At a time where all of us are learning to innovate digitally – much of it for good, as will be shown by today’s Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony – there are some who are trying an innovation of their own: to exploit fear and anxiety in a way that only sows hatred in society.
Sadly, this kind of innovation is being employed by individuals that would seek to disrespect, diminish or even deny the Holocaust and hurt Jewish people. This is particularly true when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the extremes, we have seen far-Right activists call for the targeting of Jews with coronavirus. Sickeningly branded ‘the Holocough’, the command was to ‘spread the flu to every Jew’. However, online, the term spread chaotically and was interspersed with other conspiracies that blamed Jews for inventing the virus – whether or not the posters believed it to be real. In this way, age-old antisemitic tropes were repurposed for a social media crowd with potentially deadly consequences.
