HASHTAGGED HATE

Anti-Semitic Slurs Surged on Gab, 4chan After Trump’s Election, ADL Finds

Levels haven’t returned to pre-Trump days, spiking again after the president’s inauguration and the deadly right-wing march in Charlottesville.

Racist slurs, and anti-Semitic slurs in particular, have steadily increased on two forums popular with the far right after President Trump’s election, a new study finds.

The Anti-Defamation League analyzed Gab and 4chan’s /pol/ board, digital hubs for white supremacists, and found racist attacks also spiked after Trump’s inauguration and the right-wing 2017 Charlottesville march. The overall trend is a near-continuous rise in racist slurs, with anti-Semitic slurs rising at an especially notable rate.

Anti-black and anti-Semitic posts were declining on 4chan’s /pol/ before Trump’s election, according to the ADL. On November 1, 2016, the words “Jew,” “black” “k*ke” or “n***er” each appeared in approximately 2 percent of all /pol/ posts. At that time on Gab, results for “k*ke” and “n***er” were negligible, with results for “Jew” and “black” hovering just under and just over the one-percent mark, respectively.

Trump’s election changed that. Use of the terms rose dramatically in the run-up to Trump’s January 20, 2017 inauguration. That day, nearly 4 percent of /pol/ posts contained the word “Jew,” more than 3 percent contained “n***er,” and more than 1 percent contained “black” or “k*ke.”

Gab, where posters are less anonymous, saw a similar rise in racist sentiment, although use of explicit terms still remained relatively low. Gab posts referencing “Jew” or “black” approached 2 and 3 percent, respectively.

But the inauguration-fueled hatred never really ended. Although use of the terms fell slightly after Trump’s swearing-in festivities ended, they crept up to the same levels in the first months of his term.

Then a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia sent them soaring again. The August rally, Unite the Right, drove a spike in Gab and /pol/ activity for the word “white,” the study shows. The word, which was slowly increasing in use on /pol/ suddenly appeared in more than 6 percent of /pol/ posts after Unite the Right. Gab saw nearly identical numbers.

Since then, use of “Jew” has trended up on both sites. (“Black” saw a slight dip on Gab, but “k*ke” and “n***er” rose.) By January, “Jew” appeared in more than 3 percent of all Gab posts, more than double its use at the beginning of the study in August 2016.

See more of our coverage in your search results.

ADD THE DAILY BEAST ON GOOGLE

Kelly Weill

Justin MillerEditor

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.