New UK report exposes massive online network of far-right antisemitism

A new report published on Sunday by the British Jewish group Community Security Trust (CST) explores the "shocking extent of terror incitement and anti-Jewish hate created and circulated by right-wing extremists on social media."

The report, titled "Hate Fuel: the hidden online world fuelling far right terror," focused on four relatively unregulated social media platforms: BitChute, Gab, 4chan and Telegram. 

Far-right extremists have been known to frequent these platforms, all of which were either set up or operate as a direct challenge to larger social media platforms, "citing free speech or privacy as justifications for their role in the promotion or distribution of hateful, inciteful and often violent content," according to the report.

Due to the extreme nature of the content in the report, "both in terms of the violent imagery [the CST] found and the quantity of explicit antisemitism," the group said it would be irresponsible to post it online in full. 

Instead, the CST shared a sample of posts on their site, choosing instead to the full report only with "police, government and other counter-extremism officials and experts" in Britain.

However, the content is still available in full and completely out in the open. According to the CST, "the quantity and spread of this incitement poses an urgent and ongoing terror threat to Jewish communities."

The platform mentioned most often in the report was BitChute, a UK-registered company with British directors, which hosts several videos of actual far-right terrorist attacks, including the Halle synagogue shooting and the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque massacre.

In addition, BitChute hosts propaganda videos from the proscribed terrorist group National Action; and thousands of hateful antisemitic videos that have been collectively viewed over three million times.

Comments on BitChute are hosted through a widely used mainstream third-party comment-hosting service name Disqus. 

The report found "hundreds of violent, antisemitic comments" on some of the most popular hate fuel videos, all facilitated via Disqus. 

According to CST, this is likely to be only a fraction of the amount of hateful comments across BitChute as a whole.

 Gab hosts “Britfam,” a network of British users that has 4,000 members and approximately 1,000 posts per day, which far-right extremists use to circulate racism, antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

A quick search of 4chan's /pol/ discussion board will return at least 26 different threads that had the words “kill” and “Jews” in the title and contained "explicit calls for Jews to be killed."

The encrypted messaging app Telegram was found to host several images and posts that celebrated far-right terrorists, including British terrorists Thomas Mair and David Copeland, alongside other images that urge users to kill Jews.