[2] Petras has referred to American policy towards Iraq as "The US/Iraqi Holocaust (UIH)" which he describes as "an ongoing process spanning the last 16 years (1990-2006) [that] provides us with a striking example of state-planned systematic extermination, torture and physical destruction designed to de-modernize a secular developing society and revert [sic] it into a series of warring clan-tribal-clerical-ethnic based entities devoid of any national authority or viable economy.
[14] Petras defended Marine Le Pen during the 2017 French presidential campaign, praising her policy views as pro-working class, anti-imperialist, Keynesian, pro-choice, and supportive of gay rights.
Petras predicted that a victory by Emmanuel Macron followed by his implementation of an "ultra-neoliberal supply-side agenda" would lead to mass street demonstrations by leftists, followed by a stronger Le Pen candidacy in the 2022 election.
The book was extremely controversial for its use of arguments which some critics contended were similar to those of neo-Nazis describing Jews as a loathsome, conspiratorial force seeking to oppress others.
Marqusee particularly criticised his dismissal of Finkelstein's and Chomsky's criticisms of his position, which Petras attributes to an ethnically-grounded blindness to the negative role of American Jews.
The ADL also noted Petras' assertion that "The lack of any public statement concerning Israel's possible knowledge of 9/11 is indicative of the vast, ubiquitous and aggressive nature of its powerful diaspora supporters.
The ADL also criticised what they described as Petras' antisemitic accusation that the American Jewish community controls the mass media and is "bloodthirsty" in its appetite for war.
[24] The ADL also cited a 2008 interview in which Petras stated that [U.S.] presidents are at the disposal of Jewish power [25] and maintained that Jews represent "the greatest threat to world peace and humanity.
[29][30][31][32] In 2011, Mark Gardner of the Community Security Trust, which monitors antisemitism in the UK, wrote an article in the left-wing magazine Dissent saying that Petras' works "present a conspiracy theory that... fits resoundingly with the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century socialist linkage of Jews with capitalism, now updated and repackaged for twenty-first-century anti-capitalist discourse.
'"[34] Similarly, author and researcher Paul Bogdanor, writing in an academic book published by Indiana University Press, focusing on the same texts as Gardner, described Petras as "articulat[ing] his theory of the organized American Jewish community as a 'Zionist Power Configuration' (ZPC)—an acronym that he apparently developed as a substitute for the neo-Nazi term 'Zionist Occupation Government' (ZOG)... and cautions against 'the role of the Zionist/Jewish Lobby in promoting future US wars.'