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King’s Research Portal DOI: 10.26613/3.1.42 Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication record in King's Research Portal Citation for published version (APA): Allington, D., & Joshi, T. (2020). “What Others Dare Not Say”: An Antisemitic Conspiracy Fantasy and its YouTube Audience. Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, 3(1), 35-53. https://doi.org/10.26613/3.1.42 Citing this paper Please note that where the full-text provided on King's Research Portal is the Author Accepted Manuscript or Post-Print version this may differ from the final Published version. If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections. 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Sep. 2021 JCA 2020 (DOI: 10.26613/jca/3.1.42) “What Others Dare Not Say”: An Antisemitic Conspiracy Fantasy and Its YouTube Audience Daniel Allington and Tanvi Joshi Abstract The YouTube video-sharing platform is one of the most important sites for the dissemina- tion of conspiracy theory, or—to give it a more accurately descriptive term—conspiracy fantasy. After surveying the historical and contemporary evidence for the role of conspiracy fantasy in right-wing violent extremism, this article turns its focus to a YouTube video excerpted from a public lecture in which professional conspiracy theorist David Icke pur- ports to expose members of a “Rothschild Zionist” secret society. First, historical discourse analysis is used to situate Icke’s fantasy within the antisemitic tradition of the extreme right. Then, the reception of Icke’s fantasy is studied through quantitative content analysis of YouTube user comments (n = 1123). Comments supportive of the video and its creator are found to outnumber comments that challenge them, as are comments expressing hostility to Jews or extending the video’s accusations against “Rothschild Zionists” to real-world Jew- ish collectivities. Moreover, the most popular comments are found to be disproportionately likely to be supportive of Icke or his video or otherwise anti-Jewish. These findings provide evidence that at least the active portion of the video’s YouTube audience may have had a tendency not only towards support of Icke’s ideas but also towards linkage of those ideas with an overtly antisemitic worldview. It is argued that YouTube’s ranking of comments by popularity may be serving to insulate harmful fantasies such as Icke’s from rational challenge by rendering genuinely critical responses invisible. This illustrates the dangers of outsourcing the evaluation of content to an online user community. But it also suggests that YouTube’s user interface design may be actively contributing to the spread of misinforma- tion and bigotry by placing those who try to oppose them at a disadvantage. Keywords antizionism, audience, conspiracism, conspiracy fantasy, conspiracy theory, content analy- sis, David Icke, discourse analysis, reception, right-wing extremism, YouTube INTRODUCTION explanation of human society: as Aaronovitch Conspiracism has sometimes been theorised as puts it, “an idea of the world in which the an almost universal cognitive tendency,1 with authorities, including those we elect, are system- 3 one popular introduction to the topic asserting atically corrupt and untruthful.” Although such that “huge numbers of people are conspiracy a worldview is today associated with both popu- theorists when it comes to one issue or another.”2 list and extreme manifestations of the political However, conspiracy believers evidently exist left and right,4 it is historically most closely asso- on a cline or spectrum, from those who may ciated with the antisemitic far right. Moreover, it give only provisional credit to specific conspiracy is the centrality of conspiracy theory that most accusations to those for whom fantasies of clearly distinguishes antisemitism from other conspiracy appear to provide a complete forms of bigotry, such as anti-black racism.5 Daniel Allington and Tanvi Joshi The current study takes for its object a idea of killing Jews.9 Editors or publishers of video by the professional conspiracy theorist, the Protocols in other European countries not David Icke, and the reception of the video by infrequently became significant figures in Nazi that proportion of its YouTube audience that client regimes, with responsibility for imple- actively responded by leaving comments or by menting aspects of the Final Solution,10 and clicking the “like” button on existing comments. interviews with SS concentration camp guards A historical discourse analysis of one of Icke’s show that they “believed absolutely in the Jewish most popular videos is followed by a quantitative world-conspiracy.”11 A. K. Chesterton, founder content analysis which treats both comments of the National Front—an extreme right-wing and “likes” of comments as reception data. This British group—published a book-length work analysis provides evidence of the extent to which arguing first for the existence of an interna- the video was accepted or rejected by its active tional conspiracy and then for the predomi- online audience, as well as of the extent to which nantly Jewish character of that conspiracy.12 that audience responded to the video’s thinly After Chesterton’s death, that work was incor- veiled antisemitism with comments expressing porated into the radicalisation strategy used by anti-Jewish views of their own or extending its the National Front, which made open allega- accusations of conspiracy from the “Rothschild tions of a conspiracy involving international Zionist” secret society of Icke’s imagination finance, and employed more discreet means to to real-world Jewish collectivities such as the identify the conspirators as Jewish.13 Historical State of Israel. But it also focuses attention on evidence shows that antisemitic conspiracy the mechanism by which the active audience is beliefs have played a role in motivating far able to introduce bias into the “paratexts” with right terrorist attacks in the United States, espe- which YouTube surrounds each video.6 We argue cially in white supremacist movements such as that by outsourcing the evaluation of comments Christian Identity.14 Today, conspiracy beliefs to a faceless, unaccountable online community, form a component of multiple forms of polit- YouTube has inadvertently acted to protect ical and religious extremist ideology,15 and are bigoted and irrational video content from criti- near-ubiquitous on the extreme right.16 As the cism and rebuttal. introduction to a report on exchanges of such beliefs between the far right and the far left Conspiracy Theory and Violent Extremism observes, “[t]hey are the lifeblood of hateful extremism: a way of explaining the world that Historical causality is never straightforward. involves identifying an evil enemy that is respon- But as Herf argues, “it was the conspirato- sible for all the bad things that are happening.”17 rial aspects of modern antisemitism that were It therefore seems appropriate that a UK most important in fostering its radical, geno- government agency should have expressed cidal implications.”7 The Protocols of the Elders concern regarding “the proliferation of of Zion—a fraudulent and plagiaristic work of conspiracy theories, including online, and the Tsarist propaganda purporting to expose a Jewish potential impact on radicalising people’s atti- conspiracy to control the world through high tudes and behaviour towards others.”18 There finance and the press—formed a key ideological has been a recent spate of terror attacks whose resource first for German nationalist terrorists, perpetrators or alleged perpetrators both iden- and then for the Austro-German Nazi regime.8 tify with the political right and espouse belief in In Britain, the Protocols were sold by the British conspiracy theories.19 Researchers have stressed Union of Fascists and promoted by the Britons: the importance of Islamophobic conspiracy a far-right organisation which proposed the theories in the ideology of Anders Breivik, expulsion of all Jews, and even entertained the who killed seventy-seven people in 2011.20 36 Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism “What Others Dare Not Say” The alleged Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, who delivered to Soros’s address, Sayoc shared a killed eleven, was motivated by belief in the cluster of anti-Soros memes. These included one “white genocide,” “great replacement,” or “great from [David] Icke proclaiming urgently that . substitution” conspiracy: the idea that a malev- “[THE] WORLD IS WAKING UP TO THE olent (and usually Jewish) elite has promoted HORRORS OF GEORGE SOROS”.24 non-white immigration into majority-white Although Sayoc apparently did not intend nations in order to weaken and dominate the to be identified and captured, the other cases white population.21 The alleged perpetrator of outlined above suggest that a pattern has been the Christchurch mosque shooting, in which established whereby right-wing extremists fifty-one died, released a manifesto endorsing attempt to use mass shootings as a means of the same conspiracy fantasy, as did the alleged providing their own conspiracy fantasies with perpetrators of the El Paso mall shooting, in an online audience.