I AM ON AN AIRPLANE, and I fall into conversation with the passenger next to me, which lasts for hours and allows, by turns, an unusual frankness. My seatmate is a young woman returning to the United States from a solo trip to North Africa, a graduate student in nursing. At some point, she asks me about my background. “I’m a Jew from California,” I tell her. “You know,” she says, “there’s something I’d like to ask you.” And after a pause that communicates “please don’t take this the wrong way,” she asks: “Is it true that you own the media, and the banks, and basically the government?” And to whatever was the look on my face she adds, “Well, not you, but the Jews. Because that’s what they say—”
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This essay, on Daniela Naomi Molnar's PROTOCOLS: An Erasure (Ayin Press, 2025), is available in its entirety from the Los Angeles Review of Books here.