Hatred against Muslims and Jews in the United States is increasing significantly. Just two weeks after the conflict started in Israel and Palestine, hate incidents against Jews rose by 400 percent, and increased by 216 percent over a four-week period against Muslims, compared to the previous year.
Anti-Semitic Hate and Islamophobia Spread Rampantly Online
A recent article in The New York Times reported that online hate has surged significantly on major social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, where most of the anti-Semitic and Islamophobic content is appearing. Users from the far-right on Telegram and 4chan have exploited the current conflict as an opportunity to spread anti-Semitic and Islamophobic rhetoric.
Anti-Semitic Hate and Islamophobia Online and in the Real World
Muslims and Jews are facing very high rates of hate both online and in the real world, and there is a deep connection linking this hatred in the United States. A look at the last decade is enough to see this.
Anti-Muslim and Anti-Jewish Hate Before and After the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
In a recent research paper published in Political Behavior, we studied anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish hate online and in the real world, before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and assessed the relationship between them from 2015 to 2018.
Anti-Muslim and Anti-Jewish Hate on Online Fringe Platforms and in the Real World
Our findings revealed a surprising perspective. Overall, anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish hate crimes may appear more isolated than they actually are. This is because an increase in hate crimes against both groups often occurs at different times. However, this seems to happen because the attacks come from the same extremist communities whose members seem to coordinate attacks on one group based on current events. In other words, as might be expected, extremist groups do not see fluctuations in hate but regularly alter the communities they target and the reasons they claim to target them.
Additional Analyses
Further analyses reveal that week-to-week changes in online extremist rhetoric targeting one group instead of the other precede subsequent shifts in hate crimes and bias incidents in the real world against one of the groups, regardless of whether we control for terrorism attacks and media coverage of hate crimes.
Contemporary dialogue often pits Muslims and Jews against each other. However, our research shows that a large amount of the scattered hate speech surrounding each of them – at least in 2017 – stems from the same far-right extremist communities. We urge observers, researchers, and leaders to investigate the impacts and origins of targeted hatred toward both groups today, and to consider the significant role that extremist communities may play in inciting hatred against Muslims and Jews today.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
Copyright and Permissions
Will Hobbs is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. Nazita Lajevardi is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University.
Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-same-extremists-target-both-muslims-and-jews/
Leave a Reply