When I was a columnist for the Jewish publication The Forward a few years ago, I was an outspoken critic of the Women’s March leaders, who despite their progressive politics, had questionable associations with antisemites. I felt that Tamika Mallory, in particular, had used antisemitic rhetoric herself.
At the time, I was surprised and gratified at how quickly the story was picked up by other news outlets and how easily attention was brought to my sincere concerns. In a matter of days, I was appearing on cable news, and a social media debate raged for weeks.
I experienced this exact pattern a number of other times, such as when I called out Jeremy Corbyn for antisemitism in an exchange with Rep. Alexandria Ocazio-Cortez on Twitter.
ADVERTISEMENT
Conversely, when I called out right-wing antisemitism, it never seemed to register.
In fact, it was just the opposite. Writers who tried to get similar coverage around right-wing antisemitism discussed discovered virtual radio silence. Although one accusation was enough to brand Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar an antisemite and set off a month of angry coverage, as well as a rebuke from her own party, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz could claim a Jew owns the media and most people today won’t remember the story ever happened.
I look back on that time with regret, having realized that I had been an unwitting pawn in a right-wing disinformation campaign to obscure the discourse around antisemitism.
Take the recent hoopla surrounding Whoopi Goldberg, who said on The View that the Holocaust was about “man’s inhumanity to man” and “not about race.” Her comments created a firestorm of coverage, ultimately leading her to apologize and ABC suspending her for two weeks.
Another recent controversy erupted when nine current and former GOP lawmakers—including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar—appeared at the American First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) led by Nick Fuentes, the notorious leader of the white nationalist Groyper movement. At the event, Fuentes praised both Putin and Hitler in the same breath.
Google Trends shows that relative to Whoopi Goldberg’s comments, a national politician attending an event where Hitler was praised barely registered.
This is not just a digital phenomenon: The New York Times has written only one story about the conference, but seven articles about Goldberg’s comments.
Examine the data around discussions on places like Twitter over the past decade, and the disparity is impossible to ignore.
This is the result of a certain kind of right-wing disinformation, a phenomenon that is largely still misunderstood, in part because we overestimate the power of mainstream publications in being the exclusive drivers of conversation.
Right-wing media have massive power to shift attention in any direction they choose. The Daily Wire (the main publishing home of star conservative pundit Ben Shapiro) drives more Facebook engagement than The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, and CNN combined.
This is because The Daily Wire and other non-traditional right-wing media outlets like The Blaze focus largely on recycling other outlets’ reported content with outrage-inducing headlines that focus purely on right-wing culture war issues.
For example, not one article has been written by The Daily Wire about the white nationalist conference. In contrast, they’ve written many articles about Goldberg’s comments (and still haven’t stopped). By focusing exclusively on the debates around antisemitism that hurt the left, while ignoring those on the right, highly trafficked sites help tip the balance of public discourse.
The fight against antisemitism is one of the few forms of anti-bigotry that has strong bipartisan support. Unlike discussions around Black Lives Matter, for example, antisemitism is rarely up for debate, and red lines like Holocaust denial are vociferously fought by both sides.
But it is this very bipartisanship and unity that actually contributes to the uneven distribution of discussions.
Thanks to the reach of their platforms, right-wing websites and influencers can cause stories like the Goldberg flap to trend on social media platforms almost instantly. Liberals and progressives, unaware of the source of these trends, join in the conversation, similarly condemning and calling out these discussions.
This leads to a snowball effect, particularly when the outrage occurs on Twitter.
Legacy media outlets and editors often inform their editorial choices based on which stories seem to be gaining traction. That’s how we end up in a situation where The New York Times has seven stories about a story that was actually initially driven by The Daily Wire and its founder, Ben Shapiro.
The reverse, however, rarely occurs. While liberal audiences and mainstream media outlets will respond with outrage to the stories spread by the right, the right’s media virtually blacks out news involving right-wing antisemitism.
The end result is that legacy media’s focus on this issue is not actually balanced: it is incentivized to focus on right-wing interests.
Thus, you may be surprised to learn that in the month leading up to the Goldberg story, there were many noteworthy antisemitic incidents—including the spreading of George Soros conspiracy theories by Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, Trump (again) claiming US Jews were disloyal, and a Virginia Republican candidate putting out an antisemitic ad about his opponent.
These forms of antisemitism help fan the flames that lead to antisemitic violence. The Tree of Life shooter, for example, was motivated by a Soros conspiracy theory.
This creates an ecosystem in which a particularly deadly form of antisemitism, right-wing white nationalism, is largely unseen even as it creeps into the mainstream and our halls of power. Glenn Beck was fired from Fox News, reportedly in part for spreading a Soros conspiracy theory. Now Fox News has become a hotbed of that same conspiracy theory.
None of this is good news for Jews. And until these dynamics are understood, it will only get worse.
