May 24, 2021
Against the backdrop of violence in the Middle East, ADL noted a rise of antisemitism across social media. Although much of that antisemitism focuses on alleged “evil” perpetrated by Zionists or Zionism, there has also been a significant increase in classic antisemitism, including tropes of Jews as controlling, greedy and immoral.
To explore this further, the Center on Extremism (COE) researched the prevalence of posts that include language invoking classic antisemitic stereotypes and overt anti-Jewish slurs on the 4chan’s Politically Incorrect board or /pol/ board from April 1 through May 20. /pol/ is a forum that is notorious for extremely high levels of hateful rhetoric, including racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, white supremacy and antisemitism.
We observed a surge in posts containing classic antisemitic language and anti-Jewish slurs during the conflict, which was defined as May 10 (when the military conflict between Israel and Hamas began) through May 20 (when the ceasefire was announced). These posts increased by 71% -- from a daily average of 2,801 before the conflict to a daily average of 4,795 while military operations continued.
Not surprisingly, posts with antisemitic language that included variations on terms pertaining to Zionism, Israel, Palestine and Hamas increased most dramatically, from a daily average of 186 before the conflict to a daily average of 833. This is an increase of 348%.
Posts with antisemitic language pertaining to Israel and Zionism include [sic throughout]:
- “Israel couldn't survive without a jew diaspora infecting and subverting goy countries.”
- “I hate Jews enough that my natural reaction to all the fighting is to laugh, but I know there is a schism between globalist and Zionist jews, and I'd rather have all of them in Israel, rather than the globohomo ones trying to found their new Zion in North America (likely the endgame of globohomo)”
- “I hate [Jews] because of the horrible shit they do. It’s not just a meme. Every single time someone is advocating for the things I hate, bringing trannies into my kids changing rooms, or dismantling the family, or bringing millions of hostile savages to the country my ancestors built, it’s literally always Jews. They can have Israel, they can murder Palestinian kids for all I care, I’ll even send them aide, just keep them out of my business.”
- “In all honesty if every single jew from white nations left to israel and stayed there on the condition that they'd leave behind all their power over here we stop sending them aid and stop fighting wars for them I honestly couldn't care less about these kikes. Genocide the palestinians for all I fucking care”
- “Israel only exists because of international jews. Without the heebs spying and stealing nuclear secrets and assassinating and racketeering and drug trafficking and slave trading all over the world there is no israel. Epstein wasn’t doing his bit for the hell of it he was an Israeli agent as were the jews who coordinated 9/11. Almost all of the tranny drugs come from Israel….”
- “That’s right goyim. Die for Israel and hand your women over to [n-----s] because Jews hate whiteness. How about this....FUCK ISRAEL and every traitor kike in the world.”
- “Who wouldn’t hate the filthy kikes? The Palestinian cause is just in it’s own right and it presents no contradiction to the White nationalist cause while the Zionist cause is both unjust and the enemy of European nationalism everywhere….Jews not Palestinians create wars and population displacements that are drivers of non-White Muslim refugees to Europe. Jews not Palestinians have captured institutional power in the West and use it to racially attack Whites and undermine national cohesion with mass immigration. Zionist Jews are the primary obstacle to White national liberation.”
Posts were detected on 4chan's Politically Incorrect board using a custom query containing classic antisemitic language and anti-Jewish slurs typically used by contemporary antisemites. The query was composed by subject matter specialists in ADL’s Center on Extremism. This report does not attempt to ascertain the percentage of antisemitic posts on 4chan or the entirety of the /pol/ board.