Online antisemitism

"Antisemitism on the internet" redirects here. For other uses, see Antisemitism on the internet (disambiguation).

Online antisemitism refers to antisemitism[1] on the internet.

Overview

Since the invention of the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1989,[2] has been a major issue, with significant real-world impact. Antisemitism is common on the most visited websites worldwide,[3] including Wikipedia,[4][5] Reddit[6] and Instagram.[7][8]

Research

With at least 66% of the world population using the internet[9] and social media,[10] antisemitic tropes are circulated more easily than in ancient times to influence public opinion about Jews in different regions while the Holocaust ‒ the systematic genocide of at least 6,000,000 Jews (67% of pre-war European Jews) by the Axis powers in WWII[11][12] ‒ fades out of public memory.

UNESCO

On January 23, 2025, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) said in a press release that a UNESCO study found 16% of all Holocaust-related content across social media to be denying or distorting.[13][14]

ADL

The phenomenon is shown in a global survey (58,000 respondents) conducted by the American civil rights group Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in late 2024, which found that 46% of the world's adult population (around 2,200,000,000 people) held deeply entrenched antisemitic views.[15]

Among the respondents, 56% thought that Jews were "only loyal to Israel" while 46% "Jews had too much power over global affairs".[15] 76% of those in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are found to agree with 11 negative stereotypes of Jews,[15] the highest of all regions.[15] Meanwhile, Kuwait and Indonesia are found to be the most antisemitic sovereign states.[16]

Regarding the Holocaust, only 48% of the respondents recognized its historical accuracy, with the percentage being the lowest (39%) among the age group 18–34,[16][17] contrary to the common academic leftist belief that the young is least likely to be racist.[18]

Reddit

See the main article: Reddit § Controversies
Further information: Supersessionism § Radical Traditionalist Catholics, Just Asking Questions § Holocaust denial, and Antisemitism in France § Post-war period

Reddit, as the largest forum in the world,[19] has been a subject of controversy due to the presence of subreddits devoted to disinformation and explicit materials, including subreddits r/Creepshots, r/jailbait, and r/greenandpleasant.[20][21] Reddit has also been long been criticized for uncontrolled antisemitism.[22] Antisemites, especially Holocaust deniers,[23] across the political spectrum are active on Reddit.[22]

On February 20, 2025, independent journalists announced their findings that over 110 subreddits were controlled by around 30 users who took advantage of the forum's loopholes to systematically distribute antisemitic disinformation for terrorist groups.[24][25] The methods involved "vote brigading, subreddit moderation, and content manipulation".[24]

Reportedly, the compromised subreddits include r/Documentaries (20M members), r/therewasanattempt (7.2M), r/PublicFreakout (4.7M), r/Fauxmoi (4.3M), r/MorbidReality (1.1M), r/ToiletPaperUSA (440K), r/Thatsactuallyverycool (277K), r/Palestine (270K), r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM (184K) and r/boringdystopia (94K),[24] from which misinformation was funnelled to smaller subreddits and beyond Reddit to influence public opinion,[24] while alerts to the company were repeatedly ignored.[24]

Instagram

See the main article: Instagram § Controversies

Antisemitism is also common on Instagram.[7][8] Some celebrities, including Israeli Jewish actresses Gal Gadot[26][27] and Noa Cohen,[28][29] are also victims, who have to restrict commenting on their Instagram profiles to reduce antisemitic harassment from purported pro-Palestinian groups.[26][28]

Wikipedia

Croatian Wikipedia

See the main article: Croatian Wikipedia

Between 2009 and 2021, Croatian Wikipedia was controlled by a group of far-right administrators who promoted Holocaust denial by censoring[4] the war crimes of the pro-Nazi Ustaše-ruled Independent State of Croatia (NDH)[30] and blocking dozens of rule-abiding users for trying to remove the false content.[4]

Željko Jovanović, the Minister of Science of Croatia back then, also advised against the use of the Croatian Wikipedia.[31] The most serious violation by the far-right administrators was their anti-historical designation of the Jasenovac concentration camp, in which 77,000–99,000 were killed,[32] as a "collection camp".[4] Their Holocaust denial was condemned by scholars, officials, advocacy groups and media critics.[4]

Following a year-long investigation (2020–21) by the Wikimedia Foundation, several complicit users and administrators were either banned or demoted, with one of the administrators found to have consolidated his or her power with 80 sockpuppet accounts.[33]

English Wikipedia

See the main article: English Wikipedia
The Feb. 2007 removal of an anti-Jewish critique of the NGO War on Want, in Wikipedia, with the new version on the right.
Excerpt from a 2013 review that rejects "Good Article" status for The Holocaust article, cited by PFanzelter (2015).

The English Wikipedia was criticized for condoning the systematic whitewashing of Nazi war criminals in thousands of WWII-related articles.[34] For instance, Arthur Nebe, a senior SS official who invented mobile gas chambers to kill Jews, was portrayed as a savior of Jews based on distortion of a cited source that actually said the opposite,[34] while false claims of Nazi war criminals "opposing" Hitler were made.[34] SS units responsible for the Holocaust were either depicted as brave fighters or described in passive voice to make their atrocities look normal.[34]

Those who corrected the false content had also faced persistent harassment from pro-Nazi users, some of whom were found to have repeatedly cited materials from Holocaust-denying sources (e.g. Journal of Historical Review, Nation Europa and Franz Kurowski[34]) misrepresented them as academic consensus and gamed the rules to prevent the removal of such content.[34] The violations continued for years with limited administrative intervention,[34] which mainstreamed Nazi sympathy among young readers and hurt efforts to preserve the Holocaust's historical truth.[34] German military historian Jens Westemeier commented on the issue,[34]

The English Wikipedia pages are far more sympathetic towards the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS than the German ones [. ...] Wikipedia and Amazon are the worst distributors of pro-Nazi perspectives and the ["clean"] Wehrmacht myth.

In 2023, Holocaust historians Prof. Jan Grabowski and Dr. Shira Klein published a 57-page article titled Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust[35] in The Journal of Holocaust Research wherein they reported to have found widespread distortion of Poland's Holocaust history on the English Wikipedia,[5][35] which involved the exaggeration[5][35] of Jewish collaboration with Nazi/Soviet occupiers, invention of Jewish "atrocities" against Poles, downplaying of Polish collaboration with Nazi/Soviet occupiers and blaming Jews for their own suffering in the Holocaust.[5][35]

Prof. Grabowski and Dr. Klein also criticized English Wikipedia's administrators and the Wikimedia Foundation's lack of will to handle,[5][35] leaving the site vulnerable to disinformation:

Wikipedia’s administrators have largely failed to uphold Wikipedia’s policies [. ...] unable to deal with the issue of persistent distortion [...] Wikipedia’s articles [...] have become a hub of misinformation and antisemitic canards.

On another occasion, Prof. Grabowski said,[5]

As a historian, I was aware [...] of various distortions [...] of the Holocaust on Wikipedia. What I found shocking, was the sheer scale [...] and the small number of individuals needed to distort the history of one of the greatest tragedies in the history of humanity.

Some misconceptions about the Holocaust in Poland are summarized as follows:

In 2024, independent journalists uncovered a large-scale off-site canvassing campaign to rewrite Jewish history and reshape the narrative surrounding the Israel–Palestine conflict, which involved 40 accounts having made at least 2,000,000 edits to over 10,000 Jewish-related articles.[54]

The off-site canvassing campaign was coordinated by an 8,000-member Tech for Palestine Discord channel,[54] where the organizers provided the participants in-depth training (e.g. strategy planning sessions, group audio "office hour" chats)[54] on getting used to Wikipedia's site operation, assigning participants (in groups of 2~3) to edit hundreds of articles in rotation[54] and gaming the rules to block others from correcting them.[54]

Reported examples of their revisionist[55] edits include[54]

  • Removal of "Land of Israel" from the origin of Jews in Jewish-related articles
  • Removal of mentions of 16th century Jewish immigration to Israel in Jewish-related articles
  • Removal of mentions of Hamas' 1988 charter which involved the incitement to mass murder of Jews
  • Removal of mentions of the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's alliance with Hitler[56][57] in Holocaust-related articles
  • Redefinition of Jews as an "ethnoreligious group and cultural community" from "ethnoreligious group and nation from the Levant" in Jewish-related articles

On 12 December 2024, English Wikipedia's arbitration committee announced that two editors[58] had been site-banned indefinitely for off-site canvassing[54][58] and "encouraging other users to game the extended confirmed restriction and engage in disruptive editing."[58] Another three editors have also been sanctioned for similar reasons.[58] On January 17, 2025, English Wikipedia's arbitration committee further voted to impose indefinite topic-bans on multiple longtime editors associated with the organized campaign.[59] ADL's CEO Jonathan Greenblatt commented,[59]

[I]t is now imperative for Wikipedia to [...] undo the harm caused by these rogue but prolific editors who [...] wreaked havoc across the platform [. ...] a systemic problem [...] that needs immediate action.

References

  1. ↑ "Working Definition Of Antisemitism". World Jewish Congress. Retrieved October 22, 2024.
    IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism :
  2. ↑ "The birth of the Web - CERN". CERN. Retrieved February 21, 2025.
  3. ↑ "Most Visited Websites in Worldwide 2024 | Open .Trends". Semrush. Retrieved December 12, 2024.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5
  6. ↑
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1
  9. ↑ "Internet use in 2024". DataReportal. January 31, 2024. Retrieved February 21, 2025.
  10. ↑ "Number of social media users worldwide from 2017 to 2028 (in billions)". Statista. Retrieved February 21, 2025.
  11. ↑
  12. ↑
  13. ↑ "Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion". International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Retrieved October 17, 2024. Distortion of the Holocaust refers, inter alia, to:
    • Intentional efforts to excuse or minimize the the Holocaust or its principal elements, including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany
    • Gross minimization of the number of the victims of the Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources
    • Attempts to blame the Jews for causing their own genocide
    • Statements that cast the Holocaust as a positive historical event. Those statements are not Holocaust denial but are closely connected to it as a radical form of antisemitism. They may suggest that the Holocaust did not go far enough in accomplishing its goal of "the Final Solution of the Jewish Question"
    • Attempts to blur the responsibility for the establishment of concentration and death camps devised and operated by Nazi Germany by putting blame on other nations or ethnic groups
  14. ↑
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 Pierre, Dion J. (January 14, 2025). "Nearly Half of World's Adults Hold Antisemitic Views, ADL Survey Finds". Algemeiner. Retrieved January 15, 2025.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Maltz, Judy (January 14, 2025). "'Deeply Alarming' | Kuwait and Indonesia Top List of World's Most Antisemitic Countries, Global Survey Shows". Haaretz. Retrieved January 15, 2025.
  17. ↑ Greenblatt, Jonathan (January 14, 2025). "Nearly half the world's population holds antisemitic beliefs". Politico. Retrieved January 15, 2025. We have failed to pass on the memory and lessons of the Holocaust to younger generations — the very future of our world.
  18. ↑ Pancevski, Bojan (January 14, 2025). "Nearly Half of Adults Worldwide Hold Antisemitic Views, Survey Finds". Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Retrieved January 15, 2025. Antisemitism has surged, especially among the young, as the Holocaust fades from collective memory
  19. ↑ "The world's largest forum Reddit has started making a profit for the first time in 20 years since its creation". dev.ua (in Ukrainian). January 31, 2024. Retrieved February 21, 2025.
  20. ↑ Morris, Kevin (11 October 2011). "What r/jailbait's closure really means". Reditor Blog. Archived from the original on 19 November 2021. Retrieved 28 October 2012.
  21. ↑ Chen, Adrian (12 October 2012). "Unmasking Reddit's Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web". Gawker. Archived from the original on 12 October 2012. Retrieved 28 October 2012.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1
  23. ↑
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 24.4 "The Terrorist Propaganda to Reddit Pipeline". Pirate Wire. February 20, 2025. Retrieved February 21, 2025.
  25. ↑ The Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 "Gal Gadot's official Instagram profile". Instagram. Retrieved December 13, 2024.
  27. ↑
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 "Noa Cohen's official Instagram profile". Instagram. Retrieved December 13, 2024.
  29. ↑
  30. ↑ "The Holocaust in Croatia". Yad Vashem. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
  31. ↑ "Jovanović: Djeco, ne baratajte hrvatskom Wikipedijom jer su sadržaji falsificirani" [Jovanović: "Children, do not use the Croatian Wikipedia because its contents are forgeries"]. Novi list (in Croatian). September 13, 2013. Retrieved September 13, 2013.
  32. ↑
  33. ↑ "Croatian Wikipedia Disinformation Assessment-2021 – Meta". Meta Wikimedia. Retrieved 2021-06-14. Many articles created and edited by the members of this group present the views that match political and socio-cultural positions advocated by a loosely connected group of Croatian radical right political parties and ultra-conservative populist movements. The group has been using its positions of power to attract new like-minded contributors, silence and ban dissenters, manipulate community elections and subvert Wikipedia's and the broader movement's native conflict resolution mechanisms.
  34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 34.2 34.3 34.4 34.5 34.6 34.7 34.8
  35. ↑ 35.00 35.01 35.02 35.03 35.04 35.05 35.06 35.07 35.08 35.09 35.10 35.11 35.12 35.13 35.14 35.15 35.16 35.17 35.18 35.19 35.20 35.21 35.22 Grabowski, Jan; Klein, Shira (February 9, 2023). "Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust". The Journal of Holocaust Research. 37 (2): 133–190. doi:10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 36.2 36.3 36.4 Wikipedia article, “Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust,” Wikipedia, revision from 8:06, May 24, 2022,
  37. ↑ Karyn Ball and Per Anders Rudling, “The Underbelly of Canadian Multiculturalism: Holocaust Obfuscation and Envy in the Debate about the Canadian Museum for Human Rights,” Holocaust Studies, vol. 20, no. 3 (2014): pp. 33–80.
  38. ↑ C. Łuczak, “Szanse i trudności bilansu demograficznego Polski w latach 1939–1945,” Dzieje Najnowsze 2 (1994): pp. 9–15.
  39. ↑ Ryszard Walczak et al. (eds.), Those Who Helped: Polish Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust (Warszawa: IPN, 1997).
  40. ↑ Martyna Grądzka-Rejak and Aleksandra Namysło, (eds.), Represje za pomoc Żydom na okupowanych ziemiach polskich w czasie II wojny światowej, vol. 1 (Warsaw: IPN, 2019), p. 464.
  41. ↑ Richard C. Lukas, Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989), p. 15.
  42. ↑
  43. ↑ Natalia Sawka, “Antysemita Leszek Żebrowski poprowadzi wykład o ‘żołnierzach wyklętych,’” Gazeta Wyborcza, March 1, 2016
  44. ↑ The “Israeli War Crimes Commission” statistics seem to originate from an essay from the 1960s by one Leo Heiman, which provides no footnote. Leo Heiman, “Ukrainians and the Jews,” in Ukrainians and Jews, Articles, Testimonies, Letters and Official Documents Dealing with Interrelations of Ukrainians and Jews in the Past and Present: A Symposium (New York: The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, 1966), p. 60.
  45. ↑ Machcewicz and Persak, (eds.), Wokół Jedwabnego; Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking, (eds.), Dalej jest noc: losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski (Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland), 2 vols. (Warsaw: Polish Center for Holocaust Research, 2018).
  46. ↑ 46.0 46.1 46.2 Engelking and Grabowski, (eds.), Dalej jest noc; Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, “Polnische Bürgermeister und der Holocaust im Generalgouvernement Besatzung, Kollaboration und Handlungsmöglichkeiten,” Bulletin des Fritz Bauer Instituts, (2021), pp. 26–35.
  47. ↑
  48. ↑ 48.0 48.1 Andrzej Żbikowski, Polacy i Zydzi pod okupacja niemiecką, 1939-1945: Studia i Materiały (Warsaw: IPN, 2006), pp. 482–84.
  49. ↑ 49.0 49.1 49.2 The Third Decree of General Governor Hans Frank concerning restrictions on residency in the Generalgouvernement and introducing the death penalty for aid rendered to Jews, October 15, 1941; Verordnungsblatt für das Generalgouvernement. Dziennik Rozporządzeń dla Generalnego Gubernatorstwa, Cracow, October 25, 1941, p. 595.
  50. ↑ 50.0 50.1 50.2 50.3 50.4 Adam Puławski, “Revisiting Jan Karski’s Final Mission,” Israeli Journal of Foreign Affairs, vol. 15, no. 2 (2021): pp. 289–97; Adam Puławski, Wobec niespotykanego w dziejach mordu. Rząd RP na uchodźstwie, Delegatura Rządu RP na Kraj, AK a eksterminacja ludności żydowskiej od wielkiej akcji do powstania w getcie warszawskim (Chełm: Stowarzyszenie Rocznik Chełmski, 2018).
  51. ↑ Wikipedia article, “Nazi Crimes Against the Polish Nation,” Wikipedia, revision from 14:14, June 15, 2022,
  52. ↑ Geoffrey P. Megargee, ed., Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, vol. 1: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA) (Washington: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2009), p. 692.
  53. ↑ "Omer Bartov and Joanna Tokarska-Bakir Were Awarded with the 2019 Yad Vashem International Book Prize". Yad Vashem. December 8, 2019. Retrieved March 5, 2025.
  54. ↑ 54.0 54.1 54.2 54.3 54.4 54.5 54.6
  55. ↑
  56. ↑
  57. ↑
  58. ↑ 58.0 58.1 58.2 58.3
  59. ↑ 59.0 59.1