Confronting the normalization of hate across worldwide digital platforms
Jewish advocacy groups have spent the last few years focused on antisemitism and antizionism in the academic world, as they should. At the same time, they have failed to acknowledge and confront the crisis of online antisemitism and antizionism accessible to everyone in the world with a computer or cell phone.
With 15-year-old grandchildren who will soon be applying to college, I remain alarmed at the antisemitism and antizionism on full display on university campuses around the country. The Jewish community places great value on higher education and remains justifiably alarmed at the hostile environments our young students continue to face in spaces they have a right to feel safe in. Further, I understand that this nation’s future leaders will have much of their world view formed in these unwelcoming and often hostile college settings. This will remain a fierce battle, likely for years to come. Nonetheless, campus antisemitism has at least been publicly exposed, widely criticized, and addressed to some degree by university officials under pressure by the federal government. However flawed, at least an oversight process has begun. In addition, lawyers are actively litigating civil rights violations on behalf of Jewish students and faculty around the country.
That fire is still burning, but this war has many battlefronts. And the wildfire raging out of control today is the catastrophic phenomenon of digital platform hate. And this is where the belief systems of most Americans are being formed. The leaders of our major Jewish institutions are surely aware of the ongoing slander currently mainstreaming across major social media platforms like X/Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Telegram. Unfortunately, they have failed to effectively explain to the vast majority of American Jews the ubiquitous nature and extent of this cyberattack on our community.
Scholar Adam Louis-Klein has written:
“The central strategy of modern antizionism is the Flood. [Antisemites]…flood the internet with Palestinian flags, antisemitic “laugh reacts,” false claims, slogans, fabricated casualty numbers, and emotionally charged images — some AI-generated, others cynically misappropriated from unrelated conflicts like Syria or Yemen — all falsely presented to inflame outrage against Israel. This is not mere propaganda; it is emotional blackmail: the deliberate exploitation of suffering, especially of children, to bypass reason and trigger a brute-force emotional reaction, weaponizing grief and pain into hatred.
“The Flood is driven by overwhelming demographic asymmetry: fewer than 16 million Jews stand against a global Muslim population of over 1.6 billion and more than 22 Arab states, many of which have historically refused to accept Jewish sovereignty. But numbers alone are only part of the weapon. Demographic mass is now fused with recursive algorithmic propagation: slogans, lies, and fabricated imagery are endlessly amplified through social media ecosystems that reward outrage, mob behavior, and emotional escalation. The Flood saturates information spaces not through persuasion, but through viral incitement.”
X allegedly has the highest volume of antisemitic content, while Facebook reputedly has the highest volume of user-reported incidents. YouTube is a rising offender as are platforms like Reddit, and various messaging apps. (Just randomly browse the volume of hateful posts and comments.) We now also have to deal with horrors never previously imagined, like AI and creation of bot “Rabbis” who are programmed to “admit” to evil acts, conspiracies and greed.
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