Even the most casual consumer of social media has noticed it. The explosion of anti-Jewish memes, videos, grotesque jokes, snickering, trolling—and, in a different register, material that is quite a bit darker—has flooded our screens. Since October 7, we’ve grown accustomed to talking about the rise of anti-Semitism as though it were the weather, a cloudy mood that settled over American campuses and American streets that we can describe and deplore and hope that it passes. Today’s guest argues that this way of thinking misses the point entirely, because much of what looks like weather is in fact the product of arson, much of what seems like spontaneous surges in anti-Semitism is in fact the deliberate practice of information warfare by Russia, Iran, and China against the United States.
Eliana Aiken is a policy fellow at Defense Technology Alliance, and her August essay in Mosaic explores “Anti-Semitism as Information Warfare.”
The essay walks us through the machinery of this campaign in granular detail. It explains what troll farms and SIM farms are. It explains how bots manufacture the appearance of popularity. She reports on research that points toward the astroturfing of figures like Nick Fuentes, whose content is amplified at a rate no organic audience could produce.
Aiken’s argument is that, in anti-Semitism, America’s adversaries have found a potent tool to divide Americans, sow confusion and disorder in American society, turn Americans against one another, and distract the country from their own offensive strategic maneuvering. She discusses that argument in conversation with Mosaic‘s editor Jonathan Silver.