By David Smigel, Opinions Editor
While verifying information for an article I was editing covering a bloody antisemitic attack in New York City a few months ago, I came across an online “Hoax Alert” voicing skepticism about the assault’s antisemitic motivation. The post framed it as an arbitrary assault whose narrative was twisted by Ofir Akunis, the Israeli Consul General in New York, who asserted that the attack on the Jewish-Israeli victim had resulted from worldwide incitement and propagation of blood libels against the Jewish people and state. The writer of the “Hoax Alert” denied this, despite the assailant’s professed fixation on the victim’s religion and the period of unprecedented antisemitic sentiment in which we find ourselves today. Quickly abandoning his original narrative, the writer then proceeded to insinuate that the consul and victim had themselves staged the attack, before concluding with a quote from antisemite Arthur Schopenhauer dubbing Jews “the great masters of lying.”
Looking through the Substack on which the libel had been posted, I quickly noticed a pattern of content. Nearly every post was another professed “Hoax Alert” discrediting Jewish victimization, along with scattered conspiracies denying Jewish roles in historical innovations and asserting ideas of cabal-esque control and inflated reports of antisemitism. The narratives themselves are a classic contradiction, denying Jewish competency while ascribing world dominance in the same breath. Even during the week that I am writing this, several daily posts have been made on the page contending falsified hate crimes and exaggerated Jewish value in society.
That night, I read the author’s most popular post (listed next to his “Simple Guide to Holocaust Revisionism”), in which he explains why he is an antisemite. He argued, unsurprisingly, that it has everything to do with the behavior of the Jews and nothing to do with his own gripes and failures. Antisemitism, he proposed, is rational in the face of the Jewish threat to Western civilization and the propaganda wars that we and our state have waged to garner sympathy and privilege. I could go on summarizing the very lengthy (and I mean lengthy) rants of this pathetic individual and his oh-so brave rejection of the current Jew-controlled power structure, but any more would be a larger waste of time than reading the post in the first place.
Such wasted time underlies my mixed feelings about how to approach these hateful forums. On the one hand, I’m sure the poster is some miserable basement-dweller with nothing better to do with his time than spend hours pumping out mindless rhetoric; I would also like to believe that his fringe writings are ultimately of little significance, unlikely to inspire anything tangibly harmful. Yet despite their probable insignificance, there I was, wasting precious time reading through pages of nonsense.
The phenomenon is not new to me. Since high school, I’ve stopped to read through every extremist website propagating the very prejudice it denies the existence of, every MSN comment discounting Jewish blood and every news story covering ignorant cultural icons and college students campaigning for the release of bloodguilty terrorists (with the added positive spin many outlets seem so committed to giving them).
How are we supposed to respond to this kind of content? Reporting it to moderators, in my experience, is rarely heeded, and aside from amusing myself with the absurdities of irrelevant adversaries, I question whether the exposure serves a constructive purpose at all. It never takes long before these adversaries cease to be amusing at all.
I’m sure I’m not alone in this, unable to veer away from the rage-baiting open letters calling our precarious situation “exaggerated” and our self-advocacy a tool of oppressive elites. Yet, I can’t help but wonder what the point is in listening to these sincerely disturbed people who are so blind to truth and entirely resistant to dialogue. How much do I really have to read to understand the basic principle that society has stubborn double standards when it comes to the Jewish people and that the outspoken haters are crazy across the board?
The truth is, though I’m sure they’re not worth it, there’s something so addictive about these antisemitic spirals. Engaging them won’t remedy the performative, bandwagoning nature of society and I doubt it will prevent these messages from getting out and doing harm, yet it persists.
It’s definitely worth considering the impact of these ideas being circulated when deciding whether they’re worth engaging. While there will always be the cowards who simply spew meaningless drool, it is the same extremist-aligned camp which produces the mass killings and terror we have become disturbingly accustomed to as of late. I can’t pretend this is where it all festers or starts, but providing a space for such voices only serves to legitimize them.
Being honest, I can’t decide whether to take the threats seriously. These are the scrawlings of people divorced from reality, but they are certainly capable of developing into action. I’ve seen the action: peers doxxed and even assaulted for the basic assertion of our right to exist, not to mention larger tragedies with which we are all too familiar.
Also, while I would like to believe there is a difference between the truly outspoken antisemites and the masses who simply parrot harmful ideas in the name of pushing back against the machine, how wide is the gap really? In some capacity, ideas which are intellectually worthless can still be societally dangerous.
At the end of the day, there’s not much to be accomplished from burying oneself in these pits unless you maintain control and are yourself getting something out of it. Our time is worth too much too for us to waste away on these channels, and we must resist getting sucked in. But we also have a responsibility to remain aware and vigilant, to constantly monitor. The same drive sending me down these firsthand accounts of hate is what keeps me on top of reliable news, reading and writing counters to what is ultimately baseless. Our exposure should be aimed at further affirming our identity and pride, reminding ourselves of the incoherence of those who stand against us. The rest of our time should be dedicated to purposes they could only dream of.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of David Smigel