6. Memefication of antisemitism

TikTok, currently the largest social media platform, is a breeding ground for various forms and types of hate speech, including antisemitism. This chapter addresses and analyses the concealment and survival of antisemitic content on TikTok through encoded semiotic, multimodal resources as a challenge to the existing regulations against hate speech on social media platforms. The article analyses the strategic concealment of antisemitic language as deployed in posts (i.e. memes and visual humour) and comments on TikTok, and suggests that antisemitic content is concealed using encrypted, multi-layered, and suggestive language (i.e. dog whistles) in both textual and symbolic forms. Moreover, this chapter surveys a significant array of semiotic modes, including textual, iconographic, visual, and auditory resources to examine the strategically, and seemingly ‘humorous,’ ‘memetic,’ and ‘creative’ ways of producing and maintaining antisemitic content. The memefication of antisemitic content, this chapter further argues, contributes to the concealment, banalisation, and normalisation of exclusion of and hatred against Jews. To systematically survey and analyse encoded antisemitism in TikTok memes and understand its primary trends, means of survival, and the banalisation of hate, this chapter employs mixed methods of Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MMDA) and Online Ethnography.[ During the course of conducting this research, many of the antisemitic expressions and resources have been banned from TikTok, particularly after the surge of antisemitic content following the attacks on 7 October 2023 and the following events. After receiving an open letter (https://www.deartiktok.com) asking TikTok to do more to protect Jewish users against rising antisemitism, TikTok declared that they made an additional effort to delete content violating their rules on hateful behaviour and therefore globally removed 730,000 videos between 7 October and 31 October 2023 (TikTok 2023). ]