The following article has been published in Times of Israel Blogs and J‑Wire by ECAJ Research Director Julie Nathan.

The Covid-19 virus has produced sickness and death, turmoil and dis­rup­tion, around the world. It is a silent stalker of human fragility. But it has brought with it another virus, an older but virile plague, one with no known cure, and no limits to the amount of dead bodies it can produce. This plague flares up whenever the society faces uncom­fort­able changes. This is the plague of antisemitism – the longest standing, most pervasive, and most genocidal hatred known to humanity.

During the Bubonic Plague of the 1300s, Jews were accused of creating and spreading the plague by poisoning the water-wells in order, so the accus­a­tion claimed, to destroy Christen­dom. Thousands of Jews were massacred, often by being herded into syn­agogues and set alight, resulting in over 200 Jewish com­munit­ies being anni­hil­ated. Even though the Bubonic Plague was caused by plague-infected fleas on rats, the delusion that Jews are the cause of plagues developed deep roots. So again, today “the Jews” are blamed for creating and spreading Covid-19.

The antisemitism engendered by reactions to Covid-19 is world-wide, in the streets and online. In order to see in detail what is being discussed and promoted by anti­semites online, a good snapshot with an abundance of examples is provided by a study of posts by people in one country, Australia, on one social media site, Gab. This site is favoured by extrem­ists for its per­mit­ting of all kinds of speech. These expres­sions can either be described through para­phras­ing or can be repro­duced as is. The latter method is a more accurate and precise way to show what the hate pro­pa­gand­ists are actually saying. Their online expres­sions fell into nine general themes, plus images.

Images

Weeks before Covid-19 hit Aus­trali­an shores on 25 January, Aus­trali­an anti­semites were reposting images from others that referred to Jews as the virus. One notable example was composed of images of several green cyl­indric­al-shaped viruses and several of the crowned coronavir­us, also in bright green, but in the centre of each coronavir­us was placed an image of the cari­ca­tured Jew, Shlomo. The message: Jews are the virus. This image was later updated to include the text: “Question: Why aren’t Jews getting infected? Answer: One virus can’t live inside another.”

There were other images equating Jews with Covid-19. One image of a person whose head is a coronavir­us is named “(((CORONAVIRUS)))” thus indic­at­ing it is Jewish by use of the echoes symbol, the triple par­en­thes­is. Another image is of a green coronavir­us with the Nazi-imposed yellow Star of David replete with the word “Jude” (German for “Jew”) attached at the front. Even the Israeli flag had a green coronavir­us image super­im­posed over the blue Star of David. Many images were repeatedly reposted.

One image placed Jews as the power and orches­trat­ors behind Covid-19. This image is of a cari­ca­tured Jew placing a king’s golden crown upon the coronavir­us which is sitting on a red throne, with the globe of the world wearing a surgical mask and running away from the corona-king. Another image is of cari­ca­tured Jew and the coronavir­us with text including the words “It’s not Chinese. It’s the JEW FLU!”

 Jews created it

An accus­a­tion made very early on, and con­sist­ently repeated, was that Covid-19 was created by “the Jews”. A variety of nefarious purposes were put forward. One of the earliest claims was of “the Corona virus coming from a jewish labor­at­ory.”

There were claims about Jews in China: “Appar­ently a jew professor was arrested and is believed to have sold the virus? Israeli Mossad agent?” and “Hasn’t a Jewish professor been arrested for selling this virus to students from Wuhan? China has a terrible record for pandemic viruses, wild animal con­sump­tion, and poor san­it­a­tion standards. Are they a testing lab for Israeli agents?” One wrote that “mossad released the virus in the city that had a Chinese viral warfare lab in it, so they could have plausible deni­ab­il­ity.” Another wrote that: “The jews set up China as a communist state in the first place. Nothing happens in their turf without their say so”, and “China is the scapegoat for what the NWO Jews are doing to Chris­ti­ans in America”, and “the so-called “Wu Flu” has transitioned into the dreaded “Jew Flu”.”

Put simply, one person argued that “At this point in history, a cynical mind must assume that Jews are behind any world calamity as they were with all recent wars and the Black Death.” One claimed that “The coronavir­us fits into the Jewish paradigm of legalism, parasitic proph­ecies and fab­ric­ated history.” Others claimed that Jews were immune: “they’re not going to release a virus which is going to effect them espe­cially are they” and that Jews have “anti-bodies to corvid19.”

Some proposed that it was an extension of Israeli-Iranian animosity: “Just a cohen­cid­ence how Iran and China have been the hardest hit by Israel’s bio weapon, eh? Can’t expect jewish owned media to admit THAT though” and “The idea that the virus racially dis­crim­in­ates was probably cover for israel murdering a bunch of Iranians that it wanted vapour­ised.”

Some claimed that Covid-19 was created with genocidal intent: “Watching this movie #Inferno. Basic plotline: bil­lion­aire #Jew (((Ben Foster))) plans to kill billions of people with a #virus” and “It’s obviously the jews trying to start another epidemic to kill whites.” One cited the “1320 Black Death. The rumor began to circulate that certain Spanish rabbis … had produced a powerful poison, which they poured into the water wells to cause the plague.”

Jews are spreading it, so spread it to Jews

Many people on Gab accused Jews of spreading Covid-19. One posted that “Jews have been noted as the biggest spreaders per capita.” Some claimed that it “was a jew who spread corvid19 around AIPAC and CPAC, which infected many leading political figures … it a jewish press secretary of the Brazil­lian President, whom exposed Trump to the corona virus.” Another simply claimed “that the noted jewish lack of hygiene and lacking the empathy for others” caused the virus to spread.

Others claimed that Jews were taught to delib­er­ately infect gentiles, espe­cially anti­semites: “With Rabbis schooling the online shule attendees that coronavir­us is for the gentiles not the Jews, and Jews from Israel to New York to the UK coofing [ie coughing] on anyone suspected of being anti-Semites.” There were claims that Jews can afford to spread the virus as they do not get sick: “if jews get Corona Virus they just need some vitamin C, but if Italians get Corona Virus they have to die.”

In contrast, others encour­aged spreading Covid-19 to Jews: “Start spreading the flu / Jew World Order is gay / … Jew York, Jew York / You’ve got the flu.” Another one posted: “Remember goy it’s okay to coof [ie cough] on the kids of #Yids, after all they’re just lying rodents and 2020 is the year of the rat. Mind you the #Jews will use their #media power to turn set coofing into anudda #Holocaust story.” Some claimed that “The jews have already arrested some White kids for joking around on telegram that they were going to spit on jews to spread corvid19 to their community.”

One encour­aged Jews to spread it amongst them­selves, that “Jews of New York and beyond should keep packing them­selves into syn­agogues, gathering in the street, and visiting their jewish friends and family. They should only stay away from white gentiles (Nazis), who are delib­er­ately infecting jews.”

Jewish plot to control the world

This was another common and popular theme – that Covid-19 was orches­trated in order to facil­it­ate and enable “the Jews” to enact gov­ern­ment crack­downs on demo­crat­ic rights and freedoms, lock-down whole pop­u­la­tions, cause economic chaos, and thereby control the world.

Some people claimed that gov­ern­ment policies under Covid-19 were directed by Jews and had the aim to destroy white ethno-nation­al­ists, to “use the virus to empty the [prisons], was that they were freeing up for their real goal for the prison indus­tri­al complex, somewhere to house racially conscious Whites.” Another claimed that “we see all the time the police walking in close proximity to them­selves and to those whom they seek to harass on behalf of the jewish crown.” A Victorian state gov­ern­ment advert­ise­ment educating about coronavir­us was pho­toshopped replacing the word ‘together’ with ‘subjewed’ to state: “Staying Apart Keeps Us SubJewed. To help keep us SUBJEWED, visit vic.gov…”

Some claimed that “China (given that it’s willing part of the jewish banker led agenda21 concept for a global order) was in cahoots with our gov­ern­ments for this operation to spread corvid19 to the West” and others that “At the very least it can’t hurt to draw attention to Jews betraying America for China again.” Yet, others claimed that “The CDC is run for jewish world communism.” One even suggested that “The jews will want to wreck Easter for the Chris­ti­ans.”

Others were more precise: “Lets get our pri­or­it­ies straight here (((raab))) The disease which “has no borders”, which they should be occupying them­selves over with high level summits, should be the disease of cos­mo­pol­it­an jewish global finance and trade.” Another posted: “But in all honesty the Jewish community have good reasons to be fearful for they are rightly being singled out as the traitors in our midst, as well as being a demon­strably greater ant­ag­on­ist than the coronavir­us itself.”

In contrast, some people dismissed that it was a Jewish con­spir­acy. One person claimed that the “Corona Virus has two purposes … secondly to crash the old monetary system and take away the cabals power (bankers, Rothchilds) there will be the intro­duc­tion of gold backed cur­ren­cies again.” Another person claimed: “Exactly – so it makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER to unleash a Virus that EXPOSES THE FAILURE CALLED GLOBALISM… How in the HELL could this POSSIBLY help the Jews?.. It’s FUCKED UP ALL THEIR PLANS.”

Hoax

There were quite a few posts, although clearly in the minority, claiming that the Covid-19 pandemic was a hoax. Examples include: “flaccid false flag virus exper­i­ence”, “the Global Flu Hoax of 2020”, “We’ve now come to see that the virus was a mild flu”, and “Could this be the biggest hoax in history?”

Others focused on the economic and political aspects of it being a hoax, namely that it is aimed at enabling dic­tat­ori­al control of the pop­u­la­tion: “this Holocough … lockdown bullshit … the economic damage”, “treas­on­ous sus­pen­sion of our rights over the nothing virus”, and “COVID-19 PLANDEMIC IS A NEW WORLD ORDER ROTHCHILD JEW HOAX!!!” The use of the term “Holocough” is playing on the word ‘Holocaust’, and inferring that both are hoaxes.

Jewish money-making scam

There were theories that Covid-19 was a Jewish money-making scam. It was repeatedly claimed that Jews were making money either via economic collapse caused by the lock-downs and so buying-up cheap, or were raking-off money from the gov­ern­ment support schemes, or that Jews were lending gov­ern­ments the bail-out money and would reap a rich harvest in repayment. This was a very popular theme. It tied into old ste­reo­types and tropes about Jews and money, of Shylock and Fagin, of Jews as greedy money-grubbing cap­it­al­ists.

This post summed it up: “Yeah, shit like this makes me wonder if it’s all another elaborate jew scam. Siphon off our money through bailouts. Crash the economy and buy everything up cheap. Typical.” Others claimed that “A lockdown … the great economic reaping culls many inde­pend­ent non-kike players from the scene” and “In Frydenberg’s case, using a lockdown to destroy uncounted Aussie busi­nesses … Members of the jewish community are famous for pulling this feel sorry for us so you don’t realise that we run everything as an organised crime activity, trick.” Ref­er­ences to Josh Fry­den­berg, the Aus­trali­an Federal Treasurer, were fairly common, espe­cially in relation to his being Jewish.

Others termed it in different ways: “Every jew made out like a bandit through the bailout schemes” and “all the money being thrown at the jews thanks to this false flag virus, we have our ‘cui bono’ which leads us to under­stand therefore whom per­pet­rated this whole exercise in crisis man­age­ment for the enrich­ment of the managers, scheme. Jew Bono. … But a hallmark of a guilty jew, is the mis­dir­ec­tion exercise of pre­tend­ing that they too, are a victim of the fraud that they’ve been coordin­at­ing.”

Two images exemplify this theme. A meme of a round yellow face hugging a red heart was created during Covid-19 as an image to show that people cared. This was turned into an antisemitic meme by adding a large hooked nose and of holding a bag of money instead of holding the heart. Another meme was of the US gov­ern­ment giving a cheque for “one trillion five hundred billion dollars” to “Jews”. These images were posted many times. The cheque image was posted one time accom­pan­ied by the text: “The #Jews are a parasite race of murderers, gangsters, bankers, fraud­sters, extor­tion­ists, predators, perverts and liars. They OVERTLY have the ear of ALL federal author­it­ies. Let that sink in.”

Claims that Jews were making massive amounts of money were often expressed: “Now’s the time to start trying to get people to see what the jews are doing again. Harp on about how this money is coming from nowhere, that they are getting richer by lending us money from nowhere that we have to pay them back – again which they got from nowhere”, and “Yeah, and now they’re printing what must be trillions more free money globally, which we are going to have to pay back plus interest. Trillions of dollars of free money for the jews.” One posted a general claim: “How shit works. Jews get free money no matter what the situation is. That’s why there’s the age-old meme about jews not working. Don’t need to work when your species gets money for free. (No, jews with jobs don’t work.)”

Vaccines

There has been a vocal anti-vac­cin­a­tion campaign for years. It was not just the pos­sib­il­ity of sci­ent­ists devel­op­ing a vaccine against Covid-19 that concerned ‘anti-vaxxers’, some even saw the pandemic as created in order to enforce mass vac­cin­a­tions. Many posts directly connected Jews to this, with some using the Hebrew word ‘goyim’ (gentiles), or the antisemitic hashtag ‘Expose the Nose’.

Posts included that “If Israel develops a “vaccine” for WuFlu, there is a zero percent chance I will take it vol­un­tar­ily and nobody else should take it either. Never trust anything created in Israel”, “There must be immense pushback on this jewish plan by stealth to move us closer to regular forced vac­cin­a­tion of lord knows what”, “Take the vaccine, goyim #ExposeTh­eN­ose”, and “good goyim, take your gov­ern­ment approved “vaccine” so … you can be safe and secure from the “virus”.”

An image by car­toon­ist Ben Garrison showed a cari­ca­tured Jew over­look­ing a chart titled “The Plannedem­ic” with a 6‑step plan, with the last step being “Mandatory Vaccine Rollout”. Others saw it as more dic­tat­ori­al: “it’s some martial law and some medical militia coming to your door to force immune system des­troy­ing medical death into your arm.” One went further, into Christian eschat­o­logy: “Do NOT take the vaccine or the tracking chip, if this is an accurate pre­dic­tion it is the mark of the beast.”

Mocking the Holocaust

Given any oppor­tun­ity, anti­semites often gravitate towards mocking and/or denying the Holocaust, the murder of 6 million Jews under Nazi Germany. Some used the death toll from Covid-19 to engage in mocking the Holocaust. These included: “Never forget the 6 million killed in the holocough” and “Please remember the 6 gor­ril­lion Israeli’s that died from #Car­onavir­us” and “Never forget the 1,000,000 Israelis who Tra­gic­ally Died from the Coronavir­us invented by Nazi SS Soldiers in a Death Camp.”

Some made reference to the Aus­trali­an Federal Treasurer, who is Jewish, and the gov­ern­ment economic packages to keep Aus­trali­ans fin­an­cially above water. For example: “We have a Jewish Treasurer. Never forget the 6 gorillon stimulus packages”, “Aus­trali­an FERAL (((treasurer))) – (((frightene­d­berg))) announced 3^rd stimulus package that will help 6,000,000 Who would have thought that was possible?” and “6 million. The Jewish Aus­trali­an Treasurer mira­cu­lously uses his powers of gematria to ensure that precisely 6 million Aus­trali­ans get the Shekels. … Always with the 6 million. No more, no less.”

Some engaged in Holocaust denial, by using a main­stream media headline “Italian Mayor: We can’t cremate bodies fast enough to keep up with coronavir­us deaths” as evidence that the Holocaust did not occur, and posting that “Europeans may be about to find out how difficult it really is to cremate 6 million bodies.”

In further Holocaust denial and mockery, one wrote: “In years to come there will be covid-19 museums in every town dis­play­ing not actual proof, but shoes, hair, wedding rings and sad stories from millions of survivors. Students will be taught of the horrors so they never forget (or begin to question). Denying it will land you in gaol.” This was accom­pan­ied by a photo of the Auschwitz death camp with pho­toshopped images of the coronavir­us entering Auschwitz, and the text “It’s not the first time the entire world has been tricked.”

Jews receiving divine pun­ish­ment

Some people believed that Covid-19 was an act of divine pun­ish­ment of the Jews. One man, an extremist Christian, wrote that it “Seems a ton of the parasite class and many Jews are catching Diversity flu. Almost as though God is saying something.” Another was more forth­right, posting “God: “I must send pes­ti­lence to exterm­in­ate the jews”” and “God promised to wipe the jews out with pes­ti­lence.” The latter comment was accom­pan­ied by images of the coronavir­us.

 Glee at Jewish deaths

Given that many people blamed “the Jews” for Covid-19, it is no surprise that many would be glad to see Jews die from the virus. Others went further and called for the death of Jews. Some examples include: “I just hope the prideful bigoted hateful RACIST unclean Cainetic fake jew trash dies of the corona Bullshit” and “Out of 350 million [American deaths]? I hope they are all niggers or jews.”

Another posted: “As expected the #MSM is lording the #Hollywood #Jew faggot praising #celebrit­ies through­out the headlines with regards to the #coronavir­us. Fact is most everyday citizens hope these verminous sacks of affluent crap die agonizing deaths from COVID19.” One poster used poetry: “Imagine all the hebrews / Getting covid 19 / woohoo-hoo! /… I hope someday soon they will leave us / And the Whhhi-i-i-te world will live as one” and “They would crash the economy / To make another buck / Ain’t no time being wasted / Time to heat the oven up.”

Con­clu­sion

Racist and bigoted expres­sions, against anyone, are despic­able at any time. But as history shows, when there is economic uncer­tainty, social unrest, and political turmoil, extrem­ists tend to become much more active and militant. Add a pandemic to this mix, and fuel is added to the wood-pile.

The anti-Jewish hate expressed in the online posts above, by people in one country on one social media site, is only a tiny fraction of the antisemitic hate posted online globally. The con­spir­acy theories, the animosity, the death-wishes expressed, along with the total lack of logic and reason, shows that for some people their hatred knows no bounds.

If those views enter the main­stream or are turned into violent action, then no one is safe, and the society is under threat of going down a path that leads to much pain and darkness. It is incumbent upon political and civil leaders and citizens to actively and effect­ively expose and oppose all forms of racism and bigotry, espe­cially during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dis­claim­er: All quoted comments through­out the article are repro­duced as in the original, without any cor­rec­tion of spelling or grammar. 

Julie Nathan is the Research Director at the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry, the peak rep­res­ent­at­ive body of the Aus­trali­an Jewish community, and is the author of the annual ECAJ Report on Antisemitism in Australia.