In a series of interviews and public appearances spanning nearly two years, Jim Marchant, a Republican candidate for the Senate seat in Nevada, has frequently invoked antisemitic tropes claiming that “evil people” including the “Khazarians,” “the cabal,” “globalists” and “central bankers” have controlled the government and conspired to oppress the American people and the world for centuries.

Marchant is likely a long shot for the Republican nomination — he trails a distant third in fundraising among Republicans behind Army veteran Sam Brown and former U.S. Ambassador to Iceland Jeff Gunter. Marchant, who ran for the U.S. House in 2020 and was the Republican nominee for Nevada secretary of state in 2022, emerged as a prominent proponent of false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, among other conspiracy theories. 

In public appearances dating back to 2022 that have been published online, Marchant has repeatedly promoted the idea that a shadowy group of powerful individuals has been secretly controlling the world and U.S. politics — claims that closely echo antisemitic tropes.

In one particularly striking appearance last month on America Matters Media, a syndicated radio and TV show, Marchant claimed that nefarious individuals supporting Democrats have “had a plan for thousands of years, actually… they’re evil people. You know, they’ve taken control of everything through the money system. And you know, just look it up, it started with the Khazarians.”

The Khazarians, or Khazars, refer to a group living in Eastern Europe that largely disappeared more than 1,000 years ago, and have been the subject of antisemitic conspiracy theories for centuries. 

Such theories, according to the American Jewish Committee, falsely claim that the Khazars are the antecedents of modern Ashkenazi Jews — who, the theory claims, are not “real Jews” — who developed a “Khazarian Mafia” or secret empire to control the world. The theory has also been deployed to deny Jews’ connection to the land of Israel.

The theory has been invoked by white supremacist antisemites as well as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and others in the Arab world. U.S. and the European Union officials condemned these claims last year when they were repeated by Abbas.

Marchant’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Marchant went on to say that this group “infiltrated everything, including the central bankers and all of that. And they have controlled everything. And they bailed us out after the Civil War. They turned us into a corporation.”

He claimed that Presidents Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon were targeted for assassination or other retribution for their opposition to this plan.

In other interviews and public appearances, Marchant has repeatedly utilized similar rhetoric.

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), the Jewish former synagogue president who currently holds the seat, votes for “the globalist corporations and the cabal, basically” and “gets told what to do,” voting for “bills that keep them in power” in order to “suppress” the U.S. economy, technology and healthcare, Marchant said in an appearance on Arielle and Rosemary Reality Talk in January.

Such invocations of “globalists” and a “cabal” regarding Jewish people echo common antisemitic tropes of dual loyalty and secret Jewish control, according to the AJC.

In an appearance on the John Fredericks radio show last year, Marchant similarly called Rosen a “rubber stamp for… the globalists that control the Democrat Party.”

At an event with the Mesquite Patriots in January, Marchant said the “cabal, the oligarchs, the central bankers —  those are the people that have enslaved us, and they’ve done so since right after the Civil War, I believe.” He said these people have deliberately been “keeping us sick on purpose.”

He also claimed that George Soros, the World Economic Forum and its chair, Klaus Schwab, all frequent characters in right-wing conspiracy theories, are “puppets” of “others that really control them.” 

“I’m convinced they’re not human,” he continued. “You can’t do what they do to children and be human.”

Marchant has also called for a complete “reset” of the U.S.’ foreign policy and the end to all foreign aid.

Conspiratorial rhetoric from Marchant is not new. He faced criticism in his 2022 election campaign for similar language claiming that the “patriots” had been “oppressed by the cabal, the central bankers, for decades – actually centuries,” referring separately to the “Soros cabal” controlling both the U.S. and Ukraine.

Marchant’s conspiratorial claims are wide-ranging.

In multiple public appearances, he has claimed that his former campaign strategist — who he says was “assigned to me by a group of people — a group of good patriots from the intelligence community,” was assassinated by the WEF and associated forces. He’s also claimed that these “white hats” in the intelligence community had directed him to run for Nevada secretary of state.

Pressed on these claims by an audience member at the Mesquite Patriots meeting, Marchant said he “really couldn’t tell you if I wanted to” who these people were.

Such claims about a covert conflict inside the intelligence community between an evil cabal and “white hats” have their roots inside the QAnon conspiracy movement and similar fringe-right theories. Marchant’s allusion to a secret conspiracy to harm children also echoes QAnon theories about a massive child trafficking conspiracy.

In the America Matters Media appearance, he alleged that there are “tens of thousands” of military personnel operating in “sleeper cells” inside the United States on behalf of enemies of the United States.

He also made bizarre claims that billionaire Bill Gates was poisoning farmland, alleging that a rancher who had obtained confessions, at gunpoint, of said conspiracy theory from individuals involved had been threatened by “the money people” to destroy footage of these confessions.