- Anti-Semitic threats and tropes are surging after the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.
- AG Merrick Garland and the Florida judge who signed the warrant have been targeted.
The FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago has led to a spike in extremist language online, including anti-Semitic threats against Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Florida judge who signed the search warrant. They are both Jewish.
Threats against Judge Bruce Reinhart were so specific and credible that the south Florida synagogue where he worships canceled Friday services.
The threats have not, however, kept the judge from doing his job. At a hearing on Thursday, Reinhart opened the door to the eventual public release of the search warrant application in the case, a move that could shed more light on what documents the FBI believes former President Donald Trump retained when he left office.
"Since news of the raid broke out and Judge Reinhart's name has been out, both he and Garland have been subjected to an enormous amount of threats and vitriol online. And some of that has been anti-Semitic," Alex Friedfeld, who monitors online extremism for the Anti Defamation League's Center On Extremism, told Insider.
"People are attacking them simply for being Jewish, as well as trying to weave them into conspiracy theories regarding Jewish control: That this is part of a Jewish-led attack on the right."
Recent examples include Andrew Anglin saying on his neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer that the Mar-a-Lago raid is an example of America's "Jew government" taking revenge on Trump, the ADL noted in a blog post on Thursday.
The extremist rhetoric spiked after August 8 FBI raid on Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago, a search which resulted in the seizure of 11 sets of classified documents.
Supporters of Trump became so enraged by the intrusion that some called for violence against the FBI. One man was killed by police while attempting to breach the FBI field office in Cincinnati while armed with an assault rifle.
The reaction was so intense, that Trump on Monday called for calm.
"People are so angry at what is taking place. Whatever we can do to help — because the temperature has to be brought down in the country. If it isn't, terrible things are going to happen," he told Fox News Digital.
Hours later, though, the former president resumed his attacks on the judge and the Justice Department, complaining anew on Truth Social, a social-media platform created by one of Trump's companies, that there was "no way to justify the unannounced RAID of Mar-a-Lago."
Trump specifically named Reinhart in the post, calling on him to recuse himself but providing no rationale for why that should happen.
The extremist language — some of which included explicit threats of violence against Garland and Reinhart and members of their family — has surfaced on social media platforms favored by the far-right, including 4chan, Telegram, Gettr, Gab, Truth Social.
Users identified Reinhart's temple and posted his home address, phone numbers, and the names of his family members.
One online user on the imageboard 4chan wrote of Reinhart: "That is a k---. And a pedophile … He should be tried for treason and executed."
One 4Chan user wrote,"You could remove every mortal jew [sic] from existence today but jewry [sic] will pop right back up. You have to remove the demons, that is the fight of good vs evil."
Hate as old as time
The anti-Semitic tropes that have been playing out in far-right spaces have roots as far back as the Middle Ages and are reworked and popularized by each new generation of conspiracy theorists.
The Trump-supporting QAnon, for example, recycles dangerous conspiracies that first popped up in the 12th century.
One such recycled conspiracy alleges that Jews were responsible for kidnapping Christian children and drinking their blood — through adrenochrome, a fictional chemical compound "harvested from the fear of children" for religious rituals.
Those claims, called blood-libel conspiracy theories, persisted throughout the 1800s and into the 20th century, according to the ADL.
QAnon's baseless belief in a secret Jewish cabal dominating the world also bears a strong resemblance to anti-Semitic theories, Insider's Rachel Greenspan previously reported.
The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a fictional text published in Russia in 1903, falsely alleged "a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world," according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Protocols," which continues to circulate online in anti-Semitic spaces, also referenced the blood libel.
QAnon recycled those false claims, replacing Jews with Democrats, celebrities, and anyone else the movement chooses to go after.
"These are some of the oldest narratives in the world and anti-Semites will constantly take any new story line and weaponize it for their advantage," Friedfeld told Insider.
The role of social media platforms
Friedfeld told Insider that while Telegram, 4chan, and Gab are where the most vicious threats and anti-Semitic tropes are being aired, the rhetoric is also seen to a lesser extent on more mainstream platforms.
The hate "festers" across social media platforms, Friedfeld said.
"It's deeply disturbing that they allow this stuff to continue," Friedfeld said of Telegram and Gab — calling 4chan and 8chan "lost causes."
"And it's dangerous," he said. "This stuff doesn't just stay online."
Correction: August 18, 2022 — An earlier version of this story misrepresented a judge's ruling. Judge Bruce Reinhart ordered that the affidavit be redacted; he didn't yet sign off on it being made public.