Jewish Congress members face wave of antisemitic tweets ahead of elections
A new report by the Anti-Defamation League has found that Jerry Nadler and Chuck Schumer bore the brunt of the antisemitic content.
By DONNA RACHEL EDMUNDS(From right to left) Congressman Gregory Meeks; Governor Andrew Cuomo, UJA CEO Eric Goldstein; Senator Chuck Schumer; Mayor Bill DeBlasio; US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand; JCRC CEO Michael Miller; and New York State Attorney General Letitia James march against antisemitism across the Brooklyn Bridge.(photo credit: COURTESY JAKE ASNER - UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK)
Jewish members of Congress running for re-election are being targeted with potentially antisemitic and conspiracy theory laden tweets ahead of the election, a new report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has found.ADL’s Center for Technology and Society has collated and analyzed all tweets directed at the 30 incumbent Jewish members of the House and Senate, and found that a number of them have received a large quantity of messages identified as potentially antisemitic.In total, 337,689 tweets were aimed at the 30 congressmen and women between July 23 and August 22, 2020, of which 5,954 were analyzed in more detail. Of those, ten percent, just under 600 tweets were labelled as 'problematic,' which the ADL defined as "including both antisemitic tweets as well as tweets that include antisemitic tropes but require more context to be categorized as antisemitic."The analysis revealed that these tweets were targeted disproportionately at two incumbents: Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who drew 31% of all problematic tweets, and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who attracted 26%. In Nadler's case the amount of antisemitic tweets he received was out of proportion to the amount of attention he attracts overall, as 18% of the total tweets were aimed at him.Also drawing disproportionate amounts of problematic tweets were David Cicilline (D-RI), who attracted six percent of problematic tweets but only two percent of tweets overall, and Steve Cohen (D-TN), who also attracted six percent of problematic tweets, but a mere one percent of tweets overall.The report found that the problematic tweets broke down into four broad categories: George Soros-related conspiracy theories; explicit antisemitic language; tropes related to Jewish power and control; and content questioning the loyalty, honesty, ideology, and faith of Jewish incumbents.Much of the content directed at Nadler fell into the first category, with 55% of all Soros-related tweets directed at the New York Representative. According to the report, "Many of these tweets are responses to a video where Representative Nadler was asked to disavow the violence from Antifa in Portland, to which he responded saying “That’s a myth." Tweets responding to the video alleged that Nadler only made these statements because of funding he received from George Soros, and they made up 21 percent of all Soros-related tweets directed at Representative Nadler.The ADL point to one tweet in particular as having driven this trend. A video of a former Black Lives Matter organizer was tweeted along with the message: "Chaziel Sunz, former BLM Ferguson organizer, exposes who pays for #Antifa and Black Lives Matter and how Soros and the Democratic Party uses these groups. Watch @RepJerryNadler @realDonaldTrump"That tweet was then retweeted by another account, which added the message "#WalkAwayFrom Democrats You're being used by #BLM and the Democrats."In total the video featuring Sunz was viewed 234,000 times, and made up 20% of all Soros-related tweets in the analysis sample.
A further 35% of Soros-related tweets were directed at Chuck Schumer, although it was less clear why. The authors of the report speculated: "It’s possible that the high volume of tweets directed towards Senator Schumer, other than for being Jewish, is because of his position as the Senate Minority Leader, a position he’s held since 2017."Some 7% of the problematic tweets were more classically antisemitic, using slurs against Judaism and perceived Jewish features to attack the candidates. One included an example of holocaust denial, reading: @FoxNews @RepJerryNadler. Jerry did you hit your head in the car accident before you came to the attorney Barr hearing? Do you believe the #Holocaust actually happened you jrk."Another included a screenshot of Wikipedia's page on Loans and interest in Judaism, which details that "the Torah and Talmud encourage lending money without interest [but that] applies only to loans made to other Jews." The excerpt was tweeted with the message: "JEWISH PEOPLE ARE RACIST @RepRaskin"Again, Representative Nadler and Senator Schumer bore the brunt of tweets containing explicitly antisemitic language, although Representative Raskin (D-MD) was targeted by 14% of those tweets, and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) by another 12%.The ADL have pointed out that, in an age in which increasing numbers of people are getting their news more from social media than they are from traditional print media, the growing division online has the capacity to drive division across the country.“Social media platforms are breeding grounds for hate and antisemitism at a frightening scale, and as very public and sometimes polarizing figures, Jewish members of Congress often experience the worst of this on Twitter,” said ADL CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt.“While Twitter has taken myriad steps to deal with hate speech that violates their terms of service, they’re not identifying or removing this blatant antisemitism quickly enough,” he added, calling on Twitter to "enforce their rules and remove such content swiftly and consistently.”
