Recommendations regarding the Internet, its Influencers and its Users

Abstract

Much of what has been said about cultural decision makers and influencers applies to the decision makers and influencers of the online world as well. In fact, online communication is part of the process of the construction of meaning that we have described above as culture.We address the Internet here separately and not among the recommendations to cultural decision makers and influencers in general because to a large extent the Internet is responsible for the explosion of Jew-hatred in the last decades. The Internet provides antisemites of all colors with a means to spread their agitation unhindered both in the form of explicit hate speech and in implicit manifestations coded in indirect speech acts. A recent long-term study by Monika Schwarz-Friesel exposes the Internet as “the primary multiplier and locus for the transmission of manifestations of antisemitism” and points to a more than alarming development: “Expressions of anti-Semitic sentiment have increased significantly in the digital age.”1 The main results of the long-term study are: – This increase is accompanied by a qualitative radicalization and intensification of expressions of antisemitism. – Consequently, antisemitism’s scope for expression as well as the visibility of antisemitic sentiments have grown enormously online. – The epoch-spanning reiteration of Judeophobic stereotypes and conspiracy phantasies is revealed in thousands of texts every day in the Internet. – Classical hostility towards Jews remains the primary conceptual basis for present-day hatred of Jews; 54.02 percent (mean value) of all expressions of antisemitism display classical stereotypes. – Muslim antisemitism is also marked by classical stereotypes of hostility towards Jews.