Osservatorio antisemitismo | Page 10

In addition to posting and sharing explicitly anti-Semitic comments and images, the groups and individuals upload conspiracy theory and negationist documentaries, Nazi videos, anti-Semitic cartoons and video games, and anti-Semitic propaganda such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The anti-Semitic propaganda documents posted on the pages of groups and individuals draw on three veins from the anti-Semitism archive: classic anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial/trivialization (negationism), new anti-Semitism (linked to Israel and Zionism). Most of the documentation published in the period March-September 2015 on the selected Facebook pages uses arguments drawing on classic anti-Semitism (blood libel, myth of specific Jewish cruelty, racism, conspiracy theory, etc.) and particularly on the conspiracy theories inspired by the bogus Protocols of the Elders of Zion (often linked or published online). The iconographic sources refer to the classic physiognomy (Jews with hooked noses, big teeth, claw-like hands, etc.), i.e. stereotypes making monsters of Jews that have their roots deep in anti-Semitic ideology (from the early 19th century to the 1930s) and indeed Nazi-Fascist cartoons (adapted and contextualized) are often republished. The posted photos show Jews with grotesque features or presented in line with a logic of propaganda aiming to emphasize and ridicule physical defects. Jews are demonized also via the classic mechanisms of teratomorphism and zoomorphism urging readers to “crush this kind of sewer rat”. Often Jews/Zionists are termed “big noses” who live in “Nosonia”. Here are a number of words and phrases excerpted from the page of the antiZionist Facebook group “Vittorio Arrigoni” : 10