Why antisemites always have a blastâand how Jews enhance the experience
Todayâs digital culture has monetized these pleasures. Online platforms are engineered to maximize engagement by maximizing emotional reward. Antisemitism is extraordinarily well suited to such systems. Platforms amplify the thrill of forbidden knowledge, insider language, memes, and collective outrage while making them instantly accessible and endlessly repeatable. The digital dogpileâcoordinated mass attack on a single Jewish targetâis the mob made digital. Like the analogue mobs that preceded them, these too are often gleeful and public. But unlike earlier forms, participation no longer requires gathering in the street or much physical effort at all. The mob no longer needs to gather, it simply needs to log on.
Flooding Jewish journalistsâ social media feeds with Holocaust jokes and âovenâ memes; defacing synagogues, menorahs, or Jewish community centers with swastikasâoften timed to holidays; filming antisemitic taunts of visibly Jewish people and posting them online for laughs; turning classic antisemitic tropes into viral âironicâ content or remix videosânone of these are coherent responses to a supposedly sophisticated international cabal controlling the worldâs economy, politics, media, migration, and satellites. They are rituals of humiliation. The point is not resistance. The point is pleasure.
"The third pleasure is moral. Antisemitism allows its adherents to experience hate as virtue. The antisemite does not feel like a bully. His experience is one of courage. He is exposing hidden power. Defending society. Cruelty becomes public service. This framingâhating Jews as just and rightâhas proved infinitely adaptable. Medieval violence against Jews was 'defense of Christendom.' In the medieval Islamic world, Jewish subjugation under dhimmi law was framed as righteous social order and mercy. Soviet purges were coded as 'anti-cosmopolitan virtue.' Nazi propaganda framed persecution as national hygiene. In much of the world today, antisemitism travels under the banner of anti-Zionism and resistance, repackaging eliminationist sentiment as liberation theology. The vocabulary shiftsâanti-colonialism, anti-globalism, anti-elitismâbut the emotional architecture remains. The antisemite gets to feel good. He is a whistleblower. A truth teller. A patriot. A freedom fighter. It is remarkable how stable the narrative structure remains. The blood libel accusations that convulsed medieval Europeâmurdered innocents, monstrous perpetrators, the righteous community that exposes themâhave proven durable and portable. Dress the accusation in the language of human rights reporting rather than theology and the structure barely changes."
âIf Jews protest loudly, it will be cast as Jews having something to hide. If Jewish organizations demand collective condemnation, it will be cast as Jews having the power to suppress criticism. If Jews stay silent, it will be cast as indifference, arrogance, or worseâtacit agreement. Confront the accusation publicly and Jews feed the spectacle. Ignore it and normalization spreads. Explain it carefully and with nuance and lose ground faster. Complexity will always be outrun by emotional simplicity and the vocabulary of moral crusade. In short, Jews become unwilling performers in someone elseâs theater. The antisemite wins either way.
This is part of the exhaustion Jewish communities experience in the wake of antisemitic waves that followed Oct. 7 and have not abated. It is not only fear. It is the demoralizing recognition that every available response is both necessary and compromised.â
