Hate and anti-Jewish speech by public figures and widespread on social media prompted US President Joe Biden’s emphatic condemnation of anti-Semitism, experts said.
“Silence is complicity,” Biden tweeted on Friday.
“The Holocaust happened. Hitler was a demonic figure. And instead of giving them a platform, our politicians should denounce and reject anti-Semitism,” he added.
The Democratic president spoke a day after hip-hop and fashion mogul Kanye West expressed his “love” for Nazis in a podcast and 10 days after the former president Donald Trump had dinner with West and white supremacist Nick Fuentesa fact that has been sharply criticized by the White House and part of its own Republican Party.
Twitter suspended West’s account on Friday after he posted a picture of them. an intertwined swastika and a star of David.
“I love Hitler,” West said on several occasions, sparking angry reactions on social media.
dangers
These controversies highlight the difficult struggle of a new generation against memes and conspiracy theories, such as that of the QAnon community, about Jews, or Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement, experts say.
“When you have celebrities promoting classic anti-Semitism like Kanye West, who has more Twitter followers than Jews on planet Earth, that’s going to make him part of the public discussion,” Oren Segal of the ADL, an organization that denounces hate and anti-Semitism.
“That normalization isn’t something that just started when Kanye lost his mind. It’s something we’ve seen in the public opinion, frankly, for a long time,” he recalled.
For Segal, Trumpism is a big factor.
“If Trumpism is understood as the normalization of disinformation and conspiracy theories, the normalization of anti-Semitism is not far off,” he said.
This comes with real consequences such as the deadly synagogue attacks in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Poway, California in 2018 and 2019.
Meanwhile, the fact that West and celebrities such as basketball star Kyrie Irving are African American has been generated concerns about an anti-Semitic outbreak in this community and in the youth minority.
The power of social networks
Social networks have contributed to this, being able to easily store and share any content, including hateful content.
Elon Musk’s messy takeover of Twitter demonstrated how quickly objectionable content of any kind can come back if a platform isn’t extremely diligent.
Segal said the biggest problems are the “ecosystem” of algorithm-driven video servers like TikTok and mostly uncensored messaging and discussion forums like Telegram and Reddit, where they’re built. global virtual communities around anti-Semitism.
“It’s just a toxic online environment, where the most vulnerable people are getting their worldview, where I think we’re starting to see the consequences,” Segal explains.
For Cheryl Greenberg, a professor at Trinity College, another problem is that the importance of anti-Semitism has faded among young Americans who are less informed about the Holocaust and focus on the issues of other marginalized or oppressed groups, be they ethnic minorities or LGBTQ.
The only answer, Greenberg argues, is to work more closely with other groups, including those critical of Israel, to keep anti-Semitism at bay.
“It’s infinite, because as soon as people forget, we disappear off the radar,” he complains.
Source: AFP
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Source: Clarin
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.
