Participant Biographies

Panelists

Dr. Matthias J. Becker is the founder and lead of the international research project Decoding Antisemitism at the Technische Universität Berlin. The project comprehensively and deeply analyzes online antisemitism using an interdisciplinary framework that combines the humanities, social sciences, and AI research. The research team qualitatively analyzed a dataset of over 130,000 comments from German, British, and French social media contexts and used this data as training material for AI models. Becker’s presentation will introduce the project and its research design and will discuss the latest findings from his case studies on October 7.

According to Becker: “October 7 marked a pivotal moment in which antisemitism, both online and offline, escalated significantly to levels not seen in decades. Previously, periods of escalation in the Middle East typically led to an increase in antisemitic stereotypes and demonizing analogies. What changed on October 7, however, was not just an unprecedented spike in these terms but a trend toward something the research team had not seen in previous case studies. This represents a turning point that has fundamentally changed the online reproduction of antisemitic ideas. The Decoding Antisemitism project examines antisemitic expression at all levels, analyzing not only the sheer quantity of Jew-hatred but also identifying the stereotypes and the communicative strategies used to convey them. This approach is particularly necessary in light of recent events, as coded language is a phenomenon present in mainstream online discourse as well as in fringe communities. Fully understanding this range and using this knowledge to train GenAI is the stated goal of the DA research project.”

Günther Jikeli holds the Erna B. Rosenfeld Professorship at the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism in the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. He is an associate professor of Germanic Studies and Jewish Studies and heads the Social Media & Hate research lab. The lab focuses on examining and quantifying antisemitism in social media. Jikeli has published widely on antisemitism on social media in France and Germany, perceptions of the Holocaust, and the return of religious antisemitism, including Muslim antisemitism. His focus shifted after October 7, with “Holocaust Distortions on Social Media after 10/7: The Antisemitic Mobilization” (pre-published in H-Commons) and “The Universal and The Particular: 10/7 and Its Aftermath Challenges the Very Concept of Humanity” (in Antisemitism Studies).

In his presentation, Jikeli will discuss how, since October 7, “antisemitism on social media has escalated to unprecedented levels, moving from the mere circulation of antisemitic tropes to active antisemitic mobilization. The accusation of genocide now functions as the new blood libel used to justify terror against Jews.”

Moderator and Host

Our panel’s moderator is Dr. Gabriel Noah Brahm (aka Gabi Abramovich). Brahm is Director of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute’s Israel Initiative, Professor of English and World Literature at Northern Michigan University, and a Visiting Scholar with the School of Political Science, Government, and International Relations at Tel Aviv University. A frequent contributor to such leading journals of thought and opinion as the American Mind, Fathom, Perspectives on Political Science, Society, and Telos, he is co-editor, with Cary Nelson, of The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel (2014). He received his B.A. from UCLA and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz. As a dual American-Israeli citizen, he has double, not dual loyalties. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @Brahmski.