A counter-public of solidarity!
Responses to antisemitic conspiracy ideologies online
Kick Off: OY VEY! – a platform against conspiracy myths
What can hold our society together? That is one of the central questions of our 360° event series. Hate postings, disinformation, the glorification of violence and personal insults and threats sometimes give rise to the fear that social cohesion is an alien, if not a disruptive, concept on social media.
Algorithms are designed to find the bloodiest and most shocking item of news and to spread it on a massive scale; in online forums the neighbourhood radicalises into enemies of democracy with plans for a coup; and even away from unregulated fringe sites, quite a few platform operators are tempted to abandon the task of protecting users’ dignity and personal safety in favour of a completely boundless notion of freedom of expression.
Conspiracy narratives are part of this landscape of fear, rumour and hatred, they flourish in it and in turn supply it with fuel and material. Antisemitism is the central ideology used to spin the narratives of „those up there“, the „dark elites“, the „puppets“ and their „puppet masters“, and to adapt age-old resentments to ever new phenomena – be it a pandemic, wars or global migration movements.
Recent years have clearly shown that conspiracy narratives can be turned against a wide variety of enemy images – the health system, journalists, philanthropists and politicians. This almost always includes the antisemitic marking of some supposedly Jewish element in the chosen enemies. Whether Mark Zuckerberg is unmasked as a reptilian being or the Great Replacement is presented as a government plan to annihilate the German population: antisemitic conspiracy myths always mean Jews as well – as Jews and with no opportunity to object.
OY VEY! sets out as a platform to push back such narratives and myths and, in their place, to strengthen a critical public online that acts in solidarity – without seeking to release platforms and politics from their responsibility.
We give space and reach to the perspective of those affected. We bring together actors and projects doing important work against conspiracy ideology and antisemitism. And we build on the breadth of personal experience and academic and political expertise in order to promote solidary and enlightened community standards both online and offline.
For the kick-off of our online platform we invited guests from politics, civil society and academia to discuss the steps needed in this direction and to name the challenges and problems. For social media can foster social cohesion just as much as they currently often seem to erode it.
You can find the OY VEY! platform here.The panel:
• Laura Cazes, Head of the Communications and Digitalisation Department at the Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle der Juden in Deutschland (ZWST) and editor of the anthology „Sicher sind wir nicht geblieben: Jüdischsein in Deutschland“
• Benjamin Strasser MdB (Member of the German Bundestag), Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Justice
• Sabine Frank, Head of Government Affairs and Public Policy for YouTube in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the eastern European countries
• Dr Nikolas Lelle, Project Manager of the Bildungs- und Aktionswochen gegen Antisemitismus (Education and Action Weeks against Antisemitism) of the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung
The discussion was moderated by our spokesperson Anna Staroselski.
