On the occasion of a new meeting of its Working Group on antisemitism, the European Commission published, on Thursday 3 June, a study showing a rise in online antisemitism during the pandemic.
The study, conducted by the think tank Institute for Strategic Dialogue, focused exclusively on French and German language content.
It identified 272 accounts and channels in French and 276 in German broadcasting antisemitic messages related to the Covid-19 pandemic, with Twitter being the most affected platform in French, compared to Telegram in German. On the latter, the three most prolific accounts were all discussion groups associated with the QAnon movement.
“Comparing the first two months of 2020 (pre-pandemic) and 2021 (during the pandemic), a seven-fold increase in antisemitic posting could be observed on the French language accounts, and over a thirteen-fold increase in antisemitic comments within the German channels studied”, the authors of the report summarise.
As for the details of the content, they said that it included depictions of Jews as viruses themselves, conspiracy theories presenting vaccines as a Jewish plot to sterilise or control populations, “classical anti-Jewish tropes”, and even denialist comments.
The report also shows “considerable public engagement” with this content on all platforms.
To consult it: https://bit.ly/3g2ASpe (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)