Zionist Occupation Government or Zionist Occupied Government (abbreviated as ZOG) is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that holds that Jews secretly control a given country, while the formal government is a puppet regime.
The expression is used by antisemitic groups such as white supremacists in the United States and Europe, as well as by ultra-nationalists such as Pamyat in Russia, and various far-right groups.
The word "Zionist" in "Zionist Occupation Government" should not be confused with the ideology of Zionism, the movement for support of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Because the conspiracy theorists chiefly name countries outside that area, the usage of Zionist in this context is misleading, and it is intended to portray Jews as conspirators who aim to control the world, as in the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
History
One early appearance of the term was in 1976 in an article, Welcome to ZOG-World, attributed to an American neo-Nazi named Eric Thomson. The term came to the attention of a larger audience in a December 27, 1984 article in The New York Times about robberies committed in California and Washington by a white supremacist group called The Order. According to the newspaper, the crimes "were conducted to raise money for a war upon the United States Government, which the group calls 'ZOG,' or Zionist Occupation Government."
The Order of the Silent Brotherhood was an offshoot of the Aryan Nations, an organization founded in the early 1970s by Richard Girnt Butler; the latter had since the 1950s been associated with another antisemitic group, called the Church of Jesus Christ Christian. Both of these groups trace their origins to antisemitic activists, like Gerald L. K. Smith, and they have interacted with the Ku Klux Klan.
The name was publicized extensively in Aryan Nations literature. In December 1984 Newsweek magazine reported that the Aryan Nations had set up a Bulletin Board System called "Aryan Nation Liberty Net" to offer information such as, for instance, the locations of Communist Party offices and "ZOG informers".
In 1985, the Oregon-based radical group Posse Comitatus announced: "Our nation is now completely under the control of the International Invisible government of World Jewry."
In 1996, the Aryan Nations posted on its website an "Aryan Declaration of Independence, in which we find that "the history of the present Zionist Occupied Government of the United States of America is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations... [all] having a direct object—the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states." Holding "the eradication of the White race and its culture" as "one of its foremost purposes", the "ZOG" is accused of relinquishing "powers of government to private corporations, White traitors and ruling class Jewish families."
Since 1996 the name has spread in usage, and it is now popular with many other antisemitic organizations. Swedish Neo-Nazis, for example, say that Jews in what they call the Swedish Zionist Occupied Government are importing immigrants to "dilute the blood of the white race". Websites such as Jew Watch accuse the entire spectrum of Western nations and other countries of being ruled by "Zionist Occupation Governments".