Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism and The Polarization Pendulum
The belief that Jews have a right to self-determination in the land of Israel has invited objection since before Israel’s founding in 1948. Often couched in familiar antisemitic accusations of Jewish supremacy, bloodlust, and covert dominance, a narrative of heroic resistance to these antisemitic themes paints anti-Zionism with hues of social justice and solidarity, and the hero’s battle against a powerful national threat. Influencers, artists, political leaders, and international legal bodies illustrate how anti-Zionism enhances celebrity,1 disguises corruption,2 and forges political alliances by creating a common enemy 3
The impact of anti-Zionism and its relationship to antisemitism, however, while qualitatively well described,4 remains quantitatively understudied. On the individual level, antisemitism and anti-Zionism are highly correlated.5 Attacks against Jews domestically in the United States tend to correlate with conflict in Israel.6 And antagonism to Israel is behaviorally linked to antisemitism7 These studies offer important insights, but crucial gaps remain.
Through this research, we sought to address the following research questions:
● What is the relationship between anti-Zionist and antisemitic tropes?
● What circumstances engender traditionally antisemitic vs. anti-Zionist tropes?
● Do these tropes signify and/or forecast real world harms against vulnerable communities?
● Can we quantify a double standard for the use of human rights language against Israel?
The NCRI and the Ruderman Foundation set out to quantitatively analyze the relationship between anti-Zionist tropes online and the online expression of antisemitic
1https://twittercom/rogerwaters/status/1597264317044338688?s=20&t=Y7DEGSZTOu3CMp8dD8WkXg
2 https://www.heritage.org/africa/commentary/double-standards-rule-the-day-the-un-human-rights-council
3 Tabarovsky, Izabella "Soviet anti-zionism and contemporary left antisemitism " fathom (2019)
4 https://wwwjcpa org/phas/phas-wistrich-f04 htm
5 https://research gold ac uk/id/eprint/2061/1/Hirsh Yale paperpdf
https://amchainitiative org/first-hard-evidence-anti-Zionism-fueling-antisemitism
https://wwwcambridge org/core/journals/politics-and-religion/article/abs/homeland-violence-and-diasporainsecurity-an-analysis-of-israel-and-american-jewry/2F7D87C36A37A0D0EB9600C7D58B2510
https://wwwcambridge org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/abs/explaining-ethnoreligious-min ority-targeting-variation-in-us-antisemitic-incidents/27C579F510013E8158D9952101AD2D00
tropes. Searching a two and half year period8 from January 1, 2020 to June 30, 2022, NCRI used large-scale social media data from Twitter, to analyze comments, replies, and interactions for antisemitic and anti-Zionist tropes, key terms and slogans (Appendix A). For this, we collected and analyzed approximately9 100 million posts and performed chronological and statistical analyses to decipher coded meanings and characterize key terms denoting antisemitic and anti-Zionist tropes:
Key Insights:
During the time range of our research on Twitter:
● When traditional antisemitic trope rose in popularity, anti-Zionist trope fell out of favor and vice versa.
● Whether anti-Zionist of antisemitic tropes came into favor appeared strongly influenced by real-world factors: Right vs left leaning leadership, conflict in the Middle East and domestic political unrest
● The use of both traditional antisemitic tropes and anti-Zionist tropes forecasted popular unrest, but only when each trope was in vogue.
● Both traditional antisemitic tropes and anti-Zionist tropes, though active at different times, correlated with harms against vulnerable communities in the real world.
Section 1: Traditional antisemitic conspiracy theories are correlated with large scale, domestic political unrest and violence.
We began by analyzing how and when well-characterized and prominent10 traditional antisemitic tropes and narratives, usually associated with right-wing conspiracy theories, are used on Twitter We selected terms such as the “New World Order” (NWO), which
8 The timeframe, and dataset ultimately used in this research was greater than identified at the outset of the research and provided a richer dataset to analyze
9 96,278,738 tweets in total
closely mirrors the infamous Russian antisemitic pamphlet, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. This term was popularized by notable conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones.11 Like the Protocols, the NWO narrative stokes fears of elite, cosmopolitan corporatists and financiers (AKA “globalists”). The NWO narrative attempts to veil its inherent antisemitism by focusing on “elite conspirators” rather than on “Jews.” Yet those depicted are almost exclusively Jewish (Figure 1A) and are suspected of dual loyalty (the idea that Jews’ loyalty lies with a “globalist cabal” or to the state of Israel). The most well known target of this conspiracy theory, Hungarian-born financier George Soros, is often reference as associated with “white genocide” or the “great replacement” (Figure 1B), a conspiracy theories that a Jewish elite is seeking to ethnically cleanse white people from Western nations and dilute the population with immigrants to obtain global dominance (Figure 1C). This myth has motivated numerous terror attacks against Jewish populations and others over the past several years.12
We also examined WWG1WGA (“where we go one, we go all”) a slogan13 used by the online conspiracy theories group Qanon. Qanon has been characterized14 as a populist, cult-like social media group that uses traditional antisemitic conspiracy theories15 including blood libel, the kidnapping of children for cult murder, and the anti-globalist NWO narrative.
12 https://time com/6177282/great-replacement-theory-buffalo-racist-attacks/
13 https://wwwcbsnews com/news/what-is-the-qanon-conspiracy theories-theory/
14 https://jaapl org/content/early/2022/01/25/JAAPL 210053-21
15 https://morningconsult com/2021/06/28/qanon-antisemitism-right-wing-authoritarianism-polling/
11 https://wwwadl org/resources/backgrounders/alex-jones-five-things-to-know Page
Figure 1: Typical memes depicting Jews as “elite conspirators” (A) in the myths of white genocide and the great replacement (B) to obtain international dominance through financial control(C).
We next performed a time series analysis of these terms to estimate their prevalence on Twitter over time and determine when and under what circumstances traditional antisemitic tropes emerged. Examining original tweets, where the analysis disregards retweets, quote tweets and likes, we found a total of 8.9 million mentions of these terms (22.4 million when we included retweets), and found that the terms, New World Order, Soros, Globalist, and WWG1WGA tended to appear together and rose in use over similar periods of time (Figure 2).
Our analysis showed that these terms rose, fell, and spiked together in notable and specific patterns in U.S. political activity.16 These spikes in terms from traditional antisemitic conspiracy theories were tied to key US domestic events which our timeline analysis showed to be the arrival of COVID-19 virus, public health restrictions, the death of George Floyd and pursuant riots, high profile election conspiracy theories, and the events of January 6th.
We ran statistical analyses on the use of these terms to examine whether they correlated with political mobilizations and violence. Rises in traditional antisemitic conspiracy theories historically correspond to anti-democratic ideology and violence.17 This is consistent with our findings. Data suggest that right wing anti-BLM vigilante activity, including insults,18 threats and attacks against protestors, was highly correlated to the use of several of the key terms below (Figure 3). Additionally, “Stop the Steal”
16 This U S oriented sensitivity is not surprising as the U S boasts more Twitter users than any other country and more than all other English speaking countries together
17 https://wwwmiddleburyedu/institute/academics/centers-initiatives/ctec/ctec-publications/violent-impact-anti-semitic-conspiracy theories
18 Data from ACLED
Figure 2: A volumetric timeline for Tweets containing right-wing terms show spikes after reported U.S. COVID-19 cases, the death of George Floyd, Newt Gingrich’s shared Soros conspiracy theories, and the January 6th attack.protest activity,19 which culminated in the events of January 6th, was also strongly correlated to the mentions of tropes online. Though more analysis is needed, these findings support the notion that traditional antisemitic tropes on Twitter may herald political unrest and harms against vulnerable communities (see methods for full results and statistics table).
We wondered whether online signals might be useful in forecasting unrest. We thus used a Granger causality analysis, which determines whether one signal is useful in forecasting another. Our analysis indicated that online use of several of these traditional antisemitic terms was an upstream indicator of unrest (see methods for full results). It was therefore useful for forecasting right wing threats and violence.
Section 2: anti-Zionist trope paints Israel as an exemplar of moral evil –– and is correlated with U.S. domestic antisemitic activity.
We next performed an analysis of anti-Zionist tropes and terms to estimate their prevalence and nature on Twitter over time and determine when and under what circumstances such tropes emerged.
To examine their use on social media, we selected “zionist” as well as terms such as “apartheid”, “settler” and “colonial,”20 terms intended to pertain to global human rights, and analyzed whether they may preferentially target Israel. Indexing over all of these terms, we found that Israel is mentioned, approximately 10 times more, on average, 20 https://jewishcurrents org/understanding-apartheid 19 Data
Figure 3: Volumetric timelines of Tweets containing traditional antisemitic conspiracy theories terms and real-world U.S. anti-BLM threats and violent activity from vigilantes and “stop the steal” protests depict similar spike activitythan all the other countries in the top 10 most-named countries in our dataset of human rights terms (figure 4).
Those defending Israel note that prominent international legal bodies21 and activist groups22 use the framework of human rights to demonize Israel in ways that are widely subscribed,23 leading to a double-standard used for Israel. Our research suggests that online trope such as those we examined evinces not a double standard, but a 10x standard.
Akin to traditional antisemitic trope found online, qualitative research suggests24 that anti-Zionist tropes, which criminalizes Israel to the point of caricature, have their roots in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and often lean into traditional antisemitic tropes. Like the Protocols, anti-Zionist trope stoke fears of an invasive, all-powerful, sinister, technological and financial superpower that seeks control, dominance, and disruption, especially by replacing native populations with Western and white European colonials. Like NWO tropes, anti-Zionism also attempts to veil antisemitism, but does so by targeting “Zionists,” who are almost exclusively Jewish and often suspect of dual-loyalty (figure 5).
22 https://wwwajc org/news/amnestys-outrageous-lie-its-big-problem-with-jews-and-the-truth-about-israel
23 https://wwwadl org/blog/prominent-voices-demonize-israel-regarding-the-conflict
24 Tabarovsky, Izabella "Demonization Blueprints: Soviet Conspiracist anti-Zionism in Contemporary Left-Wing Discourse" Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, vol 5, no 1, 2022, pp 1-20
https://doi org/10 26613/jca/5 1 97
21 https://wwwswp-berlin org/en/publication/unpacking-the-global-campaign-to-delegitimize-israel/ Page 6
Figure 4: Bar graph of the top ten countries mentioned most in tweets containing human rights terms from our data set shows Israel to be the top mentioned nation by nearly an order of magnitude.We began by performing a timeline analysis to determine when and under what circumstances anti-Zionist tropes (Appendix B) emerged to target Israel or Jews. Examining original tweets (disregarding retweets, quote tweets and likes), we found a total of 10 million mentions of these terms over the sample period (25 million including retweets). We found that akin to traditional antisemitic conspiracy theories, the terms tended to appear together, but with occasional sharp spikes, and often rose over shared time periods (Figure 6).
25 ‘A Zionist Cobweb Spider’ (From The Israeli-Arab Conflict in Soviet Caricatures, 1967–1973 by Yeshayahu Nir, Tcherikover Publishers, 1976)
Figure 5: Typical memes depicting Israel as a zionist nazi state (A) pursuing global control25 (B ) and depicting replacement narratives (C).
Figure 6: A volumetric timeline for Tweets containing human rights terms show spikes after the May 2021 Gaza-Israel conflict, Twitter statements from anti-Israel lawmakers, Amnesty’s publication concerning “Apartheid Israel”, and the West Bank Conflict/death of Akleeh.
Our analyses showed notable and specific patterns in the use of anti-Zionist tropes: The use of human rights terms did not spike in response to news of human rights violations at the same scale for any other nation across the globe. Instead these terms appeared to spike almost exclusively in response to developments pertaining to events in Israel. This illustrates that the anti-Zionist tropes not only appropriate the language of human rights in order to demonize Israel, but seems to displace the meaning of several human rights terms almost entirely. Our timeline analysis shows peaks in the use of such terms during the May 2021 conflict with Gaza, with spikes that followed reporting on controversies surrounding anti-Israel lawmakers in the U.S.,26 Amnesty International’s “Apartheid” report,27 and the conflict in the West Bank involving the death of journalist Shireen Abuh Akleeh.28
We next ran statistical analyses on the use of these terms to examine whether they might correlate with antisemitic incidents in the United States. We sought to do so because anti-Zionism is often defended by its proponents as being distinct from antisemitism. Our data suggest that the use of ostensibly human rights terms for the purposes of anti-Zionism correlates with antisemitic activity on29 and off30 campus. The term apartheid, which was the most frequently used term in our corpus, was 25% correlated with antisemitic activity reported by the ADL and 66% correlated with campus activity (see methods for full results and statistics table).
Hashtag twitter campaigns are also key indicators of activism. We therefore developed a hashtag analysis on the most common anti-Israel-related hashtags (see methods for full list and results), to further probe whether anti-Zionist activism leads to real world antisemitic incidents. Overall anti-Zionist hashtag use on Twitter was over 50% correlated with antisemitic activity on campus and more than 15% correlated with ADL reports of antisemitism more broadly (figure 7). As with antisemitic tropes, Granger testing showed a that the use of these hashtags were useful in forecasting the real world incidents. Though more analysis is needed, these findings support the notion that anti-Zionist tropes on Twitter may herald political unrest and harms against vulnerable communities (see methods for full results and statistics table).
26 https://wwwnytimes com/2021/06/10/us/politics/ilhan-omar-israel html
27https://wwwamnestyorg/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-o f-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/
28 https://israelpolicyforum org/2022/05/18/unpacking-the-tragic-death-of-journalist-shireen-abu-akleh/
29 AMCHA database - NOTE: NCRI used only antisemitic activity from this database and left out exclusively BDS related activity for concision and clarity
1.1 A Polarization Pendulum
Traditional antisemitic and anti-Zionist tropes appeared largely non-overlapping through the course of the research (figures 2 and 6) and further appear to engage in turn-taking. We examined what real world factors and dynamics might underlie whether anti-Zionist or antisemitic tropes are favored and when such tropes signify real world activity
We find that anti-Zionist terms and hashtags signified real world harms in our data after January 2021, but not before. Furthermore, traditional antisemitic tropes on Twitter signifed harms and unrest up until January of 2021, but not after. While these initial analyses are not exhaustive, they suggest that online activity may interact with seismic changes in political leadership in complex ways to predict real world activity.
In fact, real world political unrest and instability appears to favor the prevalence of one set of tropes over the other, with anti-Zionist tropes favored during Middle-east related events and traditional antisemitic tropes appearing with domestic unrest. Taken together, these findings suggest that the use of these tropes are not always uniform, but can act like a pendulum. anti-Zionist and antisemitic tropes shift back and forth dynamically in conjunction with political circumstances to feed polarization.
As with all research, there are limitations to note in these analyses. Twitter deplatformed numerous NWO influencers after the events of January 6th and these users migrated to other online fringe platforms such as Parler, Gab and others. Relationships between antisemitic chatter in fringe and extremist and real world events likely persisted, but this is beyond the scope of the current research. It may be the case that traditional Page 9
Figure 7: Volumetric timelines of Tweets containing left-wing terms and reported antisemitic incidents in the U.S. depict similar spike activity
antisemitic tropes on fringe platforms correlates with antisemitic incidents. Our analyses neither allow us to generalize these findings to other social media platforms, nor conclude that attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions are only coming from one side. It may be that anti-Zionist signalling emboldens antisemitic behaviors from the right as well as from the left. And it may be that traditional antisemitic tropes leads to enhanced security and vigilance, thereby preventing antisemitic attacks. Future research should seek to illuminate these questions.
Conclusion:
In this report, NCRI and Ruderman characterized how anti-Zionist and traditional antisemitic trope are related using one of the most influential31 social media platforms, Twitter. With open-source and social media data driven, evidence-based quantitative analyses, we found that traditionally antisemitic and anti-Zionist trope share virtually identical themes: bloodlust, dominance, covert control, and replacement.
Traditional antisemitic trope with over 500% increases at some of the most sensitive and charged moments of recent American history: the arrival of Covid, the death of George Floyd and the events of January 6th. In each case, a surprising finding from this research was that these antisemitic terms on Twitter were not positively correlated with antisemitic incidents. They instead forecasted political violence and stop-the-steal protests. This finding suggests that on Twitter, the potency of antisemitic tropes was regularly turned not against Jews but against political targets, such as social justice protests and government officials.
During the time range of the research, antisemitic and anti-Zionist tropes appeared to become in vogue at different times. When traditional antisemitic tropes rose in popularity, anti-Zionist tropes were more muted and when anti-Zionist tropes became prominent, traditional antisemitic tropes became less pronounced. It was only when these narratives were in vogue that they would forecast real world protests and political violence. Notably, anti-Zionist and antisemitic tropes became popular under different political regimes and episodes of unrest (figure 8).
This suggests a hypothesis: During times of uncertainty and political polarization, when institutional leadership is perceived to be sympathetic to traditional antisemitic tropes, those who subscribe to it may assume they have political cover to disseminate it. And when authority figures are perceived to be sympathetic to anti-Zionist tropes, those who subscribe to the narratives may assume they have political cover to disseminate them. Taken together, these features may help account for shifts in the differential use of
Fig 8 Daily average use of anti-Zionist (blue) and antisemitic (red) tropes on Twitter before (above) and after (below) Jan 6th
antisemitic tropes and anti-Zionist tropes in response to different conditions of polarization.
Finally, another hypothesis emerges from this research: censorship and platform leadership may influence which trope is in vogue online. The events of January the 6th witnessed one of the largest deplatforming campaigns in Twitter’s history and many of the users who were deplatformed were prominent participants in traditional antisemitic tropes. Political consideration in censorship and mass deplatforming may create a vacuum that favors the emergence of one anti-Jewish trope over the other. Now that many of those who were deplatformed may come back to Twitter, further research should examine the impact both deplatforming and changes in perception of political advantage on anti-Jewish tropes.
So is anti-Zionism antisemitism? Criticism of Israel, as with any nation, is crucial and is not itself conspiratorial or antisemitic. However, based on the IHRA32 definition of antisemitism, we assess that anti-Zionist campaigns and narratives on Twitter are largely antisemitic on several grounds: Firstly, they evidence a clear double (10x) standard key terms intended to pertain to human rights abuses refer to Israel almost exclusively Whatever else is true, the yardstick of human rights is demonstrably not the one measuring the criminalization or blame for Israel. Secondly, anti-Zionist tropes caricaturizes Israel with tropes that closely mirror the exact antisemitic tropes used by right wing extremists. Finally, In our data set, anti-Zionist trope constitutes a strong correlation to real world antisemitic incidents a correlation lacking for even traditionally antisemitic tropes on Twitter This suggests that to antisemitic actors, anti-Zionist signals are highly interpretable as antisemitic, and potentially even received as antisemitic calls to action.
It is worth noting that even as social media platforms have expressed interest in moderating content that threatens Jews, such protections are often not in place for tropes about “zionists.” This may have created an entry point for antisemitic hate. A topic network for “Zionist,” when developed from those who use the NWO terms, demonstrates a litany of vulgar antisemitic conspiracy theories emerging around the term (figure 9). Though our research suggests patterns of “turntaking” between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, this finding indicates a concerning potential: That over time, these signals may have the capacity to converge and become mutually reinforcing.
32https://wwwholocaustremembrance com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antis emitism
Appendix A
New World Order: This term is often used to refer to a supposed secret plan for a totalitarian world government, with Jewish people being accused of being the masterminds behind it. This conspiracy theory is rooted in antisemitic beliefs about Jewish control of global finance and politics, and is often used to justify discriminatory and violent actions against Jewish people.
Globalist: The term "globalist" is often used in an antisemitic context to suggest that Jewish people are working to create a one-world government in which they hold all the power.
Soros: Billionaire philanthropist George Soros has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories that accuse him of using his wealth to manipulate global events and control governments. These theories often rely on antisemitic tropes about Jewish people controlling world events behind the scenes.
WWG1WGA: This acronym stands for "Where We Go One, We Go All," which has become a slogan associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. QAnon has been linked to antisemitic beliefs due to its promotion of conspiracy theories about Jewish control of global events and its use of antisemitic language and imagery