The earliest I can remember hearing a penny joke was middle school. I learned about the big-nose stereotype in 8th grade English class. I remember my peers telling me not to worry, my nose isn’t that big. When I heard Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene blamed wildfires on a Jewish space laser, I was not surprised.
Ridiculous claims like these circulated the internet I grew up on and no one said anything against them. Greene’s claim is, of course, being disputed and ridiculed for good reason. That doesn’t change the fact that internet memes like Jewish space lasers or the tradwife reach audiences that don’t understand their roots in antisemitism.
Arguments have been raised in the past decade that far-right movements have been weaponizing memes to radicalize and recruit unknowing teens. The whole point of their seemingly harmless jokes is that they aren’t overtly bigoted, so they fly under the radar, and are shared and viewed exponentially across the internet. The idea is to normalize the traditional nationalist concepts because there’s nothing inherently bad about a blonde haired, blue-eyed woman. There was nothing inherently bad about Pepe the Frog until alt-right trolls hijacked the image and used it to flag others.
Because these memes are meant to be inconspicuous and most importantly, funny and relatable, internet users let their guard down after seeing the image long enough. At that point, it becomes easier and easier to introduce more extremist memes and jokes under the guise of trolling.
In my experience, when someone points out the antisemitic origins of popular memes, people get defensive. It’s just a joke. It’s not serious. It isn’t hurting anyone. How does it have anything to do with that? For many, the idea that a Nazi isn’t always decked out in gestapo gear is apparently surprising.
To me, what’s more worrying about these memes is the indifference to them rather than their existence. People don’t want to deal with them because it’s hard to. It’s hard to make the connection between a funny meme and what happened in Charlottesville. People want to laugh, especially when life is hard already.
I’ll never forget the time my friends confronted someone about a “coastal elite” joke they made. It was the first time antisemitism was treated as a real problem in my eyes. Prior to that I saw a high school friend use Snapchat to enlarge his nose and caption it “Jooz.” When I told him it hurt to see that, he said he wouldn’t do it again. A week later, he posted another one. I remember waiting after school for my parents to pick me up and a boy announcing he would finish what Hitler started. I remember a girl making Nazi jokes at my lunch table and insisting she didn’t understand why I was so upset about it. I remember a boy calling me “ashes” and no one reacting to it. It was so normalized I didn’t blink.
I’m not blaming anyone for sharing antisemitic memes. Most times, people truly don’t know. That’s the point of those memes. It’s difficult to trace them because of how many shares they get and how much they’re reposted. Someone could see it on Instagram and then post it on Twitter, never crediting the original creator. On top of that, they change constantly. Like any trend, antisemitic memes gain popularity and then die out, soon replaced by another. Few news organizations report on them, only research groups and the occasional article, most of which I’ve linked in this piece. It seems trivial to most, but this is where events like the Capitol riots start.
Conspiracy theories like QAnon are dangerous as this past month has shown us. To people not indoctrinated, the theories are outlandish and unbelievable, making them the popular targets of quote tweets and late-night talk shows. But we have to understand that people have been manipulated into following them. They start small with Illuminati jokes, lizard-people theories (yes, those Mark Zuckerberg memes are antisemitic, too) and faked moon landings, then get more serious like pizzagate and the Rothschilds. This isn’t to say Jewish people are above criticism, but using antisemitic canards to call them out does way more harm than good.
Since the 2016 election, antisemitism has risen. Regardless of the rules enforced on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, far-right extremists will continue to create gateways for unsuspecting people. Throughout history, Jewish people have always been scapegoats.
I understand the pandemic is worsening many people’s situations, but we are all in the same boat. We do not go to synagogue services because of lockdowns. We are worried about our jobs and families. We want to laugh and find reprieve, too, and “Jewish space lasers” is a pretty funny falsehood, even if it stems from dangerous ideology. We are laughing at Greene’s expense, not the instability she supports. You don’t have to shun or erase any of these memes, it’s possible to strip them of their harmful origins or put a new spin on them. But you should still try to know where they came from and what they are being used for, otherwise, you might be doing the far right’s job for them.
