Winrod fused the Antichrist figure with an invisible Jewish world government conspiracy

Evidence

In this pamphlet, Winrod brushed aside the issue of Mussolini’s family background. Indeed, it was not necessary to establish his Jewish roots in order to identify him as the Antichrist—quite the contrary. For Winrod, “If it developed that Mussolini is the Antichrist, the rumors concerning his Jewish ancestry would be confi rmed.” The issue, in any case, was not Mussolini but the organizational structure behind him, for Winrod saw the Antichrist as merely the instrument of an invisible Jewish conspiracy: “A Jewish Antichrist, in the end of this age, presupposes an international system of Jewish government. There can be little doubt that such a system, based upon the Jewish Money Power, has already been created—and is ready to step into the open and assume control of world affairs as soon as the time is ripe.” Winrod did not abandon the concept of a personifi ed Antichrist, but he joined it so closely to a conspiracist view of history that the man and the organization became inseparable. — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 254

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: how a single prophet figure (Antichrist, dictator) gets folded into a shadowy organizational conspiracy whenever the person alone cannot carry the explanatory weight.