Why Antisemitism Is Spreading on the Left

How October 7th, the war in Gaza, and propaganda has caused the worst spread of antisemitism on the left in recent memory

Many have noted the recent rise in antisemitism on the left brought on by October 7th and the war in Gaza. And most people who have noticed have largely attributed this to an already existent antisemitism in those spaces.

While that may be true to an extent, it’s important to examine exactly how this rise has happened and why. Far too many people jump to the assumption that antisemitism is simply a fact of life, a mythical life force that affects people a bit like a virus whenever Jews and/or Israel are in the news. Israel did something bad, and thus Jews are blamed.

So how is it possible that antisemitism seems to keep popping up in left wing spaces? And what does it say about the future of progressive movements if they can’t seem to escape getting sucked into its clutches?

The Vulnerability

One of the defining elements of left wing antisemitism is that it is often tied to the left’s goal of overturning a society’s hierarchical order. Since a defining stereotype of Jews is that they are not just disproportionately powerful but are the defining power in a society, the focus of movements can easily turn to targeting Jews instead of the true power constructs. 

This trope is far more popular on the right than the left. This is largely due to the fact that conspiracy theories are now mainstream on the right in a way that hasn’t fully infected the left. Conspiracy theories almost always replace actual power constructs that are the source of a society’s problems with a shadowy figure or cabal operating behind the scenes. 

These claims are often connected to a desire to claim that the economic and societal pain of white people are the fault of immigrants taking their jobs, Black people becoming empowered, women thinking and working for themselves, and queer people existing. In other words, it successfully diverts their attention from the causes of their misery to scapegoats and then creates an imaginary force behind the scenes making it all happen: Jews.

But this construct is mutable. It can adjust to circumstance and it can be used in many different contexts. All you need is a serious problem, a desire to manipulate a willing audience, implicit bias, a convenient enemy, and a method of disseminating disinformation.

This equation has perfectly come together recently thanks to October 7th and the subsequent war and Musk’s subversion of Twitter.

The serious problem: A horrifying war in Gaza that has decimated the population, displaced 90% of the people in the country, destroyed 60% of the buildings, and caused regional and international instability. Many progressives are fed a daily diet of videos showing the horrors in a way that was impossible before social media and smartphones: children with heads blown off, innocent people mourning their lost ones, influencers they’ve grown attached to killed. Their emotions and trauma are rightfully beyond heightened.

A desire to manipulate a willing audience: From Russia to Iran to China to neo-Nazis to Hamas itself, there is a concerted effort to use the horrors of the war to spread hate, cause division, and chip away at whatever is left of our democracy.

It is not a coincidence that Jill Stein, connected to Vladimir Putin, is suddenly getting a lot of buzz on Twitter and Twitter alone. The lead up to the election is bringing out a full out propaganda and disinformation war on America itself, but the left just as much if not more than the right in 2016 and 2020.

Implicit bias: Acting as if this rise in antisemitism on the left has come out of nowhere due to bad actors would be disingenuous. Israel has always been the way in to antisemitism on the left due to how large it looms in the discourse and how genuine the problem actually is.

This is the area in which Israel and Zionism take the place of figureheads like George Soros and the Deep State that are simply code words that take the place of naming Jews outright in antisemitic conspiracy theories. This is not to say that every mention of Soros or Israel is antisemitic, but that if they are mentioned as the all powerful hand behind the scenes controlling the world, the media, Hollywood, the economy, and on and on, they now fall within the narrative of an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Today, much of the rhetoric around Israel assumes that it somehow has more power than the United States. And often it goes even further, with claims that Israel literally controls the government, media, financial institutions, and more.

Activism itself often reflects this dynamic as well: synagogues hosting events where settlement land is sold are widely protested and Hillels are protested due to their support of Zionism and Israel. While it is debatable whether these protests when seen individually may or may not be antisemitic, the missing part of these discussions is how Jewish institutions with little to no power to affect Israeli policy are targeted far more than, say, Christian Zionists who wield enormous influence in comparison.

This is not just about Jews being associated with Israel: it is about the way people see the power dynamics between Israel and the United States.

A convenient enemy: It is precisely the desire to overturn hierarchy that makes this bias so likely to occur. Conspiracy theories and antisemitism exist because the world is complicated and they provide both an easy enemy and solution. If you are seeing horrifying images every day, and there indeed is a government that is acting in an overtly evil way, along with its unfair power imbalance in the US due to its alliance, it is not a very big hop, skip, and jump to believe an antisemitic conspiracy theory. It doesn’t make it any less dangerous, but the conditions are perfect.

Israel, then, becomes the perfect figurehead for the all-powerful symbol of the global dominance of a tiny group of people controlling our lives.

A method of dissemination: More than a year ago, I argued that Elon Musk was the most dangerous antisemite in America. My argument was based in my experience in digital marketing and studying how extremists use these principles to recruit followers.

In essence, the argument I made was that it was not only Musk’s own personal antisemitism, but the fact that he was in charge of one of the most popular social media sites in the world: Twitter (now X).

Even with its steady decline in users since Musk took over the company, it has an active userbase of about 174 million people.

For all the problems other social media companies have with antisemitism, none of them come close to the problems currently facing X. Every other social media company has attempted to have moderation, largely motivated by their dependence on advertising revenue.

X, however, is the first company to actively dismantle its moderation. On top of that, when it launched it unsuspended some of the worst and most hateful accounts that had once spread vile hate beyond their dark corners of the internet. Some of America’s most dangerous neo-Nazis and far right psychopaths whose propaganda have been directly tied to what mass shooters have consumed before going on their rampages.

In other words, the warning I made about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has now come to full fruition: it is virtually impossible to log on to the site without immediately being hit with antisemitism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and more. 

In that sense, it is far more dangerous than even hate sites like 4chan: besides the larger user base, the For You page on X spreads antisemitism to you whether you like it or not. Even on 4chan, you have to actively seek it out.

How Israel and Legacy Jewish Institutions Have Contributed

There is a final ingredient here. While all these elements are incredibly dangerous, there is one ultimate cure for even these forms of antisemitism: education.

Unfortunately, the Jewish world has failed to address the education gap precisely when it is most needed. Instead of investing energy into proper antisemitism education, tens of millions of dollars, the power of the Israeli government’s propaganda, and the energy, institutional power, and outsized voice of some legacy Jewish institutions have been put towards conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

This has led to a strong and largely justified backlash against accusations of antisemitism. The backlash has meant that since all criticism of Israel has largely been considered antisemitic, accusations have lost their power. The left is defensive about these accusations, but largely doesn’t have the education to be able to parse what is and isn’t true. The defensiveness combined with the lack of education has led to their denying any and all accusations.

This issue has expanded massively as even criticism of the war itself is cast as antisemitic and even as blood libel. The defensiveness is higher than ever and the failure in education around antisemitism has increased as the definition becomes further and further polluted.

The power of these conflated definitions, however, has largely gone unchanged. Jobs are lost, students are doxxed, and lives are upended due to this. Colleges lose their presidents, militarized police are called on encampments, and congressional hearings are called, all of which go beyond individual targeting and towards the institutional weaponization of antisemitism.

All of this has contributed to conspiracy theories. The the institutional power of Israel’s alliance with the United States gets further confused with a puppet master power as opposed to the natural result of issues like inequality, the power of allies in discourse, and more. None of this justifies hatred of Jews, of course, but the very groups that are most well positioned to educate on the topic are the ones losing legitimacy.

The Result

Today, on X as well as Tiktok, Instagram, and beyond, the toxicity spread by the anger against the war in Gaza, propagandists exploiting this anger, the implicit bias of the left seeing Israel as all-powerful, has caused antisemitism to explode. Not just on the left, of course, but in the left in a way that is markedly more dangerous than it was before. This is, I would argue, the first time that antisemitism has truly infected the left in a way that goes beyond the fringes and “far left” and closer to the mainstream.

The conspiracy theories have started with considering Israel more powerful than the United States and controlling our media, government, and financial systems. But the far right, Iran, Russia, China, and Hamas, along with the most toxic and pro-terror accounts on the left, have largely succeeded in taking people down the antisemitism funnel, from belief in conspiracy theories to naming Jews as the source of the conspiracies to overt hate.

The far right, in particular, has been incredibly effective at framing themselves as progressives fighting against Israel’s power. On X, they’ve rebranded themselves and created a network of hate that has been able to effectively use the post October 7th world as a playground in order to recruit and propagandize the left. This has led to a massive increase in their audiences and mainstream legitimization since the war began and even the ability to shape the perception of the news around Israel-Palestine in a way that has dwarfed all other accounts.

Even without overt antisemitism, support for Hamas and the attacks of October 7th have become far more widespread on the left and among younger Americans. This alone makes them vulnerable to overt antisemitic propaganda, not to mention violent extremism.

As Israel’s government continues to spread its devastation, and as long as the United States government keep backing it up, this dynamic will be hard to reverse. X is not changing its policies. Jewish institutions have largely looked the other way on the platform because of Musk’s supposed support for Israel.

All of this creates a self-fulfillment loop: Israel’s violence leads to further anger, America’s acquiescence leads to conspiracy theories, and X’s users and algorithm exploit all this to spread overt antisemitism on the left and beyond.

In other words, the best way to stop this flow of disinformation and hatred would be to call for an advertising boycott on X and continue educating the left on antisemitic propaganda.

All of these are possible, as long as the left’s leaders stop eating themselves and giving in to the maximalists. And, most importantly, building coalitions beyond what they’ve accomplished so far.

It’s possible, but it requires the will to see the possibility.