I wonder what their CEO thinks of this statistic: Antisemitism on Twitter has more than doubled since Elon Musk took over. I’d want to do something about that, if I were in charge, but maybe the billionaire thinks it’s a good thing.
In the days after Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, the social media platform saw a “surge in hateful conduct,” which its then safety chief put down to a “focused, short-term trolling campaign.” New research suggests that when it comes to antisemitism, it was anything but.
Rather, antisemitic tweets have more than doubled over the months since Musk took charge, according to research that I and colleagues at tech firm CASM Technology and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank conducted. Between June and October 26, 2022, the day before Twitter’s acquisition by Musk, there was a weekly average of 6,204 tweets deemed “plausibly antisemitic”—that is, where at least one reasonable interpretation of the tweet falls within the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of the term as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews.”
Personally, I don’t understand how anyone can fear and hate a particular ethnicity, or maybe all ethnicities other than their own. Do these people just sit around seething about the existence of Jewish people, people they probably don’t even know? Do they need a scapegoat for their own problems? Have they considered that maybe it’s their own brain that is screwed up, and that they should get therapy?
Here’s another thing I don’t understand.
Antisemitic tweets directed at Jewish investor and philanthropist George Soros warranted its own category. He was mentioned more than any other person in our data, over 19,000 times, with tweets claiming he was a member of a hidden globalist, Jewish, or “Nazi” world order.
One would think there should be little confusion about whether someone is Jewish or Nazi. Those seem to be mutually antagonistic categories.
Also, I can go days to months without even thinking of George Soros, he has so little influence on me. The only time I am reminded of his existence is when some antisemitic weirdo tells me I’m his puppet.
“Short-term”? Antisemitism has been around for two thousand years. What makes them think this trolling campaign is just a flash in the pan?
But those guys killed Jesus and something something world peace!
Yeah, these guys don’t even read their own mythology so I can’t say that I expect much out of them.
Neo-Nazis are pretty fond of saying that Jews are Nazis, which is bad; also Biden (or whatever world leader they don’t like) is literally Hitler, which is bad; also Hitler was misunderstood; also the holocaust didn’t happen; also the only problem with Hitler is that he didn’t kill enough Jews. All at the same time.
“One would think there should be little confusion about whether someone is Jewish or Nazi.”
One would think, if one refused to acknowledge Benjamin Netanyahu and his government as Jews, because there’s no way to miss the fact that they’re Nazis.
Robert Johnson, Nazis were fascists, but all fascists are not Nazis.
The only thing besides fascism that the two have in common are that both are bastards. But then, I repeat myself.
Many of the usual Reich Wing promoters are claiming that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is prosecuting Donald Trump at the direction of George Soros, as part of a “Globalist” (code for “evil Jewish plot”) agenda. The clown wagon is overflowing with these stories. Rudy Giuliani is claiming that any prosecution of Trump will lead directly to the downfall of civilization. One talking head-case claims that prosecuting Trump should lead directly to lining former president Obama against a concrete wall for a firing squad, for his participation in the assassination of JFK. I believe that when JFK was assassinated, Obama was only 2 years old.
I guess this research was done by using the Twitter API and searching for keywords? That would explain why Twitter is jacking up the cost of accessing that API.
Oh, I’m sure Melon Mush will do something about it: He’ll shadow-ban the word “antisemitism,” so nobody will violate the nazis’ Free Speech by talking about what they say.
My one grandfather was a Nazi, and antisemitic to the day he went too senile to keep track of things like that. My other grandfather voted for the Nazis because they were going to make Germany great again, and later joined the party to keep his teaching job. (After the war he was banned from teaching because of that.) I’m not defending either of them, but I think that it’s not realistic to approach fascism as a single threat when the range of affinity is that large. Nuance is necessary even if it is hard.
That said I know people who lose their shit when 23-and-me tells them they’re 40% Ashkenazi. And then you remind them that their grandmother was in fact Ashkenazi and their father was an adopted war orphan and you’re facing a person questioning a lifetime of beliefs. People are complicated, just like ogres.
So it was trending up before Musk bought it. Ok.
And it hasn’t gotten better after he fired all those people? Do tell!
Do stories like this qualify as fringe liberal conspiracy theory?
Matt G: the flash in the pan is clear in the data. The issue is that the spike didn’t recede to the prior level.
drew@10,
It was known some time before Musk actually bought Twitter that he was practically certain to do so. But then, you knew that.
@Helge, my daughters did the genealogy DNA thing. Both came up with a modest percentage of Ashkenazi, to which I chuckled. Let’s see, a bit of Scottish, Irish, English and Native American from my wife’s side, 100% Sicilian on my side, yeah, they’ll have a bit of everything in their genetics.
Hell, the only people that I’m aware of that didn’t invade Sicily were the Native Americans, Japanese and Chinese – maybe. ;)
The rest, the usual intermixing of people as they migrated. Humans do mate rather, ahem, liberally. The only time I consider that worthwhile information is in regards to known genetic diseases, should some symptoms be present. Such as some of my rheumatoid symptoms or my wife’s lupus.
Although, the entire family appears to be susceptible to being effected greatly by the laws of physics. ;)
Soros, well, I’ve got one beef with him – short selling.
As for Twitter, it’s passed cesspool on the left and accelerated hard since Musk took over and destroyed all gravitas. I say that we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Bla bla bla “free speech” bla bla bla “first amendment” bla bla bla “unpolular views get debated” bla bla bla. What enormous damage the first two amendments have caused to America.
HidariMak@ 6
Yes, but Obama was just like Stewie in Family Guy.
At age 2 he would already have had a secret storeroom full of ray guns and plasma rifles.
Being powerful and evil at a very young age is quite common. We are told that Soros – who was 15 years old when WWII ended- was a horrible Nazi collaborator. And the right wing sources would never lie.
You’d think, but, um… Israel has gone full Nazi.
#17
while “original nazi’s” were antisemitic, nazis need racial enemy – it doesn’t have to be Jews.If you take every tenet of nazism and change Jews for muslims, Chinese, Ukrainians, Palestinians or Uyghurs you are still a nazi. Maybe different shade of nazi, but still
So I’m really peeved at the trope “he can’t be a nazi, he’s a Jew”
@ 10. drew :
No, not okay. bad. Because fasicsm is rising and getting worse globe-wide & given we know where it leads to and what it does in terms of real human lives that shoudl disturb us.
Way to minimise the fact that Musk welcomed in and encouraged the nazis on twitter. Understatement tosay hasn’t got better -more acurate to say Musk and pals have made it far worse and still keeps getting worse and where do you think that will take us?
No Idon’t. Because its a basic observation using clear publicly available evidence.
The George Soros thing is all projection like just about everything else that starts conservatives foaming at the mouth. Some clever ignoramus on that side of things must have started to realize how much the Koch brothers and similar billionaires have been buying the collective conservative ideology. But rather than think about something disturbing like that, they just project so they can pretend it’s all the other side doing. That way it feels like it’s okay to stay buried in their comfortable lies.
Apparently it is possible to be both a Jew and a Nazi.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fritz-habers-experiments-in-life-and-death-114161301/
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/03/fritz-haber-fertiliser-ammonia-centenary
“Bald and absurdly Teutonic in demeanour, Haber was an ardent German nationalist. [Emphasis mine.] He was happy his invention was used to make explosives and was a fervent advocate of gas weapons. As a result, on 22 April 1915 at Ypres, 400 tons of chlorine gas were released under his direction and sent sweeping in clouds over Allied troops. It was the world’s first major chemical weapons attack. Around 6,000 men died. Haber later claimed asphyxiation was no worse than blowing a soldier’s leg off and letting him bleed to death, but many others disagreed, including his wife, Clara, herself a chemist. A week after the Ypres attack, she took Haber’s service revolver and shot herself, dying in the arms of Hermann, their only son.”
Haber was born a Jew but converted to Christianity in order to advance his career.
His work with chemical warfare led directly to Zyklon B, which was used to murder Jews in gas chambers in the concentration camps, including his two half sisters’ children and grandchildren, also some of his cousins and their children.
https://medium.com/the-mission/the-tragedy-of-fritz-haber-the-monster-who-fed-the-world-ec19a9834f74
silvrhalide:
Of course it is. Human perversity knows no bounds.
But Fritz Haber was not a Nazi.