Some Jewish leaders believe the move will not bring about change at TikTok, citing former envoy Deborah Lipstadt’s reluctance to criticize Arab anti-Semitism
TikTok, the Chinese social media platform awash in anti-Semitism, has hired a former official from a heavily scrutinized Biden administration agency to help combat the issue, a source familiar with the matter tells the Washington Free Beacon.
TikTok tapped Erica Mindel, who previously consulted for Biden administration anti-Semitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt, as its new public policy manager for hate speech. Lipstadt faced criticism in her role for her failure to speak out against the anti-Semitic campus protests after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.
The move comes amid a sharp rise in anti-Semitism on TikTok, which the Jewish Federations of North America said has been the “worst offender.” Those who use TikTok more than 30 minutes a day are 17 percent more likely to hold anti-Semitic or anti-Israel views than those who do not, according to a 2023 survey. The problem grew after Oct. 7 to such a degree that Jewish celebrities and influencers have called the company to account for its role in promoting hatred against Jews.
Sacha Baron Cohen, for instance, told TikTok executives that their platform “is creating the biggest anti-Semitic movement since the Nazis.”
Jewish TikTok employees have accused the app’s moderators of allowing open bigotry and the proliferation of false claims about Jews and Israel on the platform, and some TikTok staffers have used the company’s internal chat system to praise terrorism and anti-Israel boycotts.
Some of the examples of anti-Semitism spreading on TikTok include the conspiracy theory that contemporary Jews are not Jews but actually “Khazars” and bent on world domination, notions that Jews are responsible for the world’s wars in an effort to gain power, and suggested searches with names like “Ashkenazi Jewish witchcraft Satanism.”
In a notable November 2023 episode, a letter written by Osama bin Laden discussing motivations for 9/11 went viral. In it, the al Qaeda founder mentions Jewish “control of your economy, through which they have then taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense.”
The uptick in anti-Semitism on TikTok, which is linked to the Chinese government through parent company ByteDance, has reportedly followed a similar explosion in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories on the Chinese internet.
A spokesman for TikTok declined to comment.
Some Jewish leaders, like Zionist Organization of America president Morton Klein, are skeptical of the hire, noting that Lipstadt’s office was silent on instances of anti-Semitism that were politically inconvenient for the Biden administration. Lipstadt’s office, for instance, failed to publicly address Arab leaders who have repeatedly denied the Holocaust.
“During [Lipstadt’s] tenure, she refused to call out all sorts of antisemitism around the world,” Klein told the Free Beacon.
He noted that Lipstadt also endorsed the Biden administration’s strategy to combat anti-Semitism, which included a watered-down definition and was meant to be carried out in partnership with the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Klein said he had qualms about social media platforms like TikTok giving such a role to “anyone who worked for someone like Deborah Lipstadt, who’s afraid to take on anti-Semitism occurring throughout the world, who is defending anti-Semitic groups like CAIR … and who has refused to condemn Holocaust denial by Syria’s [former dictator Bashar] Assad and [Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud] Abbas.”
Lipstadt’s tenure coincided with a record-high surge in anti-Semitic incidents following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. She has strongly condemned pro-terrorist protests on American college campuses since leaving office but did not publicly speak out against the movement while in the Biden administration, saying she was “enjoined from involving [herself] in domestic matters” during her time as U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism at the State Department.
The Biden administration published a national plan to counter anti-Jewish bigotry in 2023, but the report promoted conflicting definitions of anti-Semitism—including those contending that it is acceptable to hold the Jewish state to different standards from other countries.
Many pro-Israel Jewish leaders, who had asked the Biden administration to use the stronger International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism, harshly criticized the decision. Ultimately, lobbying efforts on the part of anti-Israel groups to include multiple definitions of anti-Semitism to avoid giving legitimacy to the IHRA standard proved successful.
Jewish leaders also criticized the Biden administration at the time for partnering with CAIR on the anti-Semitism strategy, an organization with ties to Hamas and other terrorist organizations and whose leader said he “was happy” to see the events of Oct. 7.
But Lipstadt, who attended strategy rollout meetings, praised the plan as a “historic moment in the modern fight against what’s known as the world’s oldest hatred.”
Erica Mindel did not respond to a Free Beacon comment request.
Read the full article here
