Congressional Candidate's Lawyer Speculates That Israel is Plotting to 'Release a Virus'

Lin Wood, the attorney for Republican congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene, shared an article on Twitter about Israel’s plans for a three-week nation-wide COVID-19 lockdown. He speculated: “Do you think this is really about Covid-19? Or is Israel acting under cover of Covid-19 to protect its citizens from another soon-to-be released virus that could potentially be more serious than Covid-19. Only time will tell. #FightBack for Freedom.”

Wood’s comment evokes antisemitic tropes about Jewish responsibility for the spread of sickness. Jews in medieval Europe were blamed for the Black Death, and persecuted as a result. Israel and Jews are not one and the same — efforts to conflate the two are antisemitic — but the use of antisemitic tropes to in reference to the State of Israel can fuel antisemitism, and that is precisely what Wood’s comment did.

In addition to representing Marjorie Taylor Greene, Wood is also the attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse, the shooter who marched in Kenosha with at least one antisemitic propagandists, and Nick Sandman, the high school student who made headlines for harassing an Indigenous veteran.

Greene has lifted up Wood in her own posts, complaining to Twitter about “censorship” when Wood’s account was temporarily locked after he violated Twitter’s code of conduct, and referring to him as an “ally.”

Greene has her own extensive history of antisemitism. She has spent time with and refused to denounce neo-Nazis, and has shared white supremacist propaganda videos accusing Jews of bringing immigrants and refugees into Europe to destroy “western civilization.” Like Wood, Greene openly promotes antisemitic QAnon conspiracy theories — conspiracies that Gregory Stanton, a leading scholar on genocide, referred to as a “Nazi cult, rebranded,” that same day.

Notably, Greene has claimed “I support Israel” as a way to deflect attention away from her own antisemitism, and to issue charges of antisemitism against Muslim and Palestinian women who criticize Israel. “Support” for Israel is not a stand-in for support for American Jews, nor is criticism of Israel antisemitic. Wood’s Black Death-style conspiracy theory about Israel, however, is antisemitic.