This is mainly the work of Matthias J. Becker, a postdoc researcher at the Center for Research on Antisemitism.
Given the amount of publicity given to that text on the user’s timeline, and even in their own bio, I have reasonable grounds to believe that they are either the author/editor of that book or someone closely related to them.
The details I’ve grabbed about him and his work are honestly chilling when looked in their entirety:
His research lies within the disciplines of (pragma)linguistics, research on prejudice, and internet studies and focuses on the construction of implicit hate speech.
In his postdoc project, he examines various forms of antisemitic and racist hate speech on British news websites in the context of Brexit.
And his public lecture also includes screenshots taken around social media to build the case for antisemitism.
Note that in those slides you won’t find only traditional caricatures of Jews or shameful Holocaust denial as evidence of antisemitism (it’s definitely right to condemn these as the acts of hate and prejudice that they are).
But also memes that condemn the genocide in Gaza, the unaccountability of Israel guaranteed by the US, or “Stop calling it a conflict, it’s a genocide” images.
Basically that guy is grabbing social media content posted by any users that he considers antisemitic, takes screenshots, and adds them as evidence of antisemitism in his books, lectures and research.
And is trying to blur the boundaries and expand the definition of antisemitism.
So my first crucial question to the staff of mastodon.social is:
Are you aware that there are State-sponsored accounts on your platform that harass your users, publish screenshots of their conversations in their lectures and books, and probably feed their posts to language models without their consent, and without any legal basis, and this has been going on for YEARS? Are you ok with it? Have you at least run internal investigations to justify their operations? Will my posts or Aral’s also go in their corpora of evidence of antisemitism? Can you guarantee that it won’t be the case? Can you guarantee that the authors of the content won’t end up in one of the arbitrary lists of “hostile people” regularly redacted by Israel? Because in the past you have put permanent bans for much less than this. And if you can’t guarantee that then it should probably OTHER INSTANCES TO DEFEDERATE mastodon.social, because of threat it poses to the privacy of their users and the usage of their data, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND
My second point is more subtle and academic, but it’s even more dangerous than the privacy issue.
And it’s about the gradual extension of the boundaries of antisemitism through pseudo-academism that is not rooted in actual academic discourse, but on the random book of a postdoc researcher cited as if it was the apex of scientific consensus in the field.
We all agree that denying the Holocaust, posting apologies of Nazism or depicting Jews as greedy is deeply antisemitic and deserves condemnation.
But what about calling what’s happening in Gaza a genocide?
What about digging the most controversial passages of their sacred texts exploited by far-right rabbis to justify their claims over the whole land and look at them from a modern perspective?
What about questioning the good faith of those behind the Holocaust foundations?
What about putting Israel’s trilemma under their nose and ask them how they are supposed to solve it - and that no, throwing bombs all around while they figure out a solution is not an acceptable solution?
What about asking them to repeal the Law of Return, because it’s basically ethno-religious colonialism achieved through displacement of local populations?
What about asking them why they keep expanding their illegal settlements in the West Bank and squatting people out of their houses?
What about putting under their nose that commemorating the Holocaust while manufacturing a new one is, at the very least, incoherent?
What about putting under their nose that the most vocal supporters of the current genocide are parties like Otzma Yehudit in their cabinet, which are just the descendants of the outlawed Kach party, led by Meir Kahane, a man arrested 60 times in his life, considered a terrorist by the US, the USSR and Israel itself, whose infamous They must go pamphlet (written in one of his regular stays in a jail) has been rightfully been compared to Mein Kampf when it comes to the tone and the conclusions - and not by me, but by Jewish cultural associations? And that his leader Ben-Gvir himself has been listed as persona non grata in many countries? Can we point out the incoherence of accusing Hamas of terrorism while hosting terrorists in their own cabinet?
Can we say that Kahane and his political heirs are rotten fascists to the core without being called antisemitic, just like I can say that the government of Meloni in Italy is a direct heir of fascism without being called anti-Italian?
What about comparing what they are doing to the Arab population today to what other regimes have done to other minorities in the past to get the right perspective?
What about criticizing their continued rejection of recognizing the authority of international institutions like the UN?
Can we have honest conversations around these themes without our posts ending up in the slides of this guy as evidence of antisemitism whose definition he has manufactured in his own book out of thin air?
If not, can we admit that Israel is simply trying to forge an iron dome around itself that makes it immune from any form of scrutiny that any democratic country should be subject to, and it’s trying to do so by manufacturing a false sense of academic consensus on the basis of what a random researcher reads on the Web and thinks that it’s antisemitic? And unaccountability is basically the foundation of fascism - but if we dare to say that the current political leadership is fascist we’re also accused of antisemitism. And just because the book of this guy has a whole chapter on why “Israel has a fascist government” is supposed to be an act of antisemitism. It’s basically like an invincibility glitch - whatever you say against the chosen people of god, it’s you the one who’s wrong.
The contradiction is just more evident when you look at what the user wrote in their bio:
Criticism of / opposition to Israel is not automatically antisemitic, but it can be.
There’s basically no “it’s not automatically antisemitic“ at play here. Whoever expresses criticism against Israel on any of the topics that he considers a taboo automatically gets a #Fediblock or #AntiSemitism hashtag and the screenshot of the post shared on that pathetic wall of shame that it’s his timeline, without much room for discussion.
I mean, think of your incoherence, Eugene. You’ve made such a big deal on the technical implementation of quotes because “they could be used to harass people”. And then you let folks like these do whatever they want with the content posted by other users (on their own timeline, in their books and in their slides) for YEARS, despite the reports, without moving a single finger?
Do you, Eugene, or the staff of mastodon.social, agree with such an arbitrary extension of the concept of antisemitism, and to turn your users into guinea pigs for these non-transparent and unethical acts of research on their data sponsored by a country that mine and others consider a threat to their national security?
Do you agree with the UN and with countless international observers that what is currently taking place in Gaza is a genocide, and that anybody who spreads propaganda in its support should be treated like someone who denies the Holocaust?
We demand answers, and we’ve been waiting for too long.
cc FYI: @palestine @aral @moderation
