'Globalist,' 'cosmopolitan,' and the coded vocabulary

What it is

A dog whistle is a word that reads as ordinary to most listeners and carries a second, narrower meaning for the audience it is aimed at. In the antisemitic version the second meaning is usually "Jews," and the ordinary meaning is the escape hatch. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum describes nationalist antisemitism using coded language such as "cosmopolitan" or "globalist" to cast Jews as an alien element with dangerous and suspicious international connections. ¹

The claim underneath all of it is older than any of the words. ADL's guide to antisemitic myths states it plainly: Jews, roughly 0.2 percent of the world's population, are imagined to secretly control banks, media, industry and government. ² The Holocaust Encyclopedia calls the puppet-master image the core of the conspiracy version of antisemitism, with Jews blamed in turn for plagues, military defeats, the spread of communism, and financial crises. ¹ The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an antisemitic conspiracy theory that arose around 1900 and has long since been exposed as a fabrication, is the most durable written form of it. ¹

Cosmopolitan carries the oldest charge on this list. It attaches to the claim that Jews are permanent foreigners wherever they live, a charge ADL traces through the Dreyfus Affair, through Hitler's claim that Jewish soldiers stabbed the German army in the back after World War I, and through Stalin's fabricated 1953 Doctors' Plot, which cast Soviet Jewish physicians as assassins. ³ In its current American form, ADL describes "cosmopolitan elite" as a reference to wealthy, educated Jews accused of working against ordinary people's interests. ²

Globalist is the same idea with a modern economy attached. ADL lists it flatly as a euphemism for Jewish people when used this way. ² The Museum's entry lists it alongside "cosmopolitan" as coded language casting Jews as alien outsiders. ¹

Cultural Marxism claims that Jewish intellectuals of the Frankfurt School engineered a plot to dismantle Western and Christian culture through multiculturalism, sexual liberation, and political correctness. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported in 2003 that the theory had been assembled largely by William Lind of the Free Congress Foundation, who told a 2002 conference that the supposed conspirators "were all Jewish." ⁵

The echo, three pairs of parentheses around a name, began as an audio effect on a 2014 antisemitic podcast that played an echo whenever a Jewish name was said. Antisemites converted it to typography, and it spread on Twitter in spring 2016, wrapped around the names of Jewish journalists. Placed around a word rather than a name, as in (((banker))), it marks the word itself as meaning Jews. ⁴

They is the hardest one, because it is a pronoun. It gets its content from the Great Replacement, the theory popularized by the French writer Renaud Camus in a 2011 essay, which holds that white populations are being deliberately replaced by non-white immigrants. Imported into American white supremacy, the theory acquired a named agent: Jews, cast as the organizers of that immigration. ⁶ The marchers in Charlottesville in 2017 chanted "Jews will not replace us," which is what "they" means when it is spoken by someone who believes this. ⁶

Khazarian mafia works from the other direction. It borrows the Khazar hypothesis, a largely abandoned historical argument that Ashkenazi Jews descend chiefly from Turkic converts rather than from the ancient Near East, an idea Behar and colleagues found no genetic evidence for in 2013. ¹⁰ Antisemites use it to argue that today's Jews are impostors with no legitimate claim to Jewish history or to Israel. ¹⁰ The same "fake Jews" move shows up inside QAnon, where ADL documented influencers circulating Christian Identity material claiming modern Jews are not real ones. ⁷

Why it still matters

There are two ways to get this wrong.

The first is under-reading. The audience for coded antisemitism is not small. ADL and NORC surveyed 4,007 Americans in September and October 2022 and found 85 percent believing at least one anti-Jewish trope, up from 61 percent in 2019, with 20 percent believing six or more. ⁸ Thirty-nine percent agreed that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the United States. ⁸ A code word only functions if the belief it points at is already sitting in the listener.

The second is over-reading. "Globalist" has a real, ordinary meaning in arguments about trade, treaties, and international institutions, and most people who use it are arguing about tariffs. "Cosmopolitan" appears in normal English sentences with no second meaning attached. Our view: treating every instance as a slur spends credibility you will need later, and it gives the real antisemite a grievance he did not have to earn.

Look at what the word is standing next to. "Globalist" in a sentence about the World Trade Organization is one thing; "globalist" attached to a list of Jewish names, or sitting beside "cabal" or "rootless," is another. ADL applies a version of this to the word "Zionist," treating it as antisemitic when it is used as a derogatory term for all Jews or interchangeably with all Israelis, rather than as a description of a political position. ⁹ Ask whether the sentence requires a hidden hand to make sense. QAnon's fixation on a global elite of bankers and on George Soros carries what ADL calls deeply antisemitic undertones for exactly that reason: the story does not work without a secret coordinator, and the coordinator keeps turning out to be Jewish. ⁷

The deniability is deliberate. Demanding that a speaker confess the second meaning is therefore the wrong test, because the whole point of the vocabulary is that he never has to. Watch what happens after it is pointed out instead. Someone arguing about trade policy will say so and move on. Someone using the code will explain that you are proving his point.

Robert Bowers cited replacement theory before killing eleven people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, and Brenton Tarrant titled his 2019 Christchurch manifesto "The Great Replacement." ⁶

The words you'll hear

Globalist. Used as a euphemism for Jews, per ADL, in the older claim that Jews secretly control finance, media, and government. ² It also has a plain non-antisemitic meaning in trade and foreign-policy argument, which is what makes it useful as code.

Cosmopolitan elite. ADL's description of the modern form of the foreigner charge: wealthy, educated Jews framed as working against the interests of ordinary people. ² The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum lists "cosmopolitan" alongside "globalist" as nationalist antisemitism's coded language. ¹

Cultural Marxism. The theory that Frankfurt School intellectuals plotted to destroy Western culture. SPLC reported in 2003 that its chief popularizer, William Lind, told a conference the alleged conspirators "were all Jewish." ⁵

The echo, ((( ))). Three pairs of parentheses marking a person as Jewish, or a word as code for Jews. Traced by ADL to a 2014 podcast sound effect and widespread on Twitter by spring 2016. ⁴

The Great Replacement. Renaud Camus's 2011 claim that white populations are being deliberately replaced by immigration, given an antisemitic form in the United States by naming Jews as the organizers. ⁶

Khazarian mafia. An antisemitic use of the abandoned Khazar-origin hypothesis, arguing that Jews are impostors without real ties to Jewish history or the Middle East. Genetic work published in 2013 found no support for Khazar descent. ¹⁰

Cabal. QAnon's word for the secret global elite said to run the world, which ADL identifies as carrying antisemitic undertones through its focus on bankers and on George Soros. ⁷

Dual loyalty. The charge that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to their own country, agreed with by 39 percent of Americans in ADL's 2022 survey. ⁸