Life at present is far from normal and though our focus must rightly be on health and safety, when it comes to anti-Semitism, this old hatred adapts to the new normal without hesitation.
It didn’t take long – February, in Britain, before memes and messages were circulating online, blaming Jewish people for the virus, comparing them to it or, in one case, wishing any future vaccine be pork-based, an ill-informed attempt to condemn observant Jews to sickness.
Elsewhere, an image shared on the Telegram online platform made its way onto other sites. This displayed a grotesque caricature of a hand-rubbing Jew with the globe for his body, concealed inside a Trojan horse with the virus at its head, entering a fort guarded by another caricatured Jew and welcomed in by unknowing citizens.
However, as studies have demonstrated what starts online doesn’t end there, and in this case, what starts in one corner of the internet, does not remain there.
It wasn’t long before the conspiratorial messaging was being pushed by well-known far-right figures. David Duke, the longtime Ku Klux Klan leader, asked whether “Israel and the Global Zionist elite” were “up to their old tricks”. The link between far-right and far-left conspiracists was recently exposed and Covid-19 is a subject that crosses political extremes. Over on the far-left, Jeremy’s brother, Piers Corbyn, was offering his perspective on what he suggested was a Soros-linked population cull. A tweet so bizarre that George Galloway suggested in reply that he “take a break from Twitter mate”.
“We will continue to do what we have always done: to understand the hate, undermine its purveyors, join together to fight it and educate about its dangers.”
Of greater concern was conspiracy given voice by more mainstream figures. Bafta award-winner Rosanna Arquette, who herself has a Jewish family to whom she later apologised, was questioning reports about Israel’s efforts to find a workable vaccine, suggesting it had worked on one for over a year, “so they knew”. A lab in Israel was ahead in research because it had worked on vaccines enabled to target different types of virus, rather than a Covid-19 specific drug. Meanwhile, news of the first Israeli victim of the virus, Aryeh Even, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, was met with celebratory memes on Twitter.
Examples of conspiratorial hate from around the world are not hard to find. In France, a caricature of a former Jewish health minister pouring poison into a well has had tens of thousands of online shares. There is an article on Iranian-funded Press TV accusing Israel of engineering the virus, a former US congressional candidate asked “You gonna let those jealous, vindictive Jews get away with it?” and on State TV in Turkey, there were accusations that coronavirus was a war by a Zionist terror organisation. Yes, anti-Semitic coronavirus conspiracy theories have gone global.
Meanwhile, the FBI has reportedly intercepted messages circulating among white supremacists and neo-Nazis, encouraging members with the virus to target Jewish people by gathering and spraying body fluids at them and at the police. Such action, thankfully, hasn’t been reported, but it wasn’t long before a visibly religious Jewish man was refused an appointment in a car shop in New York and ordered to leave, accused of spreading the virus. That synagogues are closed, and missives have gone from Jewish communal bodies around the world urging isolation, means nothing to conspiracists.
Jewish groups have been seeking to build communal spirits online, but even the Zoom conferencing system is not immune to antisemitism. “Zoombombing” sees racist accounts hijack organised activities, entering meetings uninvited and spreading hate. One North London synagogue had some 205 people logged on when the group chat suddenly filled with “vile abuse”, forcing families with children, among others, to disengage. Though small in number, other Jewish online events have been targeted. The police are investigating, and the Community Security Trust, which has released a report highlighting five anti-Semitic narratives about the virus, has sent details to Jewish organisations on how to stay safe online, securing online spaces in much the same way Jewish schools and communal buildings must be protected.
There is no doubt the coming months will give organisations like ours, time to assess how we can work with government and opposition parties to ensure our digital environment is as welcoming and hate free as it can be, through the forthcoming online harms bill. In the meantime, we will do what we have always done, what is normal: to understand the hate, undermine its purveyors, join together to fight it and educate about its dangers. You can read more about antisemitism on the Antisemitism Policy Trust website.
Danny Stone MBE is the Chief Executive of the Antisemitism Policy Trust.