A counter-public in solidarity!
Responses to antisemitic conspiracy ideologies online
Kick Off: OY VEY! – 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, glorification of violence and personal insults and threats at times 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, the task of protecting users’ dignity and personal safety is abandoned by many a platform operator in favour of a completely boundless notion of freedom of expression.
Conspiracy narratives are part of this landscape of fear, rumour and hatred, thrive 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.
The last few years have clearly shown that conspiracy narratives can turn against a wide variety of enemy images – the health system, journalists, philanthropists and politicians. Almost always this includes the antisemitic marking of a supposedly somehow Jewish element of the chosen enemies. Whether Mark Zuckerberg is unmasked as a reptilian being or the Great Replacement as a government plan to annihilate the German population: antisemitic conspiracy myths always also mean Jews – as such and with no possibility of objection.
OY VEY! sets out as a platform to push back such narratives and myths and, in their place, to strengthen a critical public sphere of solidarity online – without seeking to release platforms and politics from their responsibility.
We give the perspective of those affected space and reach. We bring together actors and projects that do important work against conspiracy ideology and antisemitism. And we build on the breadth of personal experience, academic and political expertise in order to promote community standards of solidarity and enlightenment online as well as offline.
For the kick-off of our online platform we invited guests from politics, civil society and academia to discuss the necessary steps in this direction and to name challenges and problems. For social media can foster social cohesion just as much as they currently often seem to erode it.
Our platform OY VEY! can be found here.The discussants were:
• 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, 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
• Nikolas Lelle, Project Manager of the Education and Action Weeks against Antisemitism of the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung
The discussion was moderated by our spokeswoman Anna Staroselski.
