GOP Candidate, Buffalo Shooter, Profess Jewish Conspiracy

Kim Crockett, the Minnesota GOP-endorsed candidate for secretary of state, which oversees elections, thinks Minnesota has less election integrity than every part of the U.S. except for California.

And at the MN GOP convention this past weekend, she made it clear that Jews are to blame.

Crockett played a video that showed Steve Simon, Minnesota’s secretary of state, and Marc Elias, an elections attorney, as the Grady twins from the horror movie “The Shining,” based on a novel by Stephen King. A caption on the image read “let’s wreck elections for ever and ever and ever.”

The next shot was an image of Hungarian Jewish philanthropist George Soros manipulating strings attached to Simon and Elias.

Soros is a regular punching bag for Republican and far-right figures, in a campaign against the billionaire that uses “longstanding antisemitic myths, particularly the notion that rich and powerful Jews work behind the scenes, plotting to control countries and manipulate global events,” the Anti-Defamation League has said.

Crockett wasn’t alone; the weekend featured another conspiracy theory of Jewish control.

On the second day of the MN GOP convention, which ran May 13-14, an 18-year-old white supremacist in tactical gear killed 10 people in a shooting at a supermarket in a predominantly Black part of Buffalo, New York.

According to a racist screed allegedly written by the attacker, the shooting was motivated by a belief in the Great Replacement theory. The ideology accuses Jews of being powerful masterminds who are promoting non-white immigration to the United States in order to “replace” white people and drive them to extinction.

The white supremacist theory has inspired similar domestic terrorism attacks at the Mother Emanuel Church in 2015, the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, and a Walmart in El Paso in 2019. 

It has also become a regular feature across the Republican party, mainstreamed by far-right extremist media figures like Tucker Carlson.

Fox News, which hosts Carlson, drew more viewers in April than CNN and MSNBC combined, and Carlson’s show is regularly rated as one of the most popular TV programs.

Neither Crockett nor the MN GOP responded to requests for comment in time for publication. If they release statements, this story will be updated to include them.

“The ‘Jewish puppet master’ is a longstanding and deeply anti-Semitic trope,” the Minnesota DFL said in a statement.

“The stereotypes Crockett is using to fuel her campaign are centuries old and have caused incredible harm to the Jewish community both here in the United States and across the world.”

The MN GOP also endorsed Scott Jensen as the party’s candidate for governor. Jensen hosted a self-proclaimed antisemite on his podcast earlier this year.

Minnesota Republicans have a history of trafficking in antisemitism, having compared Bernie Sanders to Hitler and mask mandates to Nazi anti-Jewish laws.