19. We have been pro-palestine since birth. Some channels he watches are Gattsu, Geopold, GDF and Badempanada, doesn't like Hasan much. He's not really into socialist politics/history like me but I think he sympathizes, although he has edgy humor which is sometimes borderline centrist/center-right.
He's a lot better now but as a kid he was really difficult, and my dad and I handled this extremely poorly. I was never physical (unlike sometimes my dad), but I said some putrid shit to him throughout my teens. Regretful shit that makes me stay up at night and breakdown from guilt if I think about too much.
5-6 years ago I mellowed out and thought "man, what the fuck am I doing" and asked him if he wanted to be normal brothers again, to which he enthusiastically agreed. Since then we've had a decent relationship and talk about shows, politics, history, movies, uni stuff, etc. We seldom talk about our feelings, and we never processed that traumatic 10 year period when I was a shitty older brother. Despite going through all this he turned out relatively fine, mostly well-adjusted all things considered.
Post October 7th
At some point in the past 2 years of genocide, he started believing in ZOG (zionist occupied government), which quickly morphed into "jews run the world". According to him, "90% of Israeli and US Jews are pedophile rapist murderers"
- He thinks that in modern times, Jews control western nations including US through the media, banks, legal institutions etc.
- He knows that Zionists != Jews, but says it doesn't matter to him at this point
- Despite my best efforts to explain Israel's role in US imperialism, he still thinks "the middle east wouldnt be as bad" if not for Israel
- I've tried explaining that its a symbiosis for US and Israel, and that Israel can't do anything without green light from US, but he thinks Israel can do whatever they want because they're blackmailing US politicians with Epstein
- He sends me reels of Israeli rabbis saying crazy shit with Havah Nagilah playing in the background
- sent me an Amin al-Husseini x Hitler edit (he joked saying how husseini saw the future and wanted to save his people, and that maybe Hitler was right)
- His "evidence" includes verses from the talmud condoning pedophilia and other insane things that many religions also say
- He thinks Nick Fuentes is funny, and likes that he is "one of the only far-right people who doesn't utterly despise Muslims/Arabs"
Potential solutions
Basically I've tried explaining with logic why he's wrong but he won't budge. I suspect part of it is because I was shitty to him during his formative years so maybe that's causing some friction. I think the solution will hinge on an emotional approach rather than logical, but I'm not sure what to do.
Explain that the one thing right-wing conspiracy theories lack is class analysis.
“How is this one ethnic/political/sexuality group actually controlling everything because rich people clearly aren’t the only problem.”
Probably the most common right-wing tactic is to divide the lower classes against each other. Usually with sexism, nationalism, or ideology.
I've tried to explain that it's capitalism, not jews but he doesnt buy it. He's just running purely on emotion and (justifiable) anger at what is being done to Palestinians, so he'll twist himself into knots to pin the blame on "da jooz" because its a much easier (and dumber) explanation than trying to understand the global structure of capitalism and imperialism.
If you haven’t tried this yet; you could explain to him that modern day Israel is completely antithetical to judaism all the way back to the creation of Israel. Zionists were considered right-wing psychos by the majority of other jews before western propaganda conflated the two. Which is why the jews who were already living peacefully in Palestine before the nakba are now kept inside their own ghetto within Israel. They are all extremely pro-Palestine.
The jews as a whole believed in waiting for the return of a prophet to lead them peacefully back to the holy land.
The CIA has done this before when they created the NOI, ISIS, etc. Remember how every Islamic group in the world all said, “ISIS isn’t Islamic. They have nothing to do with us.”
The reason why the elites of western Europe and north America want to completely take over the middle east is so they can still try to maintain control over global trade. Because anyone can see capitalism contains the roots of its own destruction from 150 years away.
They’re conflating Israel with judaism to scapegoat the jews again.
If he doesn’t believe you about that, explain what NATO is and who started it.