November 25, 2019
In his remarkable address at ADL’s Never is Now Summit last week, the comedian and actor Sacha Baron Cohen called out major social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, for failing to stop the spread of anti-Semitism and hate on their platforms. “All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history,” Baron Cohen said in his remarks, after accepting ADL's International Leadership Award.
“I think we could all agree that we should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims,” Baron Cohen said.
While lesser-known platforms continue to peddle the most noxious and violent anti-Semitic content, even a cursory examination of content hosted by major social media platforms illustrates their continued inaction in the face of anti-Semitism and other forms of hate. Despite companies' promises to address this scourge, they persist in providing anti-Semites easy access to a global audience.
Below is a short list of people and organizations espousing virulent anti-Semitic views with active accounts on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. These accounts – hardly an exhaustive list - should have been removed long ago. It's well past time for social media giants to take responsibility for the content they host, promote and disseminate. These accounts should be removed immediately.
David Duke
@drdavidduke
David Duke is a racist and anti-Semite who has been active in the white supremacist movement for over 40 years. A former Klansman, Duke has tried to soften his image over the years by presenting himself as a “respectable racist” and author. Duke has made a career out of spreading unabashed anti-Semitism and white supremacy. Concerning Jews and the State of Israel, Duke’s messages typically include conspiratorial depictions of Jewish power and Jewish hatred for non-Jews, a combination he refers to as “Jewish supremacism.” Duke makes sweeping generalizations alleging Jewish control of the media, banking, world affairs and governments and Hollywood. He has 52.9K followers.
Louis Farrakhan
@louisfarrakhan Note: account has been inactive for a few months
For more than 30 years, Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI), has been a notable extremist figure, railing against Jews, white people and the LGBT community. In recent years, Farrakhan has embarked on a wide-ranging campaign specifically targeting the Jewish community, a campaign that has featured some of the most hateful speeches of his tenure as head of NOI. Farrakhan has alleged that the Jewish people were responsible for the slave trade and that they conspire to control the government, the media and Hollywood, as well as various black individuals and organizations. He frequently denies the legitimacy of Judaism – or Jewish claim to the land of Israel -- arguing that Judaism is nothing more than a “deceptive lie” and a “theological error” promoted by Jews to further their “control” over America’s government and economy. He has 339.8K followers.
Richard Spencer
@richardbspencer
Richard Spencer has become the most recognizable public face of the alt right, a loose network of people who promote white identity and reject mainstream conservatism in favor of politics that embrace implicit or explicit racism, anti-Semitism and white supremacy. Spencer coined the term “alternative right” (from which “alt right” is derived) in 2008 in an article in Taki’s Magazine, a far-right publication. At the time, Spencer was using “alternative right” to refer to people on the right who distinguished themselves from traditional conservatives by opposing, among other things, egalitarianism, multiculturalism and open immigration. Spencer has tried to use the media to mainstream racism and anti-Semitism. In recent years, Spencer has become more openly anti-Semitic, and now says he wants to establish a white ethno-state in the U.S., where whites can live separately from non-whites and Jews. Since 2011, Spencer has been the President of the National Policy Institute (NPI). He has 77.7K followers.
Gilad Atzmon
@giladatzmon
Gilad Atzmon is an anti-Semitic author and musician who describes himself as an “ex-Israeli” and an “ex-Jew.” He is an outspoken promoter of classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and a fierce critic of Jewish identity. He has written that “Jewish ideological, political, and cultural discourse is…foreign to universalism and ideas of true equality.” Although Atzmon frequently attacks Zionism, he has also argued that Zionism itself was originally a “universalist and humanist” movement which was “hijacked by Judaism” and that Israel is a “tyranny inspired by a deep Talmudic intolerance.”
Kevin MacDonald
@tooedit
Kevin MacDonald is an anti-Semite and a retired psychology professor at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). MacDonald’s anti-Semitic views became widely known after he wrote a series of books on Jews, starting in the mid-1990s. In these works, he argued that Jews are a hostile elite in American society who undermine the country’s European heritage and traditions in an effort to destroy Europeans. Couching his views as legitimate intellectual inquiry, MacDonald has asserted that anti-Semitism, including the anti-Jewish hatred exhibited by the Nazis and those who carried out the Spanish Inquisition, is a “rational” response to Judaism. He has 30.1K followers.
Alison Chabloz
https://www.facebook.com/alison.tyrer
A Holocaust denier who was described by a UK judge as “manifestly anti-Semitic” and “utterly obsessed with what she perceives to be the wrongdoing of Jews.” Chabloz believes that “Holocaustianity” is “the main religion…of the western world,” and that Zionist Jews “have a quasi-religious duty to lie” to others. She has written and performed songs which claim that Auschwitz was a “theme park” and that gas chambers are a “proven hoax.” [Source] She has 650 followers.
Kevin Barrett
https://www.facebook.com/kevinj.barrett.12
A 9/11 truther and anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist who hosts a wide array of anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers on his internet radio show and writes for the Unz Review. Barrett frequently invokes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about supposed Jewish manipulation of world events, claiming that the West does not comprehend Israel’s duplicity because of “the extent of clandestine Zionist power; and the fact that the Holocaust story has become the most sacred narrative of the West, despite the questionable factual basis of some of its most important details.” He has 5,000 friends.
Texe Marrs
https://www.facebook.com/texe.marrs1
A Christian fundamentalist pastor and founder of Power of Prophecy Ministries, Marrs promoted hardcore anti-Semitic ideas for decades. Marrs refers to Jews as members of a “Synagogue of Satan” and wrote that Jews are “responsible for virtually all wars and bloodshed on the face of the planet,” that they are an “evil cabal” whose “tentacles reach out to grip and strangle untold multitudes of innocent victims.” Marrs apparently died this weekend. He has 2.3k followers.
Israel Shamir
https://www.facebook.com/israel.shamir.1
A Jewish convert to Christianity who has written that Jews are “braying for [non-Jewish] blood,” and that Jews control the public discourse in the United States. He also claims that “Jewish hatred to Christ and Christians is deeply entrenched,” and that “nobody has to be a Jew, and as their crimes in Palestine multiply, it is imperative to not be one.” He has 7.5k followers.
Gordon Duff
https://www.facebook.com/gordon.duff.121
Duff is a senior editor at the anti-Semitic website Veterans Today, and a prolific promoter of anti-Semitic ideas and conspiracy theories. He denies the existence of gas chambers at the notorious Nazi death camp Auschwitz in Poland and claims that Israel controls the intelligence organizations of “dozens of nations,” including the United States. Duff describes Zionists as “monsters” that act “for money and power.” He has 1.5k followers.
YouTube
ADL first highlighted the following channels in August 2019. All page views are accurate as of November 25, 2019.
“TruNews”
https://www.youtube.com/user/TRUNEWSofficial/videos
This is the official channel of the fundamentalist Christian streaming news and opinion platform TruNews, whose programs routinely feature anti-Semitic content, and which has a long record of disseminating Islamophobic and anti-LGBTQ messages. TruNews founder and host Pastor Rick Wiles has used the YouTube channel to claim that Jews control the media, decimate American culture, and attack Christians. He describes Jews as the “Synagogue of Satan” and as agents of the antichrist. The TruNews YouTube channel has 190K subscribers and 211,954 views.
“Sanderson1611”
https://www.youtube.com/user/sanderson1611/videos
Steven Anderson, who leads the New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Movement from his Faith Word Baptist Church in Tempe, AZ, has a long history of preaching anti-Semitism and anti-LGBTQ messages. He claims that Judaism is a “fraud,” and openly denies the Holocaust. Pastor Anderson’s YouTube channel has 125K subscribers and 64,264,106 views.
“E. Michael Jones”
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqu-4AY-501xV5iCtt7dMKQ/videos
Longtime anti-Semite and traditionalist Catholic writer E. Michael Jones uses his YouTube channel and books to promote the idea that Jews are responsible for perpetrating attacks against the Catholic Church, as well as against standards, social stability and global political order. He portrays Judaism as inherently threatening towards Christianity; he also describes Jews as “outlaws and subversives” and claims that Judaism exhibits “a particularly malignant spirit.” E. Michael Jones’ YouTube channel has 51.9K subscribers and 566,792 views.
“Brother Nathanael Video”
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7zLFwokKwUdeE_JRlzzaGw/videos
This YouTube channel features videos of Nathanael Kapner, a former Jew who converted to the Russian Orthodox faith and is now a “street evangelist” and anti-Semitic provocateur. Kapner’s videos typically intersperse his conspiratorial, anti-Semitic rhetoric with clips and images from other media. The channel has 114,990 views. (Subscription information is not available for this channel.)
“The Red Elephants Vincent James” and “Vincent James”
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNiNWbmPWehjpQohglWsKxw/videos
The Red Elephants is a California-based extreme-right “media” entity headed by Vincent James Foxx. The site promotes conspiracy theories, anti-Semitic beliefs and white supremacist mantras. Beyond the virtual world, those associated with the Red Elephants have participated in rightwing and explicitly white supremacist rallies and demonstrations. “The Red Elephants Vincent James” channel has 295K subscribers and 36,036,986. The “Vincent James” channel has 56.8K subscribers and 9,968,954 views.