My latest: the global campaign of Jew hatred

It started on October 8.  Literally, the day after.

Think about that: a slick, global, and professional-looking propaganda campaign – one that would promote violent anti-Semitism, and deny the horrors of October 7 –  was underway the very next day.  October 7: the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

October 8: a campaign immediately starts to deny October 7, or justify it.

This writer has been involved in politics in the Americas and the Middle East for a long time.  It is impossible – literally impossible – to develop and deploy a coordinated global propaganda campaign in a single day.  It can’t be done.

But if you have millions of dollars to pay for it, and bot farms in Egypt, Britain and America to push it out – and, most importantly, if you knew October 7 was going to happen before it did – then you could do it.  And thereby reach, and manipulate, millions upon millions of people, in multiple languages.

That, along with other disturbing revelations, comes out of our latest discussion with the brilliant Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, Executve Director of CyberWell, an Israeli tech nonprofit that targets and combats the spread of anti-Semitism on social media.  Speaking from Amsterdam, Cohen Montemayor shared some startling, and disturbing findings from CyberWell’s latest report.

“We found evidence of October 7 denials – and support and celebration of it – as early as October 8, 10 and 11,” she says. “And we have evidence of accounts on X’s platform with only 3,000 followers tweeting out October 7 denial and misinformation – and getting three million views.  That’s highly suspicious.”

Other disturbing findings: there are specific anti-Semitic messages showing up on each of the major social media platforms.

•Facebook: “Jews control the world – or are dominating the world order.”
•Instagram: “The Rothschild conspiracy theory”  so named after the well-to-do Jewish family that has long been targeted by Jew haters
•TikTok: “Jews are the enemy.”
•X (or Twitter): “Jews are the enemy.”
•YouTube: “Jews are the synagogue of Satan.”

Anyone who has ever worked on a political campaign knows what that is: micro-targeting.  That is, pushing out messages that are targeted to specific demographics, based on age, gender, geography and education.  That just doesn’t happen organically.  It requires money and organization.

Now, more than 150,000 examples of that sort of anti-Semitic propaganda were flagged by CyberWell for removal by the main social media platforms.  And (some good news) the platforms are getting somewhat better at removing hate.

Cohen Montemayor says that the removal rate is now around 32 percent across all the social platforms – an improvement of almost ten per cent from 2022.  And Elon Musk’s X, where some of the worst stuff is found, has finally bowed to pressure, and is hiring 150 new employees at his Texas headquarters to identify and remove online hate.

But the bad stuff is still getting through, turbo-charged by algorithms that make the anti-Semitic content a little bit worse every time someone sees it.  CyberWell took the hateful postings and presented them to the social media bosses.  Their responses were not helpful, she says.

“X threw out the rulebook entirely when it came to content moderation, [when they decided] to no longer remove hate speech,” she says.  Thereby making X one of the worst places for anti-anti-Semitism on Earth.

This past week, the Trudeau Liberals rolled out a massive and controversial legislative package to curb online hate and harm.  But, to experts like Cohen Montemayor, the problem goes far beyond mere words.  Because the harmful words are resulting in violence, she says.

“We’ve seen this with the 9/11 bombers.  We’ve seen it with January 6 insurrection. YouTube was the number one platform cited by January 6 insurrection participants as their source of information. These very smart algorithms are meant to grab your attention, and get you addicted…the content is meant to stir emotions, to make people upset, to isolate them socially,” says Cohen Montemayor.

“Mainstream social media platforms are being used to radicalize people, leading to very violent results. October 7 was the largest-ever hijacking of social media platforms by terrorist groups.  It should’ve indicated to every Western democracy that these platforms will be exploited by terrorist groups.”

In conclusion, Cohen Montemayor makes one point several times – which is that the problem goes far beyond words. It’s an issue of national security, too.

And not just Jews will be the victims, Cohen Montemayor says, adding:  “After the October 7 massacre by Hamas, the following weekend, 800 Christians were massacred in Sudan. That massacre was uploaded directly, and streamed directly, onto Facebook.  Why? They’re learning.  These terrorist groups are learning from each other.”

It’s a chilling report, and one that all civilized nations should heed.

Because the haters are getting better at what they do.  And they’re winning the propaganda war.