(Jewish Group) The Wages of Online Antisemitism Opinion
The old saying goes, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Turns out that when those words are propelled by online outrage algorithms, they can be every bit as dangerous as the proverbial sticks and stones.
Boundless, a new group combating Jew-hatred, and the Network Contagion Research Institute, which specializes in cyber-social threat-identification and forecasting, traced the online discourse that emerged during the last major flare up in fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in May of 2021 to understand the impact here in the United States.
We found that as fighting intensified, words coopted from the human rights discourse were weaponized and used to vilify and stigmatize Israel and Jews. The words apartheid, colonialism, and settler reached their highest levels ever on Twitter. As Israel responded to Hamas rockets, the word Jew became more closely associated with the words "white" and "oppressor" on social media.
Here in the U.S., we found that in the very same places where Jews were intimidated or attacked, the term apartheid had surged on Twitter. Much has already been written on the harm that emanates from the political far right. Our research strongly suggests that weaponized language—that is language appropriated from the human rights discourse and unleashed on Israel and Jews—is contributing to real-world harm against Jews in America.
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