Antisemitic Disinformation: A Study of the Online Dissemination of Anti-Jewish Conspiracy Theories

As anti-Jewish attacks and hate crimes proliferate worldwide, anti-Jewish conspiracy memes promote fears about “replacement” by Jews and other immigrants, control by police and a nefarious “deep state” across all kinds of political affiliations, nationalities, and ethnicities.

Hatred of Jews and Judaism exists today on both the left and right sides of the ideological spectrum. It can be found among the rich and the poor, the more-and less-highly educated, the fervently religious, and the devoutly secular. It is sometimes stated coarsely, other times in the rhetoric of the sophisticated and even high-minded. But, as the report you are about to read makes clear, the “narrative” is the same—and the same as it has always been: the Jews are depicted as crafty, greedy, selfish outsiders (“rootless cosmopolitans”) who are conspiring against “us” and “people like us” to take what is ours, to control our lives and futures, to “replace” us. So what’s new?
Well, electronic media—especially social media—are new.