Antisemitic conspiracy theories surge online amid French unrest, watchdog says

The ARC collected 18,381 posts using 25 search queries in seven languages, counting any post that linked the unrest to Jews, Israel, Zionists, or the Mossad.

By David Israel, TPS

Within two days of unrest erupting across France, 816 accounts on X published 1,384 posts blaming Jews and Israel for the crisis, including the vandalism of a synagogue, a US-based antisemitism watchdog reported.

According to the Antisemitism Research Center (ARC) at the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), common themes included claims of Jewish elite orchestration, Israeli or Mossad involvement, Zionist manipulation, the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which falsely claims that elites are orchestrating the replacement of native populations through mass immigration, and antisemitic conspiracy theories alleging Jewish control of global finance.

In one post cited by the report, a user identified as @Fantastic6133 tweeted, “Islam isn’t burning France down. The jews are. They are doing it to all of our countries. It won’t be long until we all look like France.”

The tweet added, “Welcome to the jew World Order.”

ARC said this was the fourth time in under three months it has documented such patterns, noting similar conspiracy theories surrounding the migrant crisis of Ceuta, the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and, more recently, a flydubai pilot’s attempt to deliberately crash a Tel Aviv-bound plane.

“We are seeing the rapid and systematic exploitation of a news event by antisemites to spread conspiracy theories,” said CAM Editor-in-Chief Barney Breen-Portnoy, describing it as a “well-worn script” for repackaging old hatred for a modern digital audience.

The ARC collected 18,381 posts using 25 search queries in seven languages, counting any post that linked the unrest to Jews, Israel, Zionists, or the Mossad.

Researchers manually reviewed all 4,922 candidate text groups and the 100 most-viewed posts. Twenty posts were flagged as potential false positives.