alt="Crush ZOG" graffitied on a wall. The O in ZOG has a Star of David inside|thumb|Antisemitic graffiti using the term
The Zionist Occupation Government, Zionist Occupational Government, or Zionist-Occupied Government (ZOG), sometimes also called the Jewish Occupational Government (JOG), is a term for the government of the United States used by adherents of an antisemitic conspiracy theory that claims that Jews secretly control the U.S. government. Some later versions apply it to the governments of other countries. ZOG is often directly personified as the Anti-Defamation League due to its conflicts with the neo-Nazi movement. The word Zionist in "Zionist Occupation Government" is used to equate being Jewish with the ideology of Zionism, depicting Zionists as conspiring on behalf of Jews and Israel. Neo-Nazis also use the term ZOG and its derivatives more generically as a pejorative.
The term "Zionist Occupation Government" and the acronym "ZOG" were coined in a 1976 article by the neo-Nazi activist Eric Thomson. The concept was further developed and spread in the 1970s by American white supremacists, particularly by Christian Identity adherents. The highly publicized criminal actions of the neo-Nazi group the Order, who used the term, resulted in a rise in its popularity among white supremacists. The expression is used by various white supremacist and far-right groups and individuals in both the U.S. and Europe, particularly in Scandinavia.
Conspiracy and terminology
The Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG), is a term used to refer to the federal government of the United States used by adherents of a conspiracy that claims that Jews secretly control the U.S. government. Alternate terms for the same idea include Zionist Occupational Government, Zionist-Occupied Government, and Jewish Occupational Government (JOG). Various terms derived from the base "ZOG" are used by proponents, e.g. "the Zog-press", "police swine of ZOG", He assisted George P. Dietz in his operation of Liberty Bell Publications, and also went by the name Eric Campbell. Holocaust denier and fellow Liberty Bell writer David McCalden claimed that Thomson had been deported from Rhodesia for being a neo-Nazi and that he had been an intelligence officer for the CIA in South America (from which he was also eventually deported for being an intelligence agent for the United States). He was an Odinist; he wrote hundreds of articles over the next few decades on ZOG and other white supremacist topics, until 2003. He also wrote white supremacist fiction.
The ZOG concept and terminology were developed and spread in the 1970s by American white supremacists, particularly adherents of Christian Identity, a white supremacist interpretation of Christianity. Increasing conflict between the far-right movement and the government in the 1980s strengthened their idea of being persecuted by "ZOG". The term was used extensively by the Aryan Nations, a Christian Identity group led by Richard Girnt Butler. The Aryan Nations believed the only way to combat ZOG was to form a white ethnostate in the Pacific Northwest that would secede from what they called the "Jew-nited States of America". They used the term in their 1996 "Declaration of Independence".
The term became popular and received public attention after The New York Times reported on December 27, 1984, on crimes committed in California and Washington by the white supremacist group the Order, an offshoot of the Aryan Nations, which used the term to refer to the U.S. government. According to the Times, the crimes "were conducted to raise money for a war upon the United States government, which the group calls 'ZOG', or Zionist Occupation Government." During the final confrontation with the Order's leader, Robert Jay Mathews, the FBI (as a joke due to the Order's usage of the term) wore baseball hats emblazoned "ZOG"; Mathews was burned alive during the confrontation. Neo-Nazis came to see him as a martyr.
See also
- The Eternal Jew (film)
- The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century
- The International Jew
- New World Order conspiracy theory
- QAnon
- Dominant minority
- Ethnocracy