In the now-deleted Facebook post, Greene said there were "too many coincidences to ignore" with the fire, claimed there had been laserbeam sightings, and speculated that a vice chairman at "Rothschild Inc, international investment banking firm" was involved. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Rothschild discussed why Jews have been scapegoated for everything from 9/11 to the current moral panic over LGBTQ “wokeness,” what Elon Musk has in common with Henry Ford, and how we might deprogram people who have bought into antisemitic canards. If this were the use, one would hope that the space laser wouldn’t be the “Death Star” size seen in the earlier picture. The comments referred to her lengthy Facebook post five years ago in which she said that deadly wildfires in California at that time were not natural and claimed people have seen “lasers or blue beams of light causing the fire” from space.

While a number of people have been understandably upset about Taylor Greene’s post, the absurdity of the space laser conspiracy theory about the wildfires did bring some interesting flames on social media. Could not even have told you most people back in politics or families’ names, don’t know their background.Thanks to the publisher, Melville House Publishing, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book. I also remember hearing that Paris Hilton's sister Nikki married a Rothschild but I'd never dug deeper into the family because I wasn't interested. I’ve already written for Forbes about how those of Asian descent have been unfairly blamed for the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, harassed, and even assaulted.

The story he tells is about more than just a baseless lie that won’t die; it’s a larger tale about how those lies shape our culture and our politics for generations. Greene, who spoke in February at a white nationalist conference, has often been accused of making anti-Semitic remarks.

Perhaps, Taylor Greene is being incredibly brave every time she spends time outside without a force field around her. We are introduced not only to Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the banking dynasty, but also to his earliest known relative, Isak, a “fairly prosperous merchant” in the 1500s, and Isak’s grandson, Naftali. I can understand, on an intellectual level, how that happened and I appreciate the author's care in telling that story. The remainder of the book caps with antisemitism in the Trump era, including but not limited to the transition of blame from Rothschilds to George Soros and the targeted violence by those taking these conspiracies as fact and choosing to act on the lies. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.