Digital antisemitism threatens the West

Maintaining American society’s internal cohesion and preserving a strong strategic alliance with Israel are both vital to America’s national security interests. The proof is the actions of America’s chief geopolitical adversaries.

Unsealed U.S. Department of Justice affidavits addressing Russia’s Doppelgänger network and threat assessment intelligence reports from OpenAI, Graphika and Microsoft that track Chinese networks have shown that both China and Russia are actively deploying covert digital online campaigns to stoke antisemitism to unprecedented levels and drive a wedge between the United States and Israel, and divide American society itself.

Foreign intelligence agencies recognize that classic antisemitic conspiracy theories—such as “secret cabals” and “puppet master” tropes—act as a low-cost, high-yield Trojan horse. By convincing Americans that their government is controlled by the State of Israel or hidden anti-American interests, these campaigns systematically erode public faith in national and local elections, national security policies and democratic institutions.

To achieve this, foreign adversaries of the United States have turned Generative AI into an automated engine of asymmetric warfare. Russian and Chinese operations use Large Language Models (LLMs), AI image generators and synthetic voice cloning to churn out thousands of fake news articles across spoof domains (like washingtonpost.pm or Holy Land Herald), deploy photorealistic caricatures and coordinate bot swarms that amplify real-world provocations.

Whether staging physical acts of violence and vandalism or flooding social platforms with multi-directional rage to pit domestic groups against American Jews, the overall objective is total civic paralysis. It seeks to make Americans enemies of one another and paralyze U.S. foreign policy.

Ultimately, if America’s primary adversaries spend millions of dollars leveraging AI to incite hostility against American Jews and the State of Israel, as well as to sabotage the U.S.-Israel relationship, the end game leads to one undeniable conclusion: Protecting Jewish citizens and preserving the U.S.-Israel alliance are not merely moral or diplomatic issues, but essential to American national security.

The recent explosion of antisemitism, particularly against Israel, across the United States can now be definitively linked to the widespread use of social media and the internet in various aspects of life.

Digital antisemitism is defined as the spread of antisemitic hatred and conspiracy theories on online platforms along with harassment of Jewish users. Algorithmic amplification, generative AI systems and lax social-media content moderation by mainstream internet networks and platforms like Meta, X, TikTok and YouTube have enabled and technologically facilitated high-engagement emotional content. This content often pushes antisemitic tropes and calls for violence against American Jews into mainstream feeds. Artificial intelligence tools have been exploited to generate historical revisionism such as Holocaust denial or distortion.

The digital war against American Jews and American society itself has become more effective with the use of tools like conspiracy theories and antisemitic tropes. Medieval blood libels and fabricated global conspiracies, such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, are now repackaged as modern memes and QAnon narratives.

A new report by the Gino Germani Institute traced how antisemitic narratives have been used by Russia over the course of history, from the tsarist era to the Putin regime, as tools of disinformation and cognitive warfare. The report also examined how antisemitic narratives have been integrated into Russia’s long tradition of “active measures”: influence operations designed to manipulate public opinion and destabilize Western adversaries.

Following the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing war, online vitriol against the United States, American Jews and the State of Israel has surged. Big Tech has been purposely used as an amplifier of online antisemitism, which has fueled real-life violence against American Jews.

There is no Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world, but there is a global antisemitic conspiracy that uses the tools of digital and online antisemitism.

The West should be worried. After all, the first airplane hijacking was of an Israeli airliner. As a result, we now line up for invasive and time-consuming security checks at every airport in the world.

What starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews. Digital antisemitism is no different.

Get the latest updates in our WhatsApp group.