June marks the annual celebration of Pride Month around the world, recognizing the contributions and struggles of the LGBTQ+ community for equal rights. As celebratory events and parades kicked off this month, anti-LGBTQ hate and antisemitism combined on social media, with posts weaving LGBTQ+ people into common antisemitic tropes. CyberWell detected four major antisemitic narratives connected to Pride Month and the LGBTQ+ community.
New World Order
The “new world order” refers to an alleged secret master plan by a shadowy elite force to establish a totalitarian world government. This prima facie elite group includes Jewish personalities such as the famous Rothschild family, as well as non-Jewish people like Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, and the Rockefeller family. The propagandists of this conspiracy theory believe that these non-Jewish elites are secretly Jewish, too. According to this conspiracy theory, the new world order will be achieved through the collapse of Western society, brought on by the promotion of homosexuality and Pride Month.
Zionist Occupied Government (ZOG)
This antisemitic conspiracy theory alleges that Western governments are nothing more than puppets controlled by the Israeli government specifically, or the Jews in general. This month, antisemitic posts CyberWell flagged on social media have suggested that “ZOGs” use Pride Month to weaken Western society.
Religious Antisemitism
Some posts CyberWell identified tap into the classic antisemitic trope of the “Synagogue of Satan.” Originating in the New Testament, this term has been revived in recent years by Black Hebrew Israelites, the Nation of Islam, extremist Christian groups, and public figures such as Kanye West and Kyrie Irving. According to this antisemitic narrative, today’s Jewish people are pretenders who, in reality, are the Antichrist and worship the devil. In addition, some posts include slurs against Jews by using the religious term of “Goyim” (Gentile/non-Jew).
Holocaust Distortion
One form of Holocaust distortion is the claim that the Jews caused their own genocide. In particular, one conspiracy theory in this context alleges that Hitler was actually a member of the Rothschild family; therefore, the Rothschild family specifically, and Jews in general, were responsible for orchestrating the Holocaust. One Tweet suggests that members of the LGBTQ+ community are Nazis (and are actually Jews) and that Pride Month is their way of taking revenge on Western society after the Nazi defeat in World War II.
Online antisemitism doesn’t singularly harm Jewish users. As we have observed during Pride Month, hatred of one group often expands to target other vulnerable groups, including the LGBTQ+ community. Fighting Jew-hatred and all forms of hate on social media helps make our digital spaces safer for all users.
