An 1,300-percent rise in antisemitic social media content has been recorded since the start of the Russian military’s invasion of Ukraine last month, a new report published by the Fighting Online Antisemitism (FOA) NGO said.
“During the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which erupted at the end of February, we found close to 38,000 references to antisemitic content on popular social media platforms,” the report noted.
“Using a computerized system that scans social networks, keywords, and hashtags such as ‘Russia,’ ‘Ukraine,’ and ‘I hate Jews’ were scanned,” it explained. “The findings suggest that these comments increased significantly in the days leading up to the outbreak of the war. On the last day of the month, the number of publications rose to 12,500 from the previous day’s 2,500, about half with negative intent. Approximately 860 million users were exposed to these publications, which were primarily written and shared in English.”
The report added, “Manual scanning performed by the Organization’s volunteers together with using our AI automated network revealed explicit antisemitic content on the Russian social network VK. One recurring theme from these shocking publications is the accusation that Jews are responsible for the conflict and the outbreak of hostilities.”
