The targeting of Jewish people on social media and the online spread of antisemitic conspiracy theories are based on the core tactics of Holocaust denial, new research released by non-profit CyberWell ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day shows.
The research report, titled “Denial and Conspiratorial Self-Victimization in Antisemitic Discourse: Analysis of the Online Aftermath of Violent Attacks on Jews and Israelis,” aimed to track and analyze content that "erased Jewish victimhood, denied atrocities, or falsely claimed that Jews or Israelis staged attacks against themselves,” according to CyberWell.
CyberWell analyzed over 300 pieces of online antisemitic social media content, posts that received nearly 14 million views total, “that both denied violent attacks on Jews and Israelis and propagated conspiratorial self-victimization claims asserting that they orchestrated the attacks themselves.”
The analysis uncovered a pattern of antisemitism not defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of antisemitism, which specifically focuses on Holocaust-related incidents.
“The IHRA definition does not reference broader denial or conspiratorial self-victimization narratives surrounding antisemitic violent attacks,” CyberWell noted in the report, adding that they “developed a categorization system designed to specifically track and analyze” narratives involving the denials and “conspiratorial self-victimization” covered in the report.
The CyberWell framework includes four categories: CW1 - Denial of violent events against Jews, CW2 - Denial of violent events against Israelis, CW3 - Conspiratorial self-victimization against Jews, and CW4 - Conspiratorial self-victimization against Israelis.
CyberWell additionally noted that their categories can also intersect with IHRA-defined categories and that “many examples fall into more than one category simultaneously. For example, content labeling the October 7 massacre as a 'hoax' (CW1) often appears alongside claims that Jews staged the attack for political gain (CW3).”
Research began following 2024 Amsterdam pogrom
The research for the report began on November 7, 2024, following the Amsterdam pogrom in which Israeli soccer fans were chased down and beaten in the street by an organized mob, an incident CyberWell labelled “a critical turning point as the first major act of antisemitic violence following October 7.”
The posts analyzed by CyberWell related to incidents, including the Amsterdam Pogrom, Hamas’s October 7 massacre, the Capital Jewish Museum shooting, and the Boulder, Colorado, Molotov cocktail attack in which a man attacked a group participating in a solidarity march for Israeli hostages taken during the October 7 massacre, among other incidents of antisemitic violence.
CyberWell found that a pattern of denial and conspiratorial self-victimization was “consistently observed” in the posts about each event, noting that the narratives perpetuated served to “fuel further incitement.”
The most commonly occurring category in the analyzed posts was CW3 - Conspiratorial self-victimization against Jews, which CyberWell defined as posts that “blamed Jews for being responsible or committing a violent attack on themselves.”
According to CyberWell, 88% of the posts analyzed fell into the CW3 category, demonstrating that “the narrative inversion of blaming Jews for violence committed against them remains the dominant form of denial and conspiratorial self-victimization within antisemitic discourse.”
CyberWell noted that much of the analyzed posts “advance a recurring 'false-flag' narrative, alleging that Jews staged events, including instances of self-directed harm, to influence public perception.”
Such “false-flag” conspiracies claimed that a specific antisemitic incident was “staged,” linking the incident to earlier examples in an attempt to frame them as “an alleged recurring pattern.”
The use of the term Zionist as a slur was also prominent in the data, CyberWell reported, stating that it was “often used not to describe political ideology, but as a proxy for Jews and Israelis, or simply as a derogatory label,” a phenomenon that CyberWell stated aligns with a “broader observation that ‘Zionist’ is routinely deployed as a slur in multiple antisemitic narratives.”
Hate-speech standards frequently not enforced
CyberWell found that the platforms where the analyzed content was posted revealed “exceptionally low enforcement” of anti-hate speech policies and a “deeply concerning” pattern of moderation standards relaxing over time since October 7.
CyberWell concluded the research report with a number of recommendations for social media platforms regarding the regulation and removal of posts that perpetuate antisemitic hatred or conspiracy theories.
CyberWell called platforms to: "Adopt explicit policies against violent event denial; explicitly prohibit antisemitic conspiratorial self-victimization; and develop stronger detection tools for denial and conspiratorial self-victimization.”