Thank you, Matt for a most important article! The term “Zio” is a stand in for “Jew.” That was always its intent and purpose. It was first created by white supremacists who vandalized Binghamton University and sprayed painted antisemitic messages on the walls of the campus to intimidate Jewish students. Former KKK Grand Dragon David Duke popularized the term to make his and the group’s antisemitism more covert. It soon spread across the radical right. Anything that had to with Jews they simply rebranded as “Zio” so they could have plausible deniability and say the weren’t antisemitic but rather antizionist.
The KKK, Neo-Nazis and Neo-Confederates started using Zionist as a pejorative code word to refer to Jews or Israelis. Remember, these groups hate the Jewish homeland as much as they hate the Jewish people. But in time, the term migrated into parts of the far-left as well and progressive populists, communists, socialists, anarchists, and wannabe Jihadists started to use it as well. Like their far-right cousins, the far-left wanted to cover up their hatred for the Jewish people with a term that was more ambiguous and politically correct, thus why they adopted “Zio.” Today all these leftist college kids and Jihadist Brownshirts running around out there have no idea their using a word invented by white supremacists. Antifa and their ilk claim to hate and to want to punch Nazis but yet ironically, they share a link with them, a common hatred of Jews and Zionism. Antisemitism shows Horseshoe Theory is a real thing without a doubt!
If even a big time antisemite who worships the ground Hamas walks on like Jeremy Corbyn thinks the word “Zio” is a slur you know it’s bad. These pro-Palestinian tent cities full of college kids we saw pop up on college campuses across the nation last summer freely threw around antisemitic slurs and tropes including this one. Things like comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, having a Star of David with a swastika in the middle of it, masked students who’d I call the frat boy SS, blocking Jewish students from using the library, intimidating, shouting slurs at and attacking Jewish students, setting fires, chanting to globalize the Intifada, and attacking innocent bystanders including students who weren’t on either side, the press and police officers. The Pro-Palestinian rioters at Harvard staged their own version of the Beer Hall Putsch and broke into the building and vandalized Hamilton Hall. The insurrectionists were a motley crew of radical leftists, Jihadist Brownshirts, violent criminals, mentally ill people, students who wanted to look cool, and attention seekers.
These kids would’ve welcomed Hermann Georing into their camp as a guest of honor and would worship the ground Osama Bin Laden walked on. Remember that trend on TikTok where young people read Osama Bin Laden’s Letter to America and were saying how “true” everything he said in it was? Only a couple decades after 9/11, American young people were praising the architect of the attacks. Gen Z is the Lost Generation 2.0 I’m sorry to say. Jew hate and hating America and Israel has become acceptable under the guise of antizionism and anti-Imperialism. Anti-Zionist college students sound more and more like D.H. Stephenson and George Lincoln Rockwell everyday. Ivy League Universities would be loved by Hitler, Henry Ford and Father Charles Coughlin if they were alive today. They WISH they would’ve had the money and influence these schools had!
I've always been fascinated by efforts to make hatred "politically correct". Epithets allow those who think of themselves as good people to dehumanize others, and justify their bad actions.
They also encourage laziness of thought. I'm not sure if Gen Z is the lost generation, but it certainly seems like the generation of deliberate ignorance.
….And backed by Neo-Nazi Elements inside The State, a lot of this hatred is too. We have monitored these facts here in London, for many years now. All outed. There are a lot of good people in government who appreciate our outing of the Nazis in their midst. So keep going! We anti-Nazi monitors are doing a fine job. Best wishes from here in Europe.
This is the horseshoe theory at work. Marxists and neo-nazis actually have very much in common with each other, mostly their murderous hatred of Jews. Don't assume these fake "social justice" warrior "progressives" are unaware of where that term originated.
I lived and worked in Lafayette, Louisiana as an A&P mechanic when Duke was in office in Baton Rouge and it came out that he was selling Klan and Nazi literature from his office. When he was running for Senate against Bennett Johnston in 1990 I went to a campaign speech nearby to see who he was. First, you could tell that he had had facial plastic surgery because older pictures showed his 1990 difference. Second, he was smooth and his message sounded like he was a conservative. Third, I met him and just from his dress and manner I told him he didn't look like the devil and he shook my hand and just smiled. Don't think that my comment meant he fooled me because I KNEW who he was. A lot of people in Louisiana voted for him because Johnston, as far as I could tell, was not well liked.
Matt, the thing I found interesting about both pieces was that, yes, the abbreviation was popularized by the far-right, but more fundamentally, the substitution of Jew for Zionist was a Soviet propaganda operation that goes much further back. Since these articles are talking about how the contemporary Leftists are repurposing neo-Nazi lingo, why not also point out that the neo-Nazis were repurposing the SU's multi-decadal assault on its Jewish population and Israel ever since its strategic alignment with the US was clear? The synthesis, then, is that antisemites on both the far left and far right are not very original.
Excellent etymology here. The David Duke connection is crucial becuase it shows this wasn't organic shorthand but deliberate weaponization. The irony is people who'd never repeat a racial slur feel comfortable with this one precisely becasue it masquerades as politics. The Labour Party case in 2016 was instructive, watching them wrestle with whether intentions could erase a word's DNA.
Thank you, Matt for a most important article! The term “Zio” is a stand in for “Jew.” That was always its intent and purpose. It was first created by white supremacists who vandalized Binghamton University and sprayed painted antisemitic messages on the walls of the campus to intimidate Jewish students. Former KKK Grand Dragon David Duke popularized the term to make his and the group’s antisemitism more covert. It soon spread across the radical right. Anything that had to with Jews they simply rebranded as “Zio” so they could have plausible deniability and say the weren’t antisemitic but rather antizionist.
The KKK, Neo-Nazis and Neo-Confederates started using Zionist as a pejorative code word to refer to Jews or Israelis. Remember, these groups hate the Jewish homeland as much as they hate the Jewish people. But in time, the term migrated into parts of the far-left as well and progressive populists, communists, socialists, anarchists, and wannabe Jihadists started to use it as well. Like their far-right cousins, the far-left wanted to cover up their hatred for the Jewish people with a term that was more ambiguous and politically correct, thus why they adopted “Zio.” Today all these leftist college kids and Jihadist Brownshirts running around out there have no idea their using a word invented by white supremacists. Antifa and their ilk claim to hate and to want to punch Nazis but yet ironically, they share a link with them, a common hatred of Jews and Zionism. Antisemitism shows Horseshoe Theory is a real thing without a doubt!
If even a big time antisemite who worships the ground Hamas walks on like Jeremy Corbyn thinks the word “Zio” is a slur you know it’s bad. These pro-Palestinian tent cities full of college kids we saw pop up on college campuses across the nation last summer freely threw around antisemitic slurs and tropes including this one. Things like comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, having a Star of David with a swastika in the middle of it, masked students who’d I call the frat boy SS, blocking Jewish students from using the library, intimidating, shouting slurs at and attacking Jewish students, setting fires, chanting to globalize the Intifada, and attacking innocent bystanders including students who weren’t on either side, the press and police officers. The Pro-Palestinian rioters at Harvard staged their own version of the Beer Hall Putsch and broke into the building and vandalized Hamilton Hall. The insurrectionists were a motley crew of radical leftists, Jihadist Brownshirts, violent criminals, mentally ill people, students who wanted to look cool, and attention seekers.
These kids would’ve welcomed Hermann Georing into their camp as a guest of honor and would worship the ground Osama Bin Laden walked on. Remember that trend on TikTok where young people read Osama Bin Laden’s Letter to America and were saying how “true” everything he said in it was? Only a couple decades after 9/11, American young people were praising the architect of the attacks. Gen Z is the Lost Generation 2.0 I’m sorry to say. Jew hate and hating America and Israel has become acceptable under the guise of antizionism and anti-Imperialism. Anti-Zionist college students sound more and more like D.H. Stephenson and George Lincoln Rockwell everyday. Ivy League Universities would be loved by Hitler, Henry Ford and Father Charles Coughlin if they were alive today. They WISH they would’ve had the money and influence these schools had!
I've always been fascinated by efforts to make hatred "politically correct". Epithets allow those who think of themselves as good people to dehumanize others, and justify their bad actions.
They also encourage laziness of thought. I'm not sure if Gen Z is the lost generation, but it certainly seems like the generation of deliberate ignorance.
….And backed by Neo-Nazi Elements inside The State, a lot of this hatred is too. We have monitored these facts here in London, for many years now. All outed. There are a lot of good people in government who appreciate our outing of the Nazis in their midst. So keep going! We anti-Nazi monitors are doing a fine job. Best wishes from here in Europe.
Zio! Let's own it. Zios Rock!
Thank you for this excellent article. Origins of terms matter. I subscribed, keep writing.
Thanks, Matt. I subscribed.
Thank you!
This is the horseshoe theory at work. Marxists and neo-nazis actually have very much in common with each other, mostly their murderous hatred of Jews. Don't assume these fake "social justice" warrior "progressives" are unaware of where that term originated.
Nazis are National Socialists, so yeah, Marxists = Nazis.
They are both 100% rotten ideologies.
I lived and worked in Lafayette, Louisiana as an A&P mechanic when Duke was in office in Baton Rouge and it came out that he was selling Klan and Nazi literature from his office. When he was running for Senate against Bennett Johnston in 1990 I went to a campaign speech nearby to see who he was. First, you could tell that he had had facial plastic surgery because older pictures showed his 1990 difference. Second, he was smooth and his message sounded like he was a conservative. Third, I met him and just from his dress and manner I told him he didn't look like the devil and he shook my hand and just smiled. Don't think that my comment meant he fooled me because I KNEW who he was. A lot of people in Louisiana voted for him because Johnston, as far as I could tell, was not well liked.
The more things change, the more they stay the same: this example is from 6 years ago: https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/columnist/300241/why-are-progressives-using-an-anti-semitic-slur-coined-by-the-kkk/
Matt, the thing I found interesting about both pieces was that, yes, the abbreviation was popularized by the far-right, but more fundamentally, the substitution of Jew for Zionist was a Soviet propaganda operation that goes much further back. Since these articles are talking about how the contemporary Leftists are repurposing neo-Nazi lingo, why not also point out that the neo-Nazis were repurposing the SU's multi-decadal assault on its Jewish population and Israel ever since its strategic alignment with the US was clear? The synthesis, then, is that antisemites on both the far left and far right are not very original.
Excellent etymology here. The David Duke connection is crucial becuase it shows this wasn't organic shorthand but deliberate weaponization. The irony is people who'd never repeat a racial slur feel comfortable with this one precisely becasue it masquerades as politics. The Labour Party case in 2016 was instructive, watching them wrestle with whether intentions could erase a word's DNA.
all evil meets three times daily at Jew Hate Junction.