Amid Surge in Australian Antisemitism, CyberWell Releases Analysis of Jew-Hate on Social Media During Election Cycle

TEL AVIV— As the polls closed in Australia’s contentious 2025 election, CyberWell, the tech-rooted nonprofit combating online antisemitism, released new analysis focusing on antisemitic conspiracy theories promulgated online during the election cycle. The research found that 80 antisemitic posts were propagated by platform algorithms to more than 257,315 viewers, and that X moderated antisemitic posts related to the election at less than 10 percent of the rate it moderated antisemitism in 2024. Posts targeted both Labor and the Liberal Party and their respective prime ministerial candidates. 

Since October 2023, antisemitic incidents in Australia have surged. In the first year and a half since the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust – Hamas’s heinous attack on Oct. 7, 2023 – Australia has recorded more than a tripling of antisemitic episodes across the country. Attacks have included targeting synagogues, schools and members of the Jewish community with arson; graffiti defacing Jewish homes and childcare centers and threats of mass violence involving explosives. Experts and authorities have characterized the environment as an Australian national crisis, with some attacks treated as acts of domestic terrorism.

This rising climate of antisemitism, has led to a normalizing of Jew-hate across Australian popular culture and onto digital platforms, where antisemitic narratives increasingly blend into broader political discourse, often with little moderation or accountability.

During the election cycle, between November 11, 2024 and April 22, 2025, CyberWell monitored election-related antisemitic content on Facebook, X, TikTok and YouTube. More than 500 pieces of content were flagged by CyberWell’s AI-driven monitoring tool, which uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition and accompanying examples to flag posts likely to be antisemitic. CyberWell’s analysts then review each post individually and when the post is in violation of the specific platform’s community standards, the analyst submits a report directly to the platform’s moderators. Of the dataset of 500, analysts selected a sample to vet manually, and 80 posts from the sample set were confirmed as antisemitic. These 80 antisemitic posts collectively garnered 257,315 views and generated over 25,000 interactions prior to any moderator review and action. 

Analysis of those posts revealed both Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and opposition leader Peter Dutton were frequently named in conspiracies, often accompanied by visual antisemitic tropes and coded language, including that:

• Both Albanese and Dutton and their parties are influenced by Jewish wealth and power as part of the Jewish World Domination conspiracy
• Jewish elites are orchestrating demographic changes through mass migration to weaken the white Australian population (Kalergi Plan)
• Jewish organizations are staging antisemitic incidents across Australia as false flag attacks, to manipulate public opinion or justify stricter laws around hate speech

Platform enforcement of existing hate speech policies during the election period was markedly uneven. X hosted the majority of the confirmed antisemitic content—71.25 percent of posts—and removed just 5.26 percent, far below the 54.2 percent average of antisemitic content moderation in 2024 by X documented in CyberWell’s annual report. Facebook demonstrated stronger enforcement, removing 89.47 percent of flagged posts, while TikTok removed 33.33 percent. YouTube featured the fewest antisemitic posts but maintained relatively effective moderation. In total, only 26.25 percent of all confirmed antisemitic content tied to the Australian election was removed across platforms.

Every piece of the election-related antisemitic content—100 percent—included elements of Example 2 of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which covers claims alleging Jewish control over government, media, or finance. This particular form of antisemitism remains both deeply entrenched and routinely under-enforced, despite clear platform policies prohibiting such rhetoric.

“For more than a year and a half, the Jewish community of Australia has been living under threat of constant targeted attacks,” said CyberWell Founder and Executive Director Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor. “What happens online is directly related to the real-world harm that the Jewish community in Australia faces daily. Antisemitism cannot be allowed to flourish.”

“Election cycles are consistently more often high-intensity periods for divisiveness and antisemitic rhetoric becomes a tool to destabilize political dialogue and target vulnerable groups,” Cohen Montemayor continued. “Platforms must better leverage technology, personnel and partners to rapidly and decisively enforce their own hate speech rules, especially during high-intensity periods like elections, or else the line between digital hate and real-world harm will continue to blur.”

CyberWell’s full analysis is available at: https://cyberwell.org/post/behind-the-campaign-antisemitism-and-australias-online-election-discourse/ 

CyberWell is an independent, international, tech-rooted nonprofit combating the spread of antisemitism online. Its AI technologies monitor social media in English and Arabic for posts that promulgate antisemitism, Holocaust denial and promote violence against Jews. Its analysts review and report this content to platform moderators while indexing all verified posts in the first-ever open database of antisemitic social media posts—democratically cataloging it for transparency. Through partnerships, education and real-time alerts, CyberWell is holding social media platforms and their moderators accountable, promoting proactive steps against online Jew-hate.