Alexis Chapelan and Matthias J. Becker of the Decoding Antisemitism project show how commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day against the fraught backdrop of the ongoing war in Gaza has given centre stage to ‘interpretations and scenarios that severely distort the historical reality of the genocide of the Jewish people’. They examine the construction of ‘competitive martyrologies’ as a discursive political strategy that seeks ‘not only to undermine the culture of Holocaust remembrance, but also to further a radical anti-Israel political agenda.’ Social media, they show, is ‘ one of the main arenas in which this discourse plays out’.
An embattled Holocaust memory
Holocaust memory has been, since the fall of the Nazi regime, a flashpoint for antisemitic discourse. In post-Nazi countries and far-right milieus, the phenomenon of secondary antisemitism has often emerged as an attempt to expunge collective guilt for the genocide of Jews through the construction of rival martyrologies and dilution of the Holocaust’s historical impact and its uniqueness (Becker et al. 2024). The term ‘competitive martyrologies’ was coined by the Holocaust scholar Michael Shafir (2007) to describe the emergence of counter-memories that oppose the political culture of Holocaust remembrance, especially in right-wing anti-communist circles which focus more on the victims of communism. This framework builds upon Michael Rothberg’s concepts of ‘memory wars’ and ‘competitive memory,’ which posit that rival memories crowd each other and engage in competition in the public sphere over a scarce symbolic resource: political recognition of victimhood (Rothberg 2009). As the historian Deborah Lipstadt put it, this discourse aimed to create a series of ‘immoral equivalences, essentially a balance of bad behavior’ (Gerstenfeld and Lipstadt 2003). By framing the Holocaust as just one common episode of the violent history of humankind, its specific structural causes – systemic genocidal antisemitism – were obfuscated. The far right could therefore mitigate the symbolic burden stemming from the atrocities and rehabilitate elements of the ideology which underpinned them.
However, due to its plasticity, this discourse was able to appeal to groups other than European nationalist movements, especially in a post-colonial context (Rothberg 2009). The discourse of anti-imperialism ushered in a new symbolic geography of victimhood, where the Global North was the aggressor and the Global South the victim. That placed the Jews, especially after the creation of the State of Israel, on the side of the ontological aggressors. The topos of genocide, especially when levelled against Jews, was often embedded into a broader anti-Western discourse which associated Jewishness with whiteness and power. But it also maps onto a discourse of ‘Holocaust inversion’ (the portrayal of Jews or Israelis as Nazis), which is an increasingly salient feature of the repertoires of contemporary antisemitism. The topos of Holocaust inversion feeds into and compounds the idea of a competitive martyrology. It presupposes not only that there is an unjustified emphasis on Jewish suffering, but it accuses Jews or Israelis of being actively responsible for the suffering of other groups, on a scale at least equivalent with that of the Holocaust.
As highlighted by Becker (2021), Holocaust inversion is a three-pronged antisemitic strategy. Its main communicative functions are:
– The demonisation of the current Israeli ‘perpetrator’. Exploiting the post-war quasi-universal consensus that Nazism is an absolute evil, the equivalence between Israel and National Socialism implies that combatting Israel is a moral obligation and any compromise with it is unacceptable (Wistrich 2004). Therefore, it lays the infrastructure for a radical denial of Israel’s legitimacy and for a call for its destruction.
– The depreciation and the trivialisation of the historical events of the Holocaust. This maps onto the broader language of Holocaust distortion and historical revisionism
– A demand for an end to Holocaust memory. Particularly salient in countries historically involved in the extermination, this discourse seeks to expunge national guilt by claiming the victims have lost their claim to victimhood. It also posits that currently the only purpose of Holocaust remembrance is to protect Israeli actions, and as a result it is an illegitimate moral regime.
Corpus and methods
The commemoration of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January 2024, against the fraught backdrop of the Israeli retaliatory offensive and the mounting humanitarian crisis in Gaza, constitutes a useful vantage point for understanding the nexus between radical anti-Zionism and the rejection of Holocaust memory. In this respect, it sheds light on a striking contemporary example of the clash of competitive martyrologies. Whether Israeli military actions in the Gaza strip constitutes a form of genocide is at the heart of a complex ongoing legal debate. However, in the context of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the systematic accusation of genocide levelled against the Jewish state is often constructed as a mirror image of Nazi atrocities, therefore mapping onto a narrative of victim-perpetrator reversal.
But it also feeds into other prominent tropes of post-Holocaust antisemitism, such as the idea of Jewish instrumentalisation of the Holocaust or even Holocaust denial and distortion. A common conclusion is the rejection of all forms of Holocaust memory as fundamentally hypocritical. The discourse surrounding the 2024 Holocaust Memorial Day is therefore a point of juncture between secondary antisemitism and Israel-related antisemitism, highlighting the increased synergy of those hitherto distinct strands, one coming from right-wing milieus and the other from the anti-imperialist left as well as various other political milieus including the politically moderate mainstream.
In order to explore empirically this discourse, we collected a sample of about 2,200 user comments from the social media platforms YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. The comments were reactions to twenty-five posts directly connected to International Holocaust Remembrance Day, published in English on 27 January 2024. The posts belong to political organisations and figures (Keir Starmer, UK Labour Party, Rishi Sunak), public institutions (the State of Israel, the United Nations), NGOs (the United States Holocaust Museum, Amnesty International, Stand with Us, Holocaust Educational Trust), media outlets (LBC, Sky News, i24NEWS English, TRT World, DW News, GB News), independent political commentators and apolitical influencers. This broad spectrum of sources, from three of the most popular social media platforms, allowed us to capture the diversity of audiences which interact with Holocaust-related educational or political content.
The analysis was based on the interdisciplinary framework developed within the Decoding Antisemitism research project. The approach, drawing on Philip Mayring’s qualitative content analysis (2014), allows for a rigorous model in which patterns of antisemitic speech (both on the conceptual and linguistic level) are identified and mapped out, followed by an analysis of frequencies of stereotypes and other concepts as a quantitative step (Becker/Bolton 2022).
Analysis
Out of a sample of 2,202 comments, 359 or 16.3 per cent were classified as antisemitic. These numbers are slightly lower than the percentage of antisemitic comments previously identified in UK comment sections in the aftermath of the 7 October attacks and during the subsequent Israeli offensive (which is usually around 20 per cent). However, this suggests that while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the main trigger of antisemitism, Holocaust-related news stories, even when there is no direct linkage to the situation in the Middle East, remain an important trigger for antisemitic discourse.
The most prevalent concept amongst antisemitic comments was the allegation of genocide (present in 32.5 per cent of all antisemitic utterances), which functions, alongside the analogy between Israel and the Nazi regime (29.1 per cent), as the strongest of the demonising historical analogies. The corpus also features a number of tropes typical of secondary antisemitism, such as the accusation of instrumentalisation of the holocaust and antisemitism or blame for antisemitism. Explicit, direct holocaust denial is rare in the corpus, but holocaust distortion and affirmation of Nazism were slightly more common. Other comments resort to tropes specific to radical anti-Zionism, such as denial of Israel’s right to exist. It is interesting to note the encroachment of categories usually related to the Middle East conflict over discussions on Holocaust memory, that allow antisemitic comments to actively de-emphasise the suffering of Jewish communities and the legacy of anti-Jewish hate ideology.
At the most basic level, antisemitism is articulated through the idea that Jews or Israel embody the ultimate form of evil. Comments such as ‘Zionism is evil’ (HOLO-TT[20240202]) or ‘WE ALL KNOW THAT ISRAHELL IS THE DEVIL MONSTERS KILLERS. THE BAD SEED OF THIS WORLD’ (FTP-TT[20240128]) collectively portray Israelis, rather than a specific political figure or the present government, as a malign influence in the world. In the second comment, the wordplay on the name of Israel implies diabolical undertones, aligning with mediaeval associations of Jews with the devil or other demons. The construction of Israeli evil often draws upon the repertoire of the blood libel, which alleges that Israel intentionally targets children: ‘BULLSHIT JUST LIKE YOUR NON COUNTRY STEALING, KILLING, PEDOPHILE INNOCENT KIDS. PALESTINE WILL BE REBUILT AGAIN, FOR YOUR HAPPINESS ISRAHELL WILL BE ALWAYS REMEMBER AS A MURDERER OF BABYS’ (FTP-TT[20240128]) The accusation of paedophilia, which echoes another modern antisemitic blood libel – the QAnon conspiracy myth – further serves the purpose of portraying Israelis as depraved and inhuman.
The most common topos, the allegation of genocide, is conveyed in a variety of ways. It can be a part of short, slogan-like phrases such as ‘Stop the genocide in Gaza!’ (KEIRS-IN[20240127]), which are also a demand for both the Jewish/Israeli outgroup and their alleged supporters (the non-Jewish outgroup includes here the political class and mainstream media). Another observation pertains to the incorporation of accusations of genocide within rhetorical questions: ‘So it’s okay to just mercilessly murder 10s of thousands of innocent civilians and spout genocidal rhetoric from the top of government?’ (KEIRS-IN[20240127]). Arguments from authority, in which the user dismisses different opinions as uninformed or uneducated while positioning themselves as a source of epistemological authority, are also used: ‘If you don’t see this as a genocide then you need to go and research more’ (KEIRS-IN[20240127]). In the context of the Holocaust Remembrance Day, the constant reference to the alleged genocide in Gaza takes on another layer of meaning: it is meant to create an equivalency and ascribe to all Jews (past and present) responsibility for Israel’s actions.
Unsurprisingly, the topos of genocide works in synergy with the analogy between Israel and Nazi Germany. This can be done implicitly through allusions: ‘I think we all know who is behaving like Nazis and should be ashamed …’ (KEIRS-IN[20240127]) or explicitly: ‘You remember so well that you decided to live that again. Only this time you are the naz1s and Palestinians are the jews’ (ISRA-IN[20240107]). Phrases associated with Holocaust memory such as ‘Never again’ or the open allusion ‘We remember’ are repurposed to evoke the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, thus creating a sense of equivalence. This can be done through the use of icons, such as ‘ #weremember 🍉🍉🍉’ (FTP-TT[20240128]) with the watermelon icon symbolising Palestine. A major theme is the alleged double standard of Holocaust remembrance, which highlights the manner in which the topos of competitive martyrologies maps onto racial and identitarian grievances: ‘You are kidding ‘Never Again,’ except if you’re brown and Middle Eastern…’ (KEIRS-IN[20240127]); ‘Yeah……never again to the white man 🤨 the hypocrisy is staggering!!!’ (KEIRS-IN[20240127]).
Another strategy is downplaying the traumatic experience of Jews by arguing that they ultimately benefited from it. The allegation of instrumentalisation of the holocaust implies that Jews are attempting to reframe history to advance their agenda: ‘The entire point of remembering holocaust is to feel sorry for Israel, and excuse it from any number of holocausts they will commit while sending them money, weapons and undying support’ (KERNO-YT[20240129]). Another user laments that Jewish pressure and interference changed the meaning of the word Holocaust to refer to the extermination of Jews in Europe:
‘When I was a kid, the word ‘Holocaust’ referred to nuclear holocaust, in line with its etymology. Decades later I was confused for some years as this word seemed to have acquired a new meaning, i.e. now referring to the WWII genocide of Jewish people (…) it was part of Israeli hasbara. Since learning this I’ve been refusing to use the word the way it’s generally used nowadays […]’ (KERNO-YT[20240129]).
This struggle for symbolic legitimacy as a victim is at the core of the discourse of competitive martyrologies. According to some, the conflict in Gaza enacts a reversal of the roles of victims and perpetrators which collectively nullify Jewish claims to victimhood: ‘If the same ppl now commit another holocaust means their holocaust victim card has expired’ (FTP-TT[20240128]).
Other antisemitic statements include provocative affirmation of the Nazi regime (‘The SS did nothing wrong 🙄’ (FTP-TT[20240128])) or accusations of Jewish power over the political class. Drawing a comparison with the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, one user states that Israeli ‘isn’t just occupying Palestine. They also occupy US, UK, French, German, Canadian, Australian governments’ (KERNO-YT[20240129]). This echoes the ZOG (Zionist-occupied government) conspiracy theory popularised by neo-Nazi circles in the 1990s.
Germany
Parallel to the analysis of the British dataset, the German team of our Decoding Antisemitism project scrutinised 1,600 comments from Instagram profiles of German mainstream media, activists, and Jewish institutions.
Here, it is noteworthy that only 8.9 per cent of the comments across the 16 threads can be classified as antisemitic. However, two main phenomena were observed. Firstly, the Holocaust was stripped of its singularity through equating it with other historical or present scenarios of mass violence and injustice. Secondly, the discursive repertoire of human rights was often manipulated to depict Israel as the absolute evil, with the Israeli government accused of committing genocide against the Palestinian population. Commenters utilised a variety of implicit patterns, including typographical alterations (!Vern!chtungskrieg,’ in Engl.: ‘war of ann!hilation’) and open allusions to the Holocaust (‘‘Nie wieder’ geschieht übrigens ‘gerade wieder’,’ in Engl.: ‘‘Never again’ is happening ‘right now’). Additionally, they attribute these patterns to specific societal groups, employing derailing and externalisation strategies to absolve the German national in-group – whether consciously or unconsciously – from antisemitism. Misidentifying antisemitism as a phenomenon solely associated with individual societal groups is not necessarily antisemitic, but it can lead to an implicit relativisation of a problem that has always existed throughout society.
Conclusion
The commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day against the fraught backdrop of the ongoing war in Gaza has given centre stage to interpretations and scenarios that severely distort the historical reality of the genocide of the Jewish people. The construction of ‘competitive martyrologies’ is a discursive political strategy that seeks not only to undermine the culture of Holocaust remembrance, but also to further a radical anti-Israel political agenda. Social media, as a crucial site of political socialisation, is nowadays one of the main arenas in which this discourse plays out, before inevitably trinkling down offline. In order to implement an proactive – rather than simply reactive – strategy against antisemitism, it is thus important to have empirically grounded studies to understand and anticipate these developments.
Acknowledgements
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the entire Decoding Antisemitism team for their contribution to this and many other case studies.
References
Becker, Matthias, 2021. Antisemitism in Reader Comments: Analogies for Reckoning with the Past. London: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70103-1.
Becker, Matthias J./Bolton, Matthew, 2022. The Decoding Antisemitism Project – Reflections, Methods and Goals. In: Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism (JCA) (5.1), https://doi.org/10.26613/jca/5.1.105.
Becker, Matthias J./Troschke, Hagen/Bolton, Matthew/Chapelan, Alexis (eds.), forthcoming 2024. Decoding Antisemitism: A Guide to Identifying Antisemitism Online. London: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature. https://decoding-antisemitism.eu/publications/announcement-lexicon.
Gerstenfeld, Manfred, interview with Deborah Lipstadt, ‘Denial of the Holocaust and Immoral Equivalence,’ in Manfred Gerstenfeld, Europe’s Crumbling Myths: The Post-Holocaust Origins of Today’s Anti-Semitism (Jerusalem: JCPA, Yad Vashem, World Jewish Congress, 2003), 121.
Mayring, Philipp 2014. Qualitative Content Analysis: Theoretical Background and Procedures. In: Bikner-Ahsbahs, A., Knipping, C., Presmeg, N. (eds) Approaches to Qualitative Research in Mathematics Education. Advances in Mathematics Education. Springer, Dordrecht, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9181-6_13.
Rothberg, Michael, 2009. Multidirectional Memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804783330.
Shafir, Michael, 2007. ‘Nürnberg II? Mitul denazificării şi utilizarea acestuia în martirologia competitivă Holocaust-Gulag’, Caietele Echinox, no. 13.
Wistrich, Robert, 2004. ‘Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism,’ Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 16, No. 3-4, https://www.jstor.org/stable/i25834597.
Sources
FTP-TT[20240128] Fight the Power1999, TikTok, January 28th, 2024, ‘#weremember #fyp #fyp #foryouofficialpage #fypシ #foryoupage…’, https://www.tiktok.com/@fightthepower1999/video/7328908130807483691?q=holocaust%20remembrance%20palestine&t=1706568428584
HOLO-TT[20240202] Holocaust Museum, TikTok, February 2nd, 2024, ‘In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day…’, https://www.tiktok.com/@holocaustmuseum/video/7328526865763798302?is_from_webapp=1&web_id=7327977382634554912
ISRA-IN[20240107] State of Israel, Instagram, January 27th, 2024, ‘International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we commemorate the 6,000,000 Jewish men, women and children murdered by the Nazis’, https://www.instagram.com/p/C2mX2-EIeWg/
KEIRS-IN[20240127] Keir Starmer, Instagram, January 27th, 2024, ‘The Holocaust Educational Trust’s work is vital’, https://www.instagram.com/p/C2mrtUZq6Gr/
KERNO-YT[20240129] KernowDamo, YouTube, January 29th, 2024, ‘On Holocaust Memorial Day, Starmer’s Labour ban any mention of Gaza! On Holocaust Memorial Day, Starmer’s Labour ban any mention of Gaza!’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlGg2dImDpU
