Last week it was announced that Stephen Fry would be delivering this year’s alternative Christmas message on Channel 4.
What refreshing news. After all, it was only in 2008 that the Holocaust-denying, Jew-hating president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was given the platform.
So to hear instead that Fry – a national treasure and a powerful campaigner on issues including gay rights and mental health – will be using this moment to raise awareness of the hatred and racism directed at Jewish people right now, is very welcome.
Antisemitism has risen year on year but the events of recent months have shaken many of us to our core. It is unbelievable that today, 90 years after Hitler rose to power and almost 80 years since his antisemitic crimes were exposed to the world, we are seeing antisemitism reach levels that I have never witnessed before in my lifetime.
At the same time we have seen a stark rise in Islamophobia, and many people are feeling isolated and frightened.
And so much of the vitriol we have seen over recent months has taken place and been amplified on social media platforms.
For us at the Holocaust Educational Trust, as in any modern organisation, social media has long given us opportunities to reach new audiences and to hold important conversations. Yet last month we took the unprecedented decision to turn off comments on a post on our X (formerly Twitter) account due to the sickening nature of the antisemitic responses we were receiving.
Comments including “Holocaust is fake zionist jews story and did not happened” and “no one believes jews lies anymore” [sic].
In between the outright denial of the Holocaust were slogans: “From the River to the Sea… Israehell will never be”; “Keep the world clean” accompanied by an image of the star of David being thrown in the bin; and a comment about Hamas that said “they are freedom fighters fighting the occupiers’s [sic] they have all of my support”. These were all under a single post.
You may assume that this was the response to something directly mentioning Israel, or the antisemitism that is continuing to grow at a rapid rate as a result of the conflict, but you would be mistaken. Rather, these were responses to a post marking the 85th anniversary of the arrival of Jewish children to safety in the UK on the Kindertransport. They were posted below a video of 93-year-old Vera Schaufeld MBE, who was recounting her own memories of leaving behind everything she knew in Czechoslovakia – including her family, who went on to be exterminated by the Nazis – and coming to a safe haven in the UK.
This response to Schaufeld is sadly all too common at the moment. Since 7 October, Holocaust organisations have faced a huge surge in antisemitic rhetoric. The Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, which for years has posted pictures and names of the 1.1 million men, women and children murdered at the camp, recently posted a photograph of Naatje de Leeuw-Levie, a Dutch-Jewish woman who was deported to the camp. As the museum said in its post, she did not survive. Immediately a comment appeared underneath: “Neither did thousands of Palestinians that was killed Auschwitz style”. The museum has reported that it has lost more than 6,000 followers since 7 October, raising the question why remembering the Holocaust might feel at odds to people who want to support the Palestinian cause.
And it is not just institutions. I can personally attest that individuals who speak out about the Holocaust or antisemitism receive sickening abuse daily. My own social media responses since 7 October have made grim reading. Yet, heaven forbid that I speak out against it – if anything, me raising the deeply antisemitic responses that I receive daily online will only fuel the fire, proving that I am “playing the victim card”, “using” the Holocaust, or claiming antisemitism to deflect legitimate criticism of Israel.
There are countless commenters who respond to everything that I post to claim that Israel or Zionism are equivalent to the Nazis. That the Jewish state is now conducting its own “final solution” – the Nazi euphemism for the murder of 6 million Jewish men, women and children – against the Palestinians. These are all examples of Holocaust inversion, presenting the Jewish people, whom the Nazis attempted to exterminate, as the modern-day equivalent.
This is just a very small insight into antisemitism on social media today and the problem itself is much greater. Even when posts are reported, the social media companies are unlikely to act. A recent report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that X continued hosting 99% of posts that CCDH’s researchers reported for promoting hate speech, including antisemitism.
And the spread of these antisemitic conspiracies is already having a harmful effect. A recent study published in the Economist found that one in five Americans aged 18-29 believe the Holocaust to be a myth. A different survey found that nearly a quarter of Dutch people born after 1980 similarly believe it to be a myth or the number of its victims to be greatly exaggerated.
Antisemitism is now on a level not seen since the Holocaust. Since 7 October, public discourse feels futile, even impossible. Fuelled by social media, individuals are being forced to pick a side as if this were a football match.
History and facts are being replaced by emotion and a sense of righteousness. Calling out antisemitism or posting a video of Holocaust survivors sharing their testimony is now claimed to be taking a side and so ignorantly and hatefully attacked. If you have not seen the reaction to Stephen Fry, take a look.
It is true that you can be appalled by the scenes that we are witnessing in Gaza and critical of the choices made by the Israeli government, and not be an antisemite. But if anyone still wonders whether the hatred we are seeing is really antisemitism, or just legitimate criticism of a nation state, they need look no further.
Once we strip back the rhetoric, we see the same old hatred. People like Vera Schaufeld lived through it once. People like 27-year-old Naatje de Leeuw-Levie were murdered by it. Let us not be fooled just because it is dressed up with new names and new politics.
Anti-Jewish hate is on the march, and this time the world must not turn its back. Let us all make it our new year resolution to finally stamp out antisemitism, Islamophobia and hate. Let’s make 2024 the year when we finally find a cure for this poison.
• Karen Pollock CBE is chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust
• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk
