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Could social media really have stopped the Holocaust? Scholars say Elon Musk’s ‘fantasy scenario’ is far-fetched.
KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) — Gavriel Rosenfeld, president of the Center for Jewish History in New York City, specializes in Nazi Germany and counterfactual history — or the study of what might have happened, but didn’t.
So when Elon Musk claimed this week that the Holocaust could have been mitigated if only X, his social media platform, had existed at the time, Rosenfeld took notice.
He said Musk’s comments stood out as a textbook example of a “fantasy scenario in which history turns out better thanks to an alteration of some key variable — in this case, transporting present-day technology into the past.” Such arguments are called “Connecticut Yankee counterfactuals,” he said, in homage to the 1889 Mark Twain novel in which a contemporary man is transported to England during the reign of King Arthur.
“This fantasy is a self-serving one,” Rosenfeld told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It enables [Musk] to switch the conversation away from his allowing right-wing antisemites to post freely on X — which have increasingly discredited his platform — by claiming it would have served a social good if — and it’s a big if — it had existed 80 years ago.”
Rabbi Menachem Margolin of the European Jewish Association, Elon Musk and right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro stand on stage at an EJA conference in Krakow, Poland, Jan. 22, 2024. (Courtesy EJA)
Rosenfeld was one of several Holocaust scholars to challenge Musk’s comments, which he said on Monday during a conversation with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro at a conference in Krakow hosted by the European Jewish Association.
Musk’s trip to Poland came as he has become embroiled in a series of antisemitism-related controversies. In November, Musk came under fire for endorsing an X post that said Jewish communities push “hatred against whites.” (The tech mogul replied, “You have said the actual truth.”) He has also threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group, over its objections to hate speech on X. The website has seen antisemitic content spike since Musk took charge.
In his comments, Musk said X could have deterred the Nazis by making their mass murder “impossible to hide” and allowing “freedom of speech” against them.
His remarks were broadly praised during the event, which gathered European politicians and right-leaning Jewish leaders to discuss the global threat of antisemitism after Oct. 7. Among the billionaire’s most vigorous supporters was EJA Chairman Menachem Margolin — an influential European rabbi affiliated with the Chabad Hasidic movement — who asserted that X “could have saved millions of lives” during the Holocaust.
But Rosenfeld and other scholars say Musk’s imagined version of history demonstrates a misunderstanding of the genocide.
“The problem with Jews was not that they didn’t have the information, the problem was they didn’t have options,” said Doris Bergen, a Holocaust historian at the University of Toronto and scholar-in-residence at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Where were German Jews supposed to go? Who was providing refuge for elderly people, people with disabilities, and others deemed not valuable as workers?”
Bergen noted that half of Germany’s Jews — those who had the contacts and resources needed to escape the Nazi regime — actually did leave the country between 1933 and 1939. Those included Anne Frank’s family, who went to the Netherlands. But the Nazis caught up with them after occupying that country in 1940, as they did with the Jews in Poland, Hungary, France, the Soviet Union and the other nations they invaded.
“What would social media have done for these people, who in many cases were killed at the same time as the Germans invaded?” asked Bergen.
Musk argued on Monday that Nazi Germany represented the dangers of regulating speech, saying, “One of the first things the Nazis did when they came in is they shut down all the press and any means of conveying information.”
That is another inaccuracy, said Bergen, who suggested that Musk “take an intro course on the Holocaust.”
“Germany had a lot of newspapers that kept going all the way through the Nazi period,” she said. “Definitely there was pressure to conform to the ‘party line,’ but it was not so simple as controlling all the media.”
International media, including JTA, also covered what was happening in Germany and elsewhere in Europe under the Nazi regime but did not ignite adequate international concern to stop the genocide.
Christopher Browning, a Holocaust scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of “Ordinary Men,” about a Nazi death squad, also said information was available — but its availability was simply not enough to prevent the atrocities.
“Much about the Holocaust traces not to lack of information but unwillingness to process into knowledge,” said Browning. “Wishful thinking, denial and inability to imagine the unprecedented all played a role among victims, perpetrators, and bystanders.”
Historians have also pointed out that the Nazis were masters of using existing media to press their case against the Jews, suggesting that in this alternate universe, the Nazis might have weaponized social media as well — as countries today have been accused of doing in their internal and external conflicts.
David Myers, a professor of Jewish history at the University of California, Los Angeles, called Musk’s comments “ludicrous” and “offensive,” questioning why the owner of X overlooked his company’s power to swiftly disseminate hate and violence across the world. In fact, Myers said, social media might have made it easier for Nazis to find their local allies across Europe.
“Every day people gather online with like-minded souls to express their shared hatred for groups including Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Asians, and LGBTQ people, among others,” he said. “Moreover, these hate-mongers can receive detailed guidance online on how to carry out a massacre.”
Musk addressed the EJA conference after privately touring Auschwitz-Birkenau, a trip lauded by attendants of the conference. Margolin told JTA he believes that Musk has a better understanding of antisemitism and Jewish trauma after that visit.
A guide gives a tour of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, Jan. 23, 2024. (Shira Li Bartov)
However, an Auschwitz tour guide and Holocaust educator was skeptical of Musk’s claim that X could have deterred the Nazis. Social media only reflects the complexity of human nature at the heart of a genocide, which is what must be reckoned with, she told JTA.
“Social media works both ways,” said Agnieszka, who declined to share her last name. “It can generate really good generosity among people, make them really empathetic and loving toward others. But on the other hand, the same social media is able to gather people who are full of hatred.”
For Rosenfeld, the scholar of alternate histories, Musk’s counterfactual opened the doors to other scenarios that could have increased, not decreased, the dangers faced by European Jews.
“Given how popular opinion of the current war [in Gaza] has been decisively shaped by video footage shot on personal devices, it’s likely that the Allied war against Nazi Germany would have been more difficult to prosecute had there been daily images of German civilians being incinerated in Allied bombing raids,” he said, noting that some conservatives made this point in the 1970s about media coverage of the Vietnam War.
But all of the possibilities of the past, Rosenfeld said, are secondary to the role that Musk’s counterfactual thinking plays in the current day.
“From my perspective,” Rosenfeld said, “the key function of Musk’s counterfactual assertion is to rehabilitate his social media platform by investing it with hypothetical virtues — all the while deflecting attention away from its real world liabilities.”
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The post Could social media really have stopped the Holocaust? Scholars say Elon Musk’s ‘fantasy scenario’ is far-fetched. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Occidental College Settles Antisemitism Complaint
A general view of the US Department of Education in Washington, DC, on Dec. 1, 2020. Photo: Graeme Sloan via Reuters Connect
Occidental College in Los Angeles has agreed to “sweeping reforms” of its handling of antisemitism to settle a civil rights complaint brought by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
According to the ADL, which issued an announcement of the agreement on Tuesday, the college will refer to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism during its investigations of antisemitic conduct and add a section on antisemitism to its educational programming on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prevents education institutions receiving federal funds from practicing or allowing the practice of discrimination based on race, religion, and ethnic origin.
The ADL and the Brandeis Center jointly filed their complaint against Occidental College, a measure which allows for negotiating a resolution to the matter before the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) renders a ruling. The civil rights organizations charged in their claim that the college failed to correct a “pervasive and hostile environment” in which Jewish students were subject to “severe antisemitic bullying, intimidation, and physical threats” amid an explosion of anti-Jewish hatred precipitated by Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
“This agreement demonstrates Occidental College’s commitment to counter all forms of contemporary antisemitism and underscores their recognition that effectively combating antisemitism requires understanding the relationship between Jewish identity, Israel, and Zionism,” Brandeis Center president Alyza Lewin said in a statement. “We are gratified by the school’s engagement in meaningful discussions at the highest levels of the administration, and we are heartened that Occidental has committed to creating a safer environment for Jewish students. When implemented, this agreement will help ensure that Jewish students are able to learn and thrive in an environment free from antisemitic hate, discrimination, and harassment.”
ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt added, “This outcome demonstrates how the Title VI OCR process can work to effectively protect Jewish students. We are deeply grateful for the US Department of Education’s dedication and assistance in resolving this case. It is our hope that this resolution will lead to other college administrators implementing these or similar measures proactively to address antisemitism on campus.”
Occidental College’s settlement treads a path taken by other institutions of higher education against which legal action was taken to address a surge of campus antisemitism over the past year, amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
In June, Columbia University settled a civil lawsuit in which it was accused by a student of neglecting its obligation to foster a safe learning environment amid riotous pro-Hamas protests that were held at the school throughout the final weeks of the academic year.
The resolution of the case, first reported by Reuters, called for Columbia to hire a “Safe Passage Liaison” who will monitor protests and “walking escorts” who will accompany students whose safety is threatened around the campus. Other details of the settlement included “accommodations” for students whose academic lives are disrupted by protests and new security policies for controlling access to school property.
In July, New York University agreed to pay an undisclosed sum of money to settle a lawsuit brought by three students who sued the school for responding, allegedly, to antisemitic discrimination “with deliberate indifference.”
By resolving the case, NYU avoided a lengthy trial which would have revealed precisely who and which office received but failed to address numerous reports that — according to the court documents filed in November — NYU students and faculty “repeatedly abuse, malign, vilify, and threaten Jewish students with impunity” and that “death to k—es” and “gas the Jews” were chanted by pro-Hamas supporters at the school.
NYU did not merely pay money to quell the complaints of its accusers, however. Over a month after the settlement was reached it updated its Non-Discrimination and Harassment Policy (NDAH), including in it language which identified “Zionist” as a racial dog whistle that sometimes conceals the antisemitic intent of speech and other conduct that denigrates and excludes Jews. As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the policy acknowledges the “coded” subtleties of antisemitic speech and its use in discriminatory conduct that targets Jewish students and faculty.
NYU went further, recognizing that Zionism is central to the identities of the world’s 15.7 million Jews, an overwhelming majority of whom believe the Jewish people were destined to return to their ancient homeland in the land of Israel after centuries of exile. “For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity. Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists,” the university said.
Anti-Israel activity on college campuses has reached crisis levels in the year that followed Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, according to a report published by the ADL in September which revealed a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena. Titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024,” the document painted a bleak picture of an American higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.
“The antisemitic, anti-Zionist vitriol we’ve witnessed on campus is unlike anything we’ve seen in the past,” Greenblatt said in a statement accompanying the unveiling of the organization’s research. “Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the anti-Israel movement’s relentless harassment, vandalism, intimidation, and violent physical assaults go way beyond the peaceful voicing of a political opinion. Administrators and faculty need to do much better this year to ensure a safe and truly inclusive environment for all students, regardless of religion, nationality, or political views, and they need to start now.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Occidental College Settles Antisemitism Complaint first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Rashida Tlaib Uses Thanksgiving Message to Express Solidarity With ‘Palestine,’ Other ‘Indigenous People’
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) addresses attendees as she takes part in a protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza outside the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, US, Oct. 18, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) used the holiday of Thanksgiving to “mourn” the “indigenous people” of “Palestine” and elsewhere “fighting for freedom on their own land,” portraying one of America’s most storied celebrations in a negative light.
“This Thanksgiving we mourn the Indigenous people killed by European settlers and the United States in order to steal their land,” Tlaib reposted on Instagram. “From here to Palestine, we stand in solidarity with all Indigenous people as they fight for freedom on their own land.”
Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman elected to the US Congress, has long been an outspoken critic of Israel. The congresswoman was slow to issue a public statement acknowledging the Palestinian terror group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, and since the onslaught, she has repeatedly accused Israel of committing “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “apartheid.” She has also alleged that American support for Israel stems from “anti-Palestinian racism.”
US Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA), another staunch critic of Israel and progressive lawmaker, also used Thanksgiving as an opportunity to take shots at America, arguing that the beloved holiday represents “stolen land and broken treaties” for Native Americans.
Lee has been on the receiving end of immense criticism over her anti-Israel rhetoric in the year following the Oct. 7 atrocities. In the weeks following the slaughter, Lee co-sponsored a resolution calling for a “ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas. She has similarly accused the Jewish state of committing “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza. In a statement commemorating the anniversary of Oct. 7, Lee only wrote that she mourned “those killed one year ago and those massacred in the year since,” seemingly drawing an equivalence between Hamas’s terrorism and Israel’s defensive military operations.
“Thanksgiving is a time of gratitude and togetherness for many, but it’s also a reminder of stolen land and broken treaties for others. Today, let’s honor Native communities by committing to the fight for sovereignty, justice, and the promises this country has failed to keep,” Lee wrote.
In contrast, some other members of Congress called attention to the American hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza in their Thanksgiving statements.
“As we gather with family today, we must not forget the families who are missing their loved ones who were taken hostage by Hamas 418 days ago — including New York’s own Omer Neutra,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said. “Let us pray that by this time next year, they will be reunited safely with their families.”
“As you spend Thanksgiving with your family and friends, don’t forget the 100+ families whose loved ones are being held hostage by Iran-backed Hamas for the second holiday season in a row. It’’ been 419 days. Enough! Bring them home NOW!” US Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said in a statement, referring to the 101 hostages still in captivity in Gaza.
Of the remaining hostages, seven are Americans.
The post Rashida Tlaib Uses Thanksgiving Message to Express Solidarity With ‘Palestine,’ Other ‘Indigenous People’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Antisemitism in Berlin Surges to Record Levels This Year, New Data Show
Pro-Hamas demonstrators marching in Munich, Germany. Photo: Reuters/Alexander Pohl
The number of antisemitic incidents in Berlin in just the first six months of this year surpassed the total for all of 2023 and reached the highest annual count on record, according to a new German report.
Germany’s Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS) on Thursday released data documenting 1,383 incidents of antisemitism in the German capital from January to June, averaging nearly eight a day.
The figure compiled by RIAS, a federally-funded body, was a significant increase from the 1,270 antisemitic outrages tallied in 2023 and the highest count for a single year since RIAS began monitoring antisemitic incidents in 2015.
Of the 1,383 incidents documented in the first half of this year in Berlin, two were cases of “extreme violence,” another 23 were attacks (six of which were against children), and 37 were targeted acts of property damage, including 21 acts involving memorials.
In the first extremely violent incident, a Jewish student in Mitte was punched several times in the face on the street and then kicked in the face after he fell to the ground in February 2024. The victim, a member of student groups working to combat antisemitism, had been doxed online as a “right-wing Zionist,” according to The Jerusalem Post.
The second incident also occurred in Mitte, this time in May, when a visibly Jewish Ukrainian was physically attacked by an unknown assailant while on the way to synagogue. The attacker yelled “Free Palestine” while assaulting the victim, and no one reportedly intervened.
RIAS also documented 28 threats, such as direct messages on social media, and 1,240 cases of abusive behavior.
“The content of antisemitism also continued to be more violent and uninhibited. Seventy-one incidents contained threats of annihilation, including graffiti that openly called for the killing of Jews,” the report noted.
In the first half of 2024, 74 antisemitic incidents were documented in educational institutions in Berlin, including 27 incidents in schools. “The nature of the incidents is alarming: Jewish or Israeli children were beaten, spat on, threatened, and treated with hostility by their classmates,” according to RIAS. “Antisemitic incidents occurred in schools in 9 of 12 Berlin districts.”
A striking 71.6 percent of all antisemitic incidents during the first half of 2024 in the German capital were related to Israel.
RIAS previously reported a major spike in antisemitic incidents across Germany since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
There have been 230 antisemitic outrages per month since Oct. 7, 2023, compared to around 50 such incidents per month before the onslaught.
“These data indicate a lasting change in the dynamics of incidents: the number of antisemitic incidents in Berlin remained at a significantly higher level in the first half of the year than in the months and years before, starting with the sharp increase following Oct. 7,” RIAS summarized.
However, many antisemitic incidents had nothing to do with Israel or its ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza.
“It can be observed that in this context the boundaries of what can be said have shifted overall and some antisemitic statements seem to be acceptable even to [normative] society,” RIAS wrote. “They range from the demonization and delegitimization of Israel, to antisemitic conspiracy myths, trivialization of the Holocaust and reversals of perpetrator and victim, to open antisemitic insults.”
The antisemitism monitoring group concluded that rates of antisemitism show no sign of letting up in Berlin: “A downward trend is not foreseeable at the time of publication of the report.”
Europe has experienced an explosion of antisemitic incidents in the wake of the Hamas atrocities of last Oct. 7. In many countries, anti-Jewish hate crimes have spiked to record levels.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), police registered 5,154 antisemitic incidents in Germany last year, a 95 percent increase compared to the previous year.
However, experts believe that the true number of incidents is much higher but not recorded because of reluctance on the part of the victims.
“Only 20 percent of the antisemitic crimes are reported, so the real number should be five times what we have,” Felix Klein, the German federal government’s chief official dealing with antisemitism, told The Algemeiner in an interview last year.
The post Antisemitism in Berlin Surges to Record Levels This Year, New Data Show first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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