Event-Driven Hate Returns to the World Cup
Global sporting events capture the attention of billions and bring together audiences across continents and cultures. As CyberWell has repeatedly documented, these moments also provide fertile ground for bad actors to exploit that visibility and inject longstanding antisemitic narratives into mainstream online conversations under the cover of sports commentary and fan discourse.
Following the start of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, CyberWell identified antisemitic content across multiple social media platforms in English, Arabic, and French that used the tournament to promote longstanding antisemitic narratives. Similar trends were documented by CyberWell during the 2022 World Cup and continue to reappear during major international events.
CyberWell refers to this phenomenon as event-driven antisemitism: the exploitation of breaking news, cultural moments, and geopolitical developments to amplify antisemitic narratives to audiences far beyond traditional extremist spaces.
The Persistence of Jewish Control Conspiracy Claims
The dominant theme across the content identified by CyberWell was the allegation of Jewish control.
Posts across Meta and X claimed that Jews control FIFA, governments, public opinion, and world affairs. On Meta specifically, CyberWell identified 29 Arabic-language posts invoking the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous antisemitic forgery that has long been used to promote conspiracy theories about Jewish domination and manipulation of global affairs.
These posts used the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to promote conspiracy theories that Jewish people use sports and entertainment to distract societies from political and humanitarian issues.
The context may be the World Cup, but the underlying conspiracy theory is anything but new.
Jewish Control Narratives Reach Messi
The narratives identified by CyberWell extended beyond institutions to individual athletes themselves.
Following Argentina’s victory over Algeria, CyberWell identified posts alleging that refereeing decisions had been biased in Lionel Messi’s favor or questioning how he continued to compete at such a high level. These claims were frequently framed through antisemitic narratives, with users falsely asserting that Messi is Jewish, controlled by Jews, or benefiting from alleged Jewish control over the World Cup.
These claims are not really about Messi or soccer. Rather, they rely on the longstanding antisemitic trope that Jewish influence is hidden, manipulative, and all-powerful, capable of shaping institutions and outcomes from behind the scenes.
Soccer becomes the latest vehicle through which these longstanding antisemitic narratives are amplified to global audiences.
Collective Accusations of Murder Against Jews
CyberWell also identified a second recurring narrative: Collective Accusations of Murder Against Jews.
Several posts combined references to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion with accusations that all Jews collectively are responsible for killing people in Gaza, portraying Jews as murderers while presenting sports and entertainment as tools used to distract the public from these alleged crimes.
This fusion of conspiracy theories and collective accusations is not accidental. It combines allegations of hidden Jewish control with the attribution of violent criminality to Jews as a protected group, reinforcing longstanding antisemitic portrayals of Jews as both manipulative and dangerous.
Why Repetition Matters
One of the most concerning aspects of event-driven antisemitism is not the novelty of the narratives, but their persistence.
The same allegations of Jewish control that appeared during previous World Cups, elections, geopolitical crises, and cultural events continue to resurface whenever global attention converges on a major event. The danger lies in repetition. When conspiracy theories repeatedly appear in discussions surrounding politics, entertainment, sports, and current affairs, they gradually become familiar to audiences that may not recognize their antisemitic origins.
History demonstrates the consequences of allowing these ideas to become normalized.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion played a central role in spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories throughout the twentieth century and continue to inspire extremists today. Their appearance in conversations surrounding the world’s largest sporting event illustrates how adaptable these narratives remain and how easily centuries-old hatred can be repackaged for modern digital audiences.
The Responsibility of Platforms
Addressing event-driven antisemitism requires more than reactive moderation after harmful content has already spread widely.
As major global events continue to generate predictable spikes in online antisemitism, platforms should strengthen the detection and enforcement of antisemitic content, while investing in the multilingual expertise needed to identify evolving narratives across languages and regions. Social media platforms have a responsibility to ensure that their users and communities are protected from hatred and abuse, particularly during major global events when harmful narratives can spread rapidly.
As the tournament continues, CyberWell will continue monitoring online discourse and working with platforms to identify emerging trends, improve enforcement, identify policy gaps of existing antisemitic trends, and help prevent the normalization of antisemitic narratives.
