Cynthia McKinney, a former Democratic Party Congresswoman for Georgia who was elected five times before being defeated at a Primary in 2002, has posted an antisemitic conspiracy theory on her Facebook.

McKinney has made antisemitic statements in the past, blaming “Zionists” for “kicking [her]—out of Congress” and has ties to antisemitic groups.

In the Facebook post, McKinney urges her followers to “wake up” before peddling a conspiracy theory about international finance which singles out Jewish individuals as pulling the strings behind the control of world banking. She linked to an article on the website Global Research.

However, perhaps more worryingly, she included her own image (below) which depicts an Octopus bearing the Star of David enveloping the White House. IN the background is an image of Barack Obama speaking at AIPAC, the pro-Israel pressure group, and the tentacles have the names of various Jewish groups such as the ADL on them. This is a typical antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Such conspiracy theories have been common as a form of antisemitism for well over 100 years, but contemporary incarnations often attempt to evade the accusation of Antisemitism by making the target “Zionism”, or by referring to financial institutions or wealthy Jewish individuals as a proxy.

In this way, they refer to the traditional target, Jews worldwide, merely through association and innuendo. However, identifying several Jewish groups in the image she shared makes McKinney’s antisemitism far more obvious than that in the article she shared.

The Octopus itself is a classic antisemitic image, which was used by the Nazis and many others.

According to the Definition of Antisemitism, “using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterise Israel or Israelis” is antisemitic.