Former U.S. National Security Advisor Michael Flynn recently made a number of misinformed comments suggesting that Jews had the means to avoid deportation to concentration camps during the Holocaust because they outnumbered Nazi guards, and that Jewish mothers “willingly” gave their children up to the Nazis. 

 

Such Holocaust distortion downplays the horrific physical and psychological circumstances that millions of Jews suffered. Blaming the victims for a perceived failure to resist perpetrates a destructive narrative that ignores the history of the Holocaust. There were many cases of Jewish resistance in concentration camps, including one in Treblinka where prisoners attacked Nazi guards with stolen weapons in August 1943. 

Flynn, who faced charges of making false statements to the FBI and was pardoned by President Trump, has expressed other antisemitic comments in the past. He compared Trump voters to Holocaust victims, claiming the U.S. government was deporting right-wing voters to death camps in September 2022, and he called for all Americans to conform to a single religion in November 2021.

 

Actor and director Bradley Cooper received backlash this week for wearing a prosthetic nose to portray Jewish composer Leonard Bernstein in his upcoming movie Maestro. After viewers saw the movie trailer online this week, many expressed concerns that the prosthetic nose plays into antisemitic stereotypes that Jews have large noses, while others argued it is not antisemitic to use makeup or prosthetics to make an actor look more like the real-life character.

 

Users who opposed the use of the prosthetic nose accused Cooper of participating in "Jewface," a term popularized by Jewish comedian Sarah Silverman, to describe a situation where an actor alters their appearance and behavior while portraying a Jewish character. This sparked further debate on whether non-Jewish actors should be able to play Jewish characters, part of a greater conversation on representation in media. Some users pointed out that Jake Gyllenhaal, a Jewish actor, was considered for the role of Bernstein, but lost out to Cooper.

Among those defending Cooper are Bernstein's children, who released a statement saying they believe their father would have been proud of Cooper's portrayal of him in the movie.

 

August 14th marked the Feast Day of St. Maximilian Kolbe, the martyr of Auschwitz, within the Catholic Church.

 

Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish Catholic priest who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1941 and interned at Auschwitz after he provided refuge to 2,000 Jews who were hiding from German persecution. At Auschwitz, Kolbe volunteered to take the place of a man who was to be starved to death in an underground bunker. Kolbe was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1982.

 

On social media, many people posted in honor of Kolbe, highlighting his selfless deeds.

 

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in collaboration with the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) released a two-part report on the amplification and auto-generation of hate on several social media platforms. The report highlights how the biggest social media platforms and search engines at times directly contribute to the proliferation of online antisemitism and extremism through their own tools.

 

The first study found that new users who expressed an appetite for conspiracy theory related content were later exposed to more extreme, antisemitic, and hateful content on these platforms. The second study found that companies use predictive tools in their search algorithms to autofill names of known hate groups. 

 

The ADL and TTP also showed how social media platforms promote hate groups using predictive algorithms to feed their users content they may be interested in, and how they should adjust these algorithms to prevent radicalization of their user base. The report also notes that while there are many variables that contribute to people being exposed to hateful content, including the behavior of the user, social media companies exacerbate the issue and make harmful situations worse.

 

 

 

 

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