Last month, Ana Kasparian, executive producer of the progressive YouTube channel The Young Turks (6.5 million subs), tweeted out “Hey, bitch, the goyim are waking the fuck up. Deal with it.” Ana, like many other chronically online leftists, has been making increasingly obsessive anti-Israel content since October 7. So obsessive, in fact, that it led Jillian Michaels, a co-host of Ana’s panel show Her Take, to storm off set in the middle of production saying “I don’t know how every show ends up being about ‘how do we bash Israel?’ This is not for me, I am not interested in this.”
“MAGA communist” influencer Jackson Hinkle likes to use the same phrase as Kasparian with his millions of followers. Examples include, “Goyim, do not complain. You must die for Israel,” “Now goyim, it’s time to die for Israel,” and “Goyim, don’t ask questions.” This is copied in even harsher languages by the “American Communist party,” a political formation that seems to be less a real party than a social media grift.
It’s difficult to work out who the anti-Israel leftists or right-wing groypers are because their language is now indistinguishable
There are multiple factors driving the groyperfication of the online left. But it can’t be denied that there is increasing acceptance of anti-Semitic tropes by a subset of leftists and influencers. Nick Fuentes and his digital army of fans, “the Groypers,” have revamped anti-Semitic tropes for the digital era. Now, online leftists are using that same rhetoric.
Of course, left-wing anti-Semitism goes back decades: Stalin carried out Jewish purges and Brezhnev had vast quantities of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion printed in Arabic and distributed throughout the region to counter Israel.
But the difference today is that leftist anti-Semitism is propagated and encouraged by Islamic activists, who can now communicate instantly with their counterparts in the US. Palestine alone has a Marxist Popular Front party, a Marxist Democratic Front, and a Marxist People’s Party. Many of these younger Middle Eastern activists are just as online as America’s young radicals and they, too, are sharing their views online. It isn’t just the keffiyeh that’s been adopted by US college activists since October 7.
Using “goy” to imply malicious intent by Jews towards outsiders is just one example of the anti-Semitic vocabulary used by left-wingers these days. Perhaps even more popular is the term “ZOG,” which stands for Zionist Occupation Government. The term originated in American white supremacist and neo-Nazi circles in the 1970s, particularly around the American Nazi Party and a group called “The Order.” Now it’s used far more often by fanatical internet socialists.
While some leftists have been arguing about whether or not it’s OK to use words like “ZOG” and “goy,” others have been using the terms against their opponents within the movement. Podcaster Sean McCarthy tweeted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling her a “slave for ZOG”. Some radical pro-Palestine activists have taken to calling Zohran Mamdani “Zogran Goydani,” a name that for now seems to have won out over “Ziohran.”
Why do they call him “Zogran/Ziohran?” Examples include Mamdani condemning anti-Semitic attacks, including the one involving two bombs being thrown at a crowd of Jews which, thankfully, didn’t go off. They were also annoyed at him for failing to defend his wife’s egregious old tweets about Israel.
When other leftists object to this behavior, as Jacobin contributor José Sanchez and DSA Maoist Christopher Winston did recently, they are attacked. When Winston objected to the use of “Zogran Goydani”, he was immediately pounced upon with language like “ZOG slave,” “goy slave,” and “kikeslave.” When Sanchez called such language “the socialism of fools”, he was called a “shabbos goy cuck,” “cucked Marxist,” “Zionist cuck.” It’s difficult to work out whether those denouncing them are anti-Israel leftists or right-wing groypers because their language is now indistinguishable.
None of this shows any sign of abating given the war with Iran and the incentives of creator revenue sharing. You can now actually make a living calling people abusive names online, provided you have a big enough following. These activists are fighting for attention and it seems the best way to get it is using these deeply unpleasant slurs. The leftist groypers are here to stay.
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