How anti-Semitism came back into the public domain

On December 7, 2021 tweet @RechtseTokkie: “It is very bad what happened to the Jews in WWII, but unfortunately I will also see more and more clearly why people hated those people so much at the time.” A month later, January 11, the same account tweeted: “Islam is the cancer of the world and there is only one effective remedy. #irradiation” – attached is a photo of an atomic bomb. Two months later, March 6, the leader of Forum for Democracy, Thierry Baudet, re-tweets another message from this account.

FVD members systematically like and retweet anti-Semitic accounts, it turned out last week data analysis of Leiden University† 10 percent of all Forum members’ Twitter activity is a re-tweet or like of a so-called “diffused anti-Semitic” account — an account that spreads conspiracy theories intertwined with anti-Semitism, such as “QAnon” (which assumes the world is run by a Satanist pedophile elite) or ‘The Great Reset’ (the idea that an elite group uses corona for radical change). For PVV members this is 2 percent, for all other parties surveyed 0 percent. Furthermore, an average of 33 per 5,000 retweets and likes from accounts that spread ‘hardcore anti-Semitism’ came from FVD members. These are accounts that call the corona vaccine ‘jewbrew’ and post Jewish caricatures. With the PVV this was 1 in 5,000, with other parties zero.

FVD is the only political party where an anti-Semitic Twitter pattern has been demonstrated. Nevertheless, the Leiden scientists are cautious about drawing conclusions. Researcher Peter Burger: “As a scientist, I cannot demonstrate the intention behind the messages. Or the unknowing accounts of anti-Semites boost, or whether it is intended as a “dog whistle” for far-right voters. But we can conclude that there is an overlap between the ideas of anti-Semites and Forum for Democracy.”

It doesn’t surprise him, that overlap. According to Burger, it fits within a pattern. An investigation by The Jewish Agency and The Institute for National Security Studies found anti-Semitic rhetoric among politicians in Germany, France, England, Ireland and Spain, as in the Netherlands, especially politicians on the radical right-wing flank.

Almost eighty years after the Second World War, Jew-hatred seems to be back in the public and political realm. How is that possible? Bart Wallet, professor of Jewish studies at the University of Amsterdam, has been working on this question for years. In 2019, he warned that anti-Semitism is slow went mainstream again – that was one year before the news of racist and anti-Semitic messages in JFVD app groupsthe youth department of FVD.

“From the 1960s, anti-Semitism was not done, very taboo,” he says. “There must have been anti-Jewish remarks made at drink tables, but publicly it was invisible. That changed from the year 2000.” The internet became widely available – the gut turned upward. Anti-Semites could now find each other online. “At first it was anonymous, but the more anti-Semitism spread on the internet, the more accepted it became. Now you see people spreading anti-Semitism online under their own name.”

Political factors also contributed to the normalization of anti-Semitism. The political center has been shrinking for years. In 2002, middle parties still won 138 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives, in 2021 there were only 95. This, coupled with growing polarization and political fragmentation, has led to electoral growth on the political flanks† In this political reality, startling opinions pay off.

Also read: The crisis of the political center

Wallet: „The rise of populism also gave ‘the underbelly’ a legitimate place. Part of populism is namely: ‘air your heart’, ‘say what you have on your liver’. That creates a climate in which anti-Jewish feelings can float to the surface.” Furthermore, Wallet continues, populism focuses on the struggle of ‘the people’ against ‘the elite’. And there are countless age-old conspiracy theories in which ‘the Jews’ form an elite government behind the scenes.

Blood fairy tale

Anti-Semitism is not equally prevalent on both sides of the political spectrum. Researchers from the Utrecht Data School studied, commissioned by the Central Jewish Consultation, two hundred thousand expressions of anti-Semitism on various online platforms. The vast majority of these expressions on Twitter come from right-wing conservatives – seven times more often than from other groups. There was a remarkable amount of anti-Semitism on YouTube (916 responses). The highest number was found among videos from the official channel of FVD. And also on the internet forum Reddit there were many anti-Semitic expressions to be found in an unofficial FVD subreddit. One user writes: “If I were to say that Jews have been creating enemies everywhere for over 2,000 years and rarely win the sympathy of their neighbors, is that anti-Semitic? I don’t think so, but it’s true. You would be surprised how often Jews are exiled and murdered in Europe, this often has to do with money.”

Peter Burger: „In recent years there has been a development in which the parliamentary radical right and the extraparliamentary extreme right are growing closer together. For example, you have the repopulation theory, which claims that the white population is slowly being replaced by immigrants, often Muslims, as part of a premeditated plan. That theory is used by PVV MPs, and also applies to the extreme right, only the PVV thinks the EU is behind it, while the extreme right thinks it is a plan by a Jewish elite.”

Bart Wallet: „There are also left-wing traditions of anti-Jewish characterization. But in the right-wing radical right there are transnational networks. This whole revival of anti-Semitism in Europe is being fueled by global alt-right thinkers. It’s cynical, but politicians may adopt these ideas because there are many voters who believe them. Or do they really believe them?”

The Utrecht research also found that by far the most anti-Semitism has to do with conspiracy theories. The hatred of billionaire George Soros is fueled by anti-Semitism. The age-old theory that Jews are in a ‘cabal’, an elite organization that secretly runs the world behind the scenes. Even the QAnon theory, which (among other things) assumes that there is a Hollywood elite that drains children of their lifeblood to stay young themselves, follows the “template” of the blood libel – an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory dating back to the Middle Ages and into the past. led to pogroms. If you peel off all the layers of a conspiracy theory, remove all the rings of Satanism, pedophilia and cabals, you find a core of Jew hatred.

According to Bart Wallet, that is no surprise either. “Anti-Semitism always comes back. These kinds of theories come to life when people lose their grip on reality. With the economic crisis of 2008, people no longer understood. They lost traction, and they looked for easy right versus wrong explanations to regain it. Theories about Jews, Freemasons, Jesuits… that play out because they are in the cultural archive. And because they are centuries old, they seem plausible. This also happened with the refugee crisis, the corona crisis, and now with the war between Russia and Ukraine.”

Pro-Israel

It is cognitively a difficult tightrope to walk: making anti-Jewish statements, and at the same time being pro-Israel. It is a final notable feature of contemporary anti-Semitism in the Netherlands, and it appears in both studies. An accuser of George Soros regularly has the blue and white flag in the bio.

Criticism of the mainstream definition of anti-Semitism is growing, so there’s a new one

There are four reasons for this. First, many anti-Semites see Israel as a Western bastion in the Middle East, Bart Wallet says. “The remarkable thing is that Jews there are seen as representatives of the West, while Jews in the West are seen as representatives of the East. That is a cognitive disconnection.” A second reason is that Israel is seen as a country ‘for and by’ Jews. Far-right thinker Jared Taylor said in 2017 to NRC: “If they strive for a monoculture, we should support it.” The implication of this is that ‘we’ must therefore strive for an ‘ethnostate’. Another reason is simply that Jew-hatred often goes hand in hand with Islamophobia. From that perspective, the battle between Israel and Palestine is a win-win situation.

The last – and most confusing – reason is that many conspiracy theorists believe that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Jews. You have the Jewish elite, also known as the ‘Khazar mafia’, who run the banks, politicians, Hollywood and pedo networks. And you have the ordinary Jewish people, who also suffer from that elite.

FVD was more often under fire for alleged anti-Semitism. In 2020, after research by HP/The Time, to the outside that there were racist and anti-Semitic messages in app groups of the youth organization Forum for Democracy. The organization expelled the whistleblowers. Later that year, FVD party leader Thierry Baudet was accused by various Forum members that, during a team building dinner, had made anti-Semitic statements: “Almost everyone I know is anti-Semite”, and: “Corona was invented by George Soros”. In 2021, the JFVD organized the Yule Feast – a holiday that some (including former FVD member Theo Hiddema) believe would refer to the Christmas party that the Nazis celebrated. That same December Baudet asked parliamentary questions about the role of the Rothschild family in ‘our’ government – ​​the banking family plays a major role in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Also in that month, Baudet was ordered to remove tweets in which he compared the corona measures with the Holocaust. According to the judge, Baudet would have “implicitly downplayed” the Holocaust.

Also read: Forum for Democracy seems to belong to Baudet again

No media riot

While reports about anti-Semitism at the FVD youth association led to a week-long media row in 2020, last week’s investigation had all but disappeared from the news cycle within hours. Why?

Wallet: “These studies mainly confirm what we already know. The flirting with conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic ideology is so consistent and overt that anyone following FVD accounts is quick to reach similar conclusions. This leads to a certain habituation. Apparently, we as a society are no longer shocked by how much these ideas have taken root.”