WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The hatred and anti-Semitism that apparently propelled a man to open fire inside a Pittsburgh synagogue Sunday – killing 11 and injuring six others – has been seeping into the mainstream from extremist sites on the Web for years, according to a man who works daily to weed it out.
Eliyahou Roth founded They Can’t in Israel in 2013 to mobilize a network of supporters to flag hateful, anti-Semitic content on sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
To date, Roth says the group has gotten more than 75,000 pieces of extremist content taken down in the past four years.
“I know that it comes as a surprise for you, what happened [in Pittsburgh], but I saw children going into school with armed soldiers in Brussels two months ago,” Roth said. “All of this has to be talked about in media because the problem is not new, and it’s not getting better.”
Before he opened fire in the Tree of Life Congregation Synagogue on Sunday, federal investigators say 46-year-old Robert Bowers had posted anti-Semitic rants on the social media site Gab – a fringe website which has since lost its hosting in the wake of the shooting.
READ MORE | What is Gab, the fringe social network used by Pittsburgh shooting suspect? | Pittsburgh synagogue shooting: What we know, questions that remain
In a post to Gab just prior to entering the synagogue, authorities say, Bowers wrote, “I can’t sit by an [sic] watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics. I’m going in.”
Bowers’ online profile was reportedly filled with anti-Semitic comments and conspiracy theories. Gab has since issued a statement saying it was “saddened and disgusted” by the attack.
But Gab isn’t the only place such content exists, now. Roth says all of the media social media companies – Facebook, Youtube and Twitter – are rife with posts promoting hate.
“For years we saw that anti-Semitism slowly, slowly went out from persons from the Dark Web and went out to the biggest social media – on Facebook, on Twitter,” Roth said. “No monitoring is made by themselves, so people are feeling free to express what they want to express, and there is no sanction for propaganda. It’s a free place for any mind, and the most extreme minds are using it.”
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Roth’s group, They Can’t, monitors large-scale trends and works to get anti-Semitic content removed from the Web. He said the organization has recently been combating a new strain of content originating in Pakistan.
“We discovered a new trend in Pakistan: people praising Hitler for killing Jews,” Roth said. “So this last month we removed about 6,000 posts praising Hitler for what he did to the Jews and asking him to come back to the world and do more.”
Although people around the world speak English, Roth said he believes 85-90 percent of the English-language anti-Semitism on the Internet originates from the U.S.
“What I mean is, America, from the beginning – from what we saw on YouTube years ago – was at the very center of the far-right propaganda on social media,” he said.
Roth said Facebook had been the biggest offender years ago, but that the social network has since revamped its efforts to remove anti-Semitic content on its site. Other social media outlets remain a larger challenge.
“If I can give you an example of the same kind of content, but it’s more connected to terrorism incitement... Facebook will remove 100 percent of the content we report, YouTube will remove 50 percent and Twitter will remove 1 percent,” Roth said. “Classic anti-Semitism, I believe Facebook will remove 70 percent, YouTube 30 percent and Twitter 0 percent.”
What can you do if you see hateful, anti-Semitic or otherwise extremist content on the Web? Click the “report” button, Roth says. If that doesn’t work, send the URL to They Can’t.
“What I ask the people is, if you see hate in the street and if you see hate on the Internet, don’t turn a [blind] eye to it,” Roth said.
