At first glance, the X account @StopZionistHate seems like a pro-Palestinian leftist organization. It describes itself as a “Leading non-partisan American based organization fighting zionism and zionist hate.” Its logo is corporate-looking, and it has the $1,000-a-month “gold check” that represents supposedly reputable businesses and nonprofit groups. Some tweets seem anodyne — the account provides fact-checking, for example, via “our very own news wire.”
But the vast majority of its content is anything but vanilla. Stop Zionist Hate is based on and in reaction to an account called Stop Antisemitism; both achieve their high engagement and awareness rates by sharing upsetting and horrifying examples of hate — in Stop Zionist Hate’s case, from “Zionists” (usually far-right supporters of Israel) directed at pro-Palestinian activists, Muslims and others. Similar to Stop Antisemitism, it also doxxes and engages in mass harassment campaigns to get these people fired. All of this helps feed the outrage of its audience while positioning Stop Zionist Hate as a leader in the battle for Palestinian rights.
After Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, white nationalists pivoted to pro-Palestinian content.
Scratch the surface, though, and something far darker is exposed: a white nationalist marketing machine. Accounts like Stop Zionist Hate are part of an even larger white nationalist, neo-Nazi and far-right project: exploiting the war in Gaza as disinformation explodes and a friendly billionaire/social media site owner gives them free rein.
To understand how Stop Zionist Hate fits into this, we need to examine how that project came to be. After Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, white nationalists pivoted to pro-Palestinian content. Accounts like those of Jackson Hinkle (with a long track record of transphobia) and Censored Men (misogyny) have followed this tactic to incredible success, garnering hundreds of thousands or even millions of new followers. Together, these accounts are able to achieve billions of impressions of their content.
While these accounts are now focused on Israel, this growth in their audiences means that they will now be able to spread their more toxic views as time passes. Already, Hinkle has begun spreading the idea that “Zionists” are releasing “sexualized video games for children,” a classic antisemitic trope about Jews’ exploiting children.
It is this logic that led directly to the creation of Stop Zionist Hate. Unlike the white nationalists above, it did not have a track record to sully its image. And since Twitter no longer vets any of its blue and gold checks, it was able to instantly appear credible with its gold check.
What we are seeing, then, is a full-blown campaign by white nationalists to use the war in Gaza as cover for more and more explicit antisemitism.
But for those paying attention, it immediately raised alarm bells. For one thing, Stop Zionist Hate drew early support from an unlikely source for an ostensibly progressive account: 4chan and its antisemitic, racist, Islamophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic board /pol/ (short for “politically incorrect”). Furthermore, accounts like these do not grow so quickly without some help. On Nov. 7, it had only a few hundred followers. On Nov. 9, only 10 minutes after Stop Zionist Hate spit out a tweet, Censored Men shared it and told its 800,000 followers, “Everyone follow @StopZionistHate to keep updated on Zionist hate crimes.” A day later, the account had 16,000 followers.
When it was created, Stop Zionist Hate first followed many of the white nationalist accounts pretending to be pro-Palestinian. (Those behind the account have since attempted to sanitize their list of followed accounts.) It then complained about the supposed lack of attention to hate crimes against white people, a common refrain of neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Then it joined a Twitter Spaces (live chat) with neo-Nazis, and the person representing the account said they were fighting the “Zionist control over our institutions.”
A few days ago, the mask went from slipping to completely off: Stop Zionist Hate began spreading overt antisemitic content, including invoking the antisemitic trope that Jews killed Jesus.
Despite this, less than two months after its launch, Stop Zionist Hate has 121,000 followers. As it gains more followers, it will doubtless continue to double down on spreading overt antisemitism.
It does not stop there: Whoever is running Stop Zionist Hate is creating a network of accounts that spread different messages in a closely connected ecosystem, allowing it to maintain plausible deniability in its intentions while shepherding its audience from its anti-Zionist content to overt antisemitism.
Among a few such accounts, an account called Defund Israel Now is the most overtly antisemitic. It has a similarly corporate look, as well as the $1,000-a-month gold check, but a typical tweet claims Jews “destroyed Christianity through LGBT propaganda & pornography,… stole tax dollars to bomb muslim countries...[and] censored white voices.”
What we are seeing, then, is a full-blown campaign by white nationalists to use the war in Gaza as cover for more and more explicit antisemitism. This has been made infinitely easier by Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, which destroyed any semblance of content moderation or user verification on the site.
And that is only the tip of the iceberg. Stop Zionist Hate’s fans on 4chan already see the implications of what this means. In one popular post about the account, a user says, “Someone should start ‘Stop BLM Hate.’” In response, another says: “This is another good idea. We should take it a step further and do them all, Indians, latinx, Muslims, etc. Fight fire with fire.”
Since white nationalists are not focused only on Jews, accounts like Stop Zionist Hate are not in any sense about helping Palestinians. The goal is, in marketing parlance, to segment their audiences. By focusing only on Israel and spreading only antisemitism, they can achieve one objective. But the technique, if unchecked, will be used against others.
This is the new age that Musk has ushered in with his purchase of Twitter. There is now a social media website and app with over 200 million active users that allows overt bigotry to spread like wildfire and lets disinformation accounts pose as legitimate organizations. Which means that those selling hate have found their best marketing channel. And they are only getting started.