There has been an unprecedented 12-fold increase in hateful social media content being referred to specialist police officers since Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, according to the UK’s Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit.
Once focused on propaganda shared by the Islamic State group (IS) and the fall-out online following UK-based attacks, much of the unit’s focus has shifted to assessing whether hateful and extreme social media posts breach anti-terror legislation.
The team says it has received more than 2,700 referrals from the public - shared via an online form - since Hamas attacked Israel, and Israel launched waves of air strikes on the Gaza Strip in return.
It is a spike in hate that leaves young Britons increasingly exposed to radicalisation by algorithm.
Alternate title: Why are Millennials Killing the Genocide Industry?
Took me a while to see what the article means by “radicalization” because these days radicalism can mean anything between far right antisemitism and the smallest critique on Israel.
Can’t even trust the wording of BBC anymore when it comes to this.
“Radicalized”
I noticed it hit us to a lesser extent here on Lemmy too, where algorithmic influence is minimal at best. I think it’s an extremely complex, multi-headed beast, where any individual could be responding to any particular combination of perhaps a dozen or two largely independently-operating variables.
Imo the largest one is actually simply the underdog effect. The Israelis are so much more powerful than the whole of Gaza, that it’s hitting like a David and Goliath story. Except the sides are kinda switched from historical ethnicity.
The underdog effect has a broad appeal though, and from an American perspective, tends to hit us very hard. You can see it in our movies a lot, or even in various sports contests pretty often.
When leaders ignore the issue. And media is biased it is very easy to take advantage of the a angry people who watch what the believe a daylight genocide. I believe if the leader were critical and outspoken about the war crimes these things less likely to be working.
Politically (I am not talking about ethically here, the ethics are unambiguous), it’s a difficult needle to thread because a significant portion of Democrats, especially the ones with money, are still very pro-Israel. He also knows that if he condemns Israel, Republicans will start doing things like calling him antisemitic and he will have no hope of funding Ukraine. All of that is not the easiest thing to work through in an election year.
He’s also obviously pro-Israel himself based on his congressional go-around to arm them, so I doubt he’s willing to condemn them, but even if he was, I don’t know that he necessarily would unless he knew it was politically expedient to do so. Unless you’re an idiot like Trump, you keep political expediency in mind when you’re in office in your first term.
Which is kind of infuriating in it’s own way since Hamas are hardly an unwilling underdog, their leaders literally rob Gaza’s resources to the point that several Hamas leaders are billionaires, when Iran is throwing all the weapons they can at you, what’s the point of tax revenue except to be pocketed? To improve the standard of living for your constituents and develop the infrastructure of the territory you’re governing? That’s Israeli agent talk!
These guys are no david, they’re the rock Iran pretending to be David is throwing at Israel along with Hezbollah and now the Houthi rebel factions, and all of them are more than willing to force their people into the side of the rock that’ll make impact if they think it’ll hit Israel harder.
Here comes the hasbara.
