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Facebook says page accusing “occult Jews” of “sacrificing Christian children” doesn’t violate its community standards


Facebook has refused to remove a page which propagates the most incendiary and unabashed blood libel, claiming that the content does not violate its community standards.

The page is called “Jewish ritual murder” and has as its secondary title “truthaboutjews”

Blood libel is the scurrilous accusation that Jews murder Christian children to bake matzo. It originated in Christian Europe and was historically used to incite violence against Jewish communities, frequently leading to large scale pogroms, individual murders, expulsions, rapes and torture. It is closely linked to similar accusation that Jews poisoned wells. Today there are many equivalents of blood libel, such as the accusation that Israel Jews engage in organ harvesting. As well as this, blood libel has taken a hold in the Muslim world, and similar accusations are made by both the far left and the far right.

Among the accusations on the page is that Andrei Kievski and various other Christian figures were “killed by occult Jews”. It also says that Jews are to be collectively held responsible for various biblical events.

They also reproduced a 1932 article from Der Stürmer, the Nazi tabloid newspaper produced by Julius Streicher, who became a central figure in the Nazi party. The article purports to be a history of “Jewish ritual murders”, and it includes accusations that children were “tortured to death” by Jews. The fact that Facebook found that a page that is quite literally sharing Nazi propaganda, which was instrumental in creating the atmosphere of rampant antisemitism that eventually led to the Holocaust, is deeply concerning.

One of the comments reads “shame on Jews”. The page has clearly been proactive in deleting many comments from its followers, and appears to run a policy of doing so, as having the page deleted for bigoted comments is “what they want to accomplish”.

The page, of course, also attacked Israel, writing that their page is under threat as attacking antisemitic pages “is source of great money as so called jewish state finance whole machinery of internet trolls recruited among jewish students”. This is perhaps the clearest demonstration yet of how traditional antisemitism blends seamlessly into antisemitism disguised as criticism of Israel. The fact that Jewish students are singled out is particularly worrying, as Jewish students at various Universities, including at SOAS in London, have been accused of being agents of the Israeli state, a vicious accusation which is used to bait and harass Jewish students under the guise of attacking what is perceived to be an Israeli policy. 

There are quite literally of dozens of posts containing blood libel, none of which Facebook upon inspection thought violated its community standards. This is not the first time Facebook has failed to enforce its own rules; last year it decided that calling to “gas this shrivelled up Jewish piece of shit” did not violate its rules. Facebook must start enforcing its rules to prevent Nazi propaganda and incitement to violence from being allowed to flourish on its platform.

In the meantime, please take the time to report the page, which can be found here.