Zionist Occupation Government
Zionist Occupation Government
Anti-Semitic groups believe that the U.S. government is under the control of Zionist Jews.
Zionist Occupation (also Occupied, Occupational) Government (ZOG) is a term used by anti-Semitic groups who believe that the U.S. government is controlled by Zionists. When used by a white-supremacist group the phrase is most often a derogatory euphemism for “Jew,” suggesting that the government is controlled by Jews who are joined in an international conspiracy, such as the one outlined in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. More specifically, the term refers to any Jew or non-Jew who places the goals of Israel over those of the United States and tries to persuade the U.S. government to use military or economic power on behalf of Israel. The far-right groups who decry ZOG often glorify the “liberation movements” of Syria, Libya, Iran, and Palestine. Yasser Arafat was esteemed as a particularly admirable figure.
Some students of anti-semitism state that the name “Zionist Occupation Government” probably originated with Aryan Nations, which has used the ZOG reference extensively in its literature and has popularized it online. Others suggest the term was first used in a text entitled “Welcome to ZOG-World,” written by neo-Nazi Eric Thomson in 1976. Widespread usage was quite likely encouraged by a December 27, 1984, article in the New York Times reporting on the series of robberies committed in California and Washington State by white supremacists who were using their plunder to pay for a war upon the U.S. government, which they called the “Zionist Occupation Government.”
In 1996 the “Aryan Declaration of Independence,” posted on the Aryan Nations website, stated that the ZOG has as its goal “the establishment of an absolute tyranny” over the United States and “the eradication of the White race and its culture” as “one of its foremost purposes.” Since that time the term has been used by numerous anti-Semitic and white-supremacist groups.