When news of the Bernie Madoff investment scandal broke in late 2008, a wave of anti-Semitic sentiment quickly followed. “The greed and corruption of the Jews has brought the financial system and the American economy low,” wrote a reader named Jeanrenoir on Portfolio.com, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Web sites, newspapers, and magazines in both the United States and Europe likewise hosted racist vitriol and conspiracy theories. Yet if there was any conspiracy, it was that…

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Read more stories by Max L. Kleinman.