With white supremacists driven online by the pandemic, anti-Semitism trackers watch for new threats
For the folks who monitor anti-Semitism, a pandemic-induced nightmare nearly became real this month.
A Massachusetts man was arrested for trying to set off a firebomb near the entrance of a Jewish home for the elderly.
He got the idea, federal authorities said, from the internet.
The incendiary device was planted near Ruth’s House in suburban Springfield, in western Massachusetts, on April 2. That was a day before the date designated as “Jew killing day” on a thread on white supremacist social media allegedly read by the suspect. The preferred target, the thread said, was a “Jew nursing home.”
Jewish security insiders have been fretting since January about the possible dangers of a pandemic. Chief among them: that spiking online activity during quarantine would bring more people in contact with the toxic brew of racism, anti-Semitism and the glorification of violence that occupies the dark corners of the web.
more...
