Late last year, Malik Faisal Akram travelled from the UK all the way to Dallas with the intention of taking Jewish people hostage in a synagogue. He bought himself a gun and, on 15 January, enacted his plan at the Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas.
Fortunately the hostages escaped unharmed. But why did Akram fly 4,500 miles to take Jews hostage, when he lived on the doorstep of Britain’s second-biggest Jewish community in Manchester?
The answer lies in the murky world of antisemitic conspiracy theories, and a centuries-old belief in mysterious Jewish power that can still motivate people to kill.
