IN CASE YOU WONDERED WHY TRUMPISTS ARE ANTI-VAXX::

In early January, the governor of Utah, the state Senate's minority whip, the owner of the Utah Jazz basketball team, and many of the region's prominent tech CEOs were all recipients of a mass email titled simply: "Genocide."

"I write this email knowing that many of you will think I'm crazy after reading it," the email began. "I believe there is a sadistic effort underway to euthanize the American people. It's obvious now. It's undeniable, yet no one is doing anything." 

It all comes back to vaccines, he explains. And what's more: "I believe the Jews are behind this." 

The rest of the email is riddled with misinformation and antisemitic tropes: that "the Jews" secretly created the COVID-19 vaccines to weaken immune systems. That they hope to kill billions of people this way. That American Hasidic Jews "instituted a law for their people that they are not to be vaccinated for any reason." The message, first reported by the local television station KSTU, stunned the Utah tech community. Equally stunning was who wrote it: Dave Bateman, cofounder of the Utah-based property management startup Entrata, which had just achieved a $1 billion valuation. The company's board of directors asked Bateman to step down, which he did--less than 24 hours after pressing "send."

From day one, COVID-19 vaccines have been a target of antisemitic conspiracy theories. But to understand them, it's important to start with conspiracy theories about the virus itself. As soon as the pandemic began, conspiracists were blaming it on the Jews. These early theories were usually some variation of the idea that Jews created the virus, or that they were trying to control it. In May 2020, a University of Oxford study found that nearly 20 percent of adults in England agreed to some extent with the statement that "Jews have created the virus to collapse the economy for financial gain." 

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