why is this happening?
bad parenting, possibly. hateful professors and instructors, to be sure. but, more than any other factor, generation z – that is, those born in 1996 and later – are being targeted by anti-semitic and extremist organizations online. and the statistics tell a disturbing story.
according to a poll conducted by harvard university (which itself has had no shortage of anti-semitic student activity), more than 50% of americans between 18 and 24 believe hamas’ pogroms were “justified.”
where are those young people getting their information? from the chinese-regime-run tiktok.
tiktok is the search engine they use, more than google or any other. the european union, unlike canada, has demanded this week that tiktok detail the efforts they are making to curb pro-hamas propaganda.
so far, tiktok hasn’t responded.
when one u.s. researcher engaged with just one tiktok post on the israel-hamas war, his feed was almost immediately overwhelmed with anti-israel messages. he looked at the resulting data, and found that “tiktok is being controlled by anti-israel bot farms – much of which is paid for by hamas-supporting organizations.
if you look even deeper, you can see why israel is losing the information war among young people. among the ever-important hashtags, for example, #standwithisrael” got two million views. meanwhile, #standwithpalestine got an extraordinary 37.7 million – almost twenty times as many.