Report: Surge of anti-Semitic tweets, many sent by Trump supporters, threatens to silence journalists

Journalists reporting on the presidential election have increasingly become the target of anti-Semitic harassment and threats on Twitter in the past year, according to a new report.

The Anti-Defamation League noticed an uptick in abuse directed at journalists who are Jewish or perceived to be Jewish and assembled a task force this summer to evaluate the trend. In a report published Wednesday, the nonprofit organization details how it used a broad set of search terms to identify 2.6 million tweets containing anti-Semitic language, memes and imagery. The report's findings are limited to the time period between August 2015 and July 2016.

More than 19,000 of the messages, which included death threats and photos of concentration camps, were intended for journalists. A "considerable" number of those tweets were written or sent by users who described themselves as "white," "conservative," "nationalist" and supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump.

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL, told Mashable that the analysis revealed "coordinated, intentional and deliberate efforts to target and silence" the voices of journalists and pundits on Twitter. He characterized that ongoing campaign as a threat to freedom of expression and speech.

"This isn’t politics; this is prejudice, and it doesn’t belong in the public square," Greenblatt said.

The ADL, which does not endorse or oppose political candidates, notes that Trump's rhetoric denouncing journalists as "absolute scum" and "lying, disgusting people" may have contributed to an environment that bred harassment of media professionals.

Greenblatt said that Trump has also amplified white nationalist sentiment by tweeting memes that feature the Star of David and Pepe the Frog, which have both been used to convey anti-Semitism.

The ADL report, however, stopped short of blaming Trump for the "ugly" tweets.

"While candidates can and do affect the environment in which social media operates as well as the tenor of its messages, the individuals who tweet hateful words are solely responsible for their messages," said the report.

The ADL's research found that 1,600 Twitter accounts were responsible for 68 percent of the tweets sent to members of the media. Sixty percent of those tweets were written as replies to journalists' posts. Only 21 percent of the accounts involved in the attacks were suspended or deleted by either the user or Twitter, according to the ADL.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Ben Shapiro, formerly an editor for Breitbart, got more than 7,400 anti-Semitic tweets, making him the primary recipient of such messages. After criticizing Trump, Shapiro received a "wave" of anti-Semitic tweets calling him a "Christ-Killer" and "k*ke."

“It’s amazing what’s been unleashed,” Shapiro told the ADL's researchers. “When my child was born there were lots of anti-Semitic responses talking about cockroaches.”

Other targeted reporters include Julia Ioffe, who profiled Melania Trump for GQ; Jonathan Weisman, a New York Times editor; Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic; and Sally Kohn, Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer, all of whom work for CNN.

Ioffe was the subject of tweets that called her, among other slurs, a "filthy Russian k*ke." She also received photos depicting concentration camps labeled with captions like, "Back to the ovens!"

The ADL noticed a surge in anti-Semitic tweets in the wake of election-related developments but the content of those messages varied widely. They included common tropes like the belief that a cabal of Jewish people control global finance, influence media coverage and were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

The 2.6 million anti-Semitic tweets published between August 2015 and July 2016 had an estimated 10 billion impressions, which the ADL likened to the social media exposure an advertiser could anticipate from a $20 million Super Bowl ad.

Greenblatt said the recent velocity and volume of anti-Semitic tweets was unprecedented. He worries that trend has brought discriminatory and hateful speech targeting Jewish people to the mainstream. The ADL, he added, expects increased anti-Semitic attacks during the remainder of the election and in its aftermath. The organization will release a set of recommendations for journalists, policymakers and social media companies next month.

While noting that the medium of social media is relatively new, Greenblatt is careful to stress that the messages racists and anti-Semites are distributing via Twitter have persisted for "generations."

"I think 50 years ago these people hid behind white hoods," he said. "Today they hide behind keyboards and smartphones."