Politicians from Forum for Democracy regularly retweet messages from Twitter accounts that contain anti-Semitic texts and images. This is evident from a research from Leiden University, reports de Volkskrant Tuesday. The retweets do not often contain anti-Semitic statements, but they do increase the reach of those accounts.
The researchers analyzed 100,000 tweets, retweets and likes from politicians from FVD, BIJ1, D66, DENK, GroenLinks, PVV and SGP in the period between December 2021 and February 2022.
The study distinguished between hardcore anti-Semitism, in which tweets were explicitly directed against Jews, and diffuse anti-Semitism. In the latter case, anti-Semitic stereotypes and stories are cited and conspiracy theories are shared.
No Dutch political party itself places tweets in the category of hardcore anti-Semitism, the research shows. Tweets from hardcore anti-Semitic accounts are five times more likely to be shared and liked by FVD politicians than by random Twitter users.
In addition, more than 10 percent of tweets from FVD politicians consist of liking and retweeting accounts in the diffuse anti-Semitism category. For the PVV, that share is 2 percent and for other parties it is less than 1 percent.
Check with other parties
According to the researchers, the defense of Forum politicians is more often that they cannot constantly check where tweets come from. Peter Burger, who conducts research into disinformation, does not call it a coincidence that FVD members retweet these accounts. “Other politicians are able to avoid these tweeters,” he says. Yet Burger does not want to claim that FVD members deliberately retweet anti-Semitic accounts. “This research looks at behavior and content, not intentions,” he tells de Volkskrant†
Forum for Democracy leader Thierry Baudet says against de Volkskrant that there is nothing behind the activities on Twitter. “I retweet so much,” he says. According to Baudet, Twitter is about the message, not the messenger. “The fact that you should not retweet someone because he also finds things that are unacceptable is an ad hominem. I therefore do not see it as my responsibility to investigate that.”