SPECIAL REPORT: Untangling the anti-Semitic web of hate

The internet is paradise for anti-Semites. They have taken their message of hate and made it glossy, watchable, and accessible to the YouTube generation.

“White Pride” extremist hate sites once had very little web traffic. Now they are in the top one percent of internet world traffic. These popular sites are based in the United States but anyone with the internet can access them.

In the week the latest anti-Semitic figures were released, LISA SANDERS tracks down the most prolific and online Jew-haters in the world today.

JewWatch DotCom

Google the word “Jew” and you’re in for a shock. High up on the page listings, a link brings you to JewWatch.com, a vast collection of clickable articles which purports to be “the Internet’s Largest Scholarly Collection of Articles on Zionist History”. If you click through, you’ll encounter Holocaust denial, conspiracy theories, “Jewish supremacists” and myriad references to banking and Hollywood.

A naïve reader could be left in no doubt whatsoever that the world is in grave danger from the threat posed by World Jewry. Search YouTube for “Holocaust” and you’ll be offered the sub-category “Holocaust hoax.” Google the recent terror attacks in Paris and, cheek-by-jowl with mainstream news stories is Mossad’s Fingerprints on Paris Attacks by something called Real Jew News.

Not just rhetoric

Tragically, hate rhetoric on the internet can lead to real-life violence. One year ago, Glenn Miller Jr. went on a rampage in Kansas, where he shot dead a man and his grandson outside a Jewish community centre, then a woman outside a Jewish retirement home. At his trial, Miller spoke at length about his anti-Semitic, white nationalist beliefs, which he claimed to have shared online. He shouted “Heil Hitler” as he was sentenced to death for the killings.

Should we curb the internet?

A fierce debate is under way over whether internet companies should curb hate speech. Jewish security chiefs have welcomed Google boss Eric Schmidt’s recent admission that the search engine giant is considering a “hate-speech spell-checker” but Europe’s legislators are still unsure what stance to take. On 17 December, representatives from the EU, Israel and the Fundamental Rights Agency met in Brussels for the ninth EU-Israel Seminar on Combating Racism, Xenophobia and Anti-Semitism. Top of the agenda was anti-Semitism on the Internet, which the delegates called “a very worrying phenomenon”.

Who are these online hate-mongers?

Mike Delaney

Ironwood, Michigan, looks idyllic, a chocolate-box-pretty small town in America’s Midwest. It’s from here that Mike Delaney runs the ProThink and Zion Crime Factory sites and video channels, together with numerous YouTube channels, including one called Jews Did 9/11. His video Missing Links invents a mythical group, the Sayanim, described in the video as a network of Jews who carry out nefarious deeds to serve Israel and the Jews.

Delaney calls his videos “the most comprehensive video education you’ll ever find”. Viewers can download flyers to promote Delaney’s brand of anti-Semitism including a flyer for a Holocaust denial site and a flyer alleging that kosher food is a “scam” aimed at stealing money from non-Jews. But his main focus is to promote his conspiracy theory about the Twin Towers. His videos get thousands of clicks a day. “The wars are still from the excuse of 9/11. Without that foundational thing being discovered for what it really was –an Israeli operation – we are going to continue to be in the mess that we are in till we face it.”

Brother Nathaniel

Brother Nathanael Nathanael Kapner, dressed in the robes of an Orthodox Christian monk, looks like a harmless eccentric wandering Times Square in New York City. Yet he runs one of the most popular anti-Jewish video websites in the world, called Real Jew News.

He runs his anti-Semitism business from a tiny hamlet high in the Rocky Mountains above Denver, Colorado. Viewers and subscribers are urged to “Donate Now!” via Paypal, credit card or in Bitcoin. And as a US non-profit organisation, Nathanael even enjoys tax-deductible status.

“If you walk in front of a synagogue, put a sign of a cross on you because there is demonic influence in there,” he asserts, when he consented to be interviewed. Asked to explain his antipathy to Jews, he said: “They have abundant, tremendous wealth. The economy is going to pieces here in America but Jews are still driving Cadillacs and living in their gated communities. “They have power. Tremendous, vast political power. They run the media. So if you take those three realms combined, then you have control over the political system.”