Antisemitic conspiracy theories blaming Jews for 9/11 gaining traction on social media

The Lie That Won’t Die: 25 years after the attacks, conspiracy theories blaming Jews for 9/11 net tens of millions of views on social media.

By World Israel News Staff

Antisemitic conspiracy theories about the September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda attacks reached tens of millions of people on major social media platforms during commemorations marking the 25th anniversary of the attacks, according to a new report from the Combat Antisemitism Movement.

The group’s Antisemitism Research Center said it reviewed 174 high-reach social media posts published between September 11 and 13 that collectively generated at least 56.5 million views, 1.2 million likes, 122,000 shares and 46,000 comments.

The posts examined by researchers promoted conspiracy theories portraying Jews or Israel as responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which Al Qaeda hijackers seized four commercial airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.

According to the report, many of the posts focused on American Jewish real estate developer Larry Silverstein, who held the lease on the World Trade Center at the time of the attacks, and used this to advance claims that Jews or Israel had secretly orchestrated or benefited from the attacks.

Other posts expanded those claims to accuse US officials of helping engineer the attacks or using them to justify wars in the Middle East on Israel’s behalf, the report said.

CAM said the conspiracy theories are no longer limited to fringe websites and forums, but are increasingly appearing on mainstream platforms including X, Instagram and TikTok.

“The 25th anniversary of September 11th should have been a universal moment of remembrance and reflection,” said Oliver Marks, a research associate at the Antisemitism Research Center. “Instead, our study showed how antisemites exploited the moment to resurrect and amplify familiar conspiracy narratives falsely blaming Jews and Israel for the attacks.”

Marks said the use of Silverstein and distorted claims about the attacks helped give longstanding antisemitic narratives the appearance of legitimate historical debate.

“By weaponizing the figure of Larry Silverstein and distorting basic facts about 9/11, these narratives transform antisemitic mythology into seemingly credible ‘alternative history,’” he said. “We must confront these distortions with facts, historical truth, and an unambiguous rejection of the hatred underlying them.”

The report, titled “Hijacking History: The Antisemitic Campaign to Distort the Truth of 9/11,” also calls on social media companies to change how they handle conspiracy theory content tied to the attacks.

CAM said platforms should not necessarily remove such posts, but should stop recommendation, discovery and autoplay systems from algorithmically promoting them.

The group is also calling on social media companies to disclose how often their systems distributed or recommended the content during the anniversary period.