Decoding Antisemitism An AI-driven Study on Hate Speech & Imagery Online Fourth Discourse Report

Key Findings:

This report focuses on antisemitic discourses that arose online in response to two recent major international events: the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a series of terrorist attacks in Israel. It analyses the differences and similarities in the way web users reacted to these discourse triggers in the UK, France and Germany. In addition, the report examines four national case studies which drew our attention due to the number of antisemitic reactions they elicited: novelist Sally Rooney’s boycott of Israeli publishers in the UK, the Pegasus spyware case in France, and the controversies around singer Gil Ofarim and documenta 15 art exhibition in Germany. 

The UK and French corpora both contained 12 % of antisemitic comments. By contrast, the German corpus presented a significantly lower number of antisemitic comments, at just 1%. Despite the topic being Ukraine and Russia, users often drew parallels with, and quickly shifted their attention to, the Arab-Israeli conflict, presenting Israel as an evil entity, which must bear the entire guilt for all suffering in this conflict. 

The UK corpus contained the highest percentage of antisemitic reactions (17%), followed by the French (12%) and the German (9%). This discourse trigger stimulated different antisemitic concepts across the three countries, such as the denial of Israel’s right to exist, the apartheid analogy, and conspiracy theories. This repertoire of concepts was mainly adopted by the users to justify, downplay or glorify the attacks. 

Regarding the Sally Rooney boycott case, the web user comments tended to reflect the political stance of the newspapers. Those supporting Rooney’s boycott elicited a higher number of antisemitic comments (e.g. 23% in Guardian threads) than those criticising it (e.g. 6% in the Daily Mail comments sections). Many supportive comments called for a general boycott of Israel and/or directly referenced the BDS movement. 

A much lower level of antisemitism (5%) was identified in the comments reacting to the Pegasus spyware case involving the Israeli NSO Group. Here, web users tended to resort to conspiracy theories to interpret Israel’s actions in the geopolitical sphere. Likewise, when castigating the actions of Israeli firms and government, comments highlighted Israeli (or Jewish) alienness and rootlessness. 

The German singer Gil Ofarim published a video in which he accuses the Westin Hotel in Leipzig of turning him away from the reception desk because of his Jewish identity. The number of antisemitic comments was much higher in the threads posted after the incident became public (14%) than in those reacting to the doubts about Ofarim’s accusations (3%). In the former case, users tended to accuse him of instrumentalising antisemitism to his advantage. In the latter, this was combined with the idea that Jews allegedly have an especially privileged position, or a free pass to act as they please. 

The controversy around antisemitic images being displayed as part of the 2022 documenta 15 art festival in Kassel triggered widespread discussion of antisemitism in Germany today. 7% of analysed comments were identified as antisemitic. Despite a broad consensus on the antisemitic character of the objectionable artworks, in most of these antisemitic comments users deny, relativise and affirm their antisemitism, namely by supporting artistic freedom, satire and/or social critique.