Viral Anti-Semitic Photos Spark Outrage

A series of anti-Semitic photos has made its way across the internet and has provoked outrage across the country. The photos feature a group of teenagers at a party gathered around a swastika made out of red solo cups. Other photos show the teens laughing, toasting, and Sieg Heiling around the Nazi symbol. Many open cans of beer are also visible in the photos. The photos originated from a party in Orange County, Calif., where many of the party goers attend high school.

These photos were posted over the weekend on Twitter and Snapchat and soon went viral. They managed to capture the attention of law enforcement and the school district. A statement was sent to parents of this community confirming some students, “created inappropriate anti-Semitic symbols” (as if these symbols are ever appropriate).

The district told NPR that despite the actions not taking place on school campus or at any school function, they “condemn all acts of anti-Semitism and hate in all their forms.”

Officials said that, “many times off-campus student actions, under the care of their parents and guardians, negatively impact our educational environment. We take our responsibility to students seriously when they are in our care and when their actions outside our care impact our learning environment.”

Most of the boys and girls in the photos are raising their right hand in what appears to be the Nazi salute. A few of the teens can be seen holding their phones and even taking pictures of the swastika, which is made of about 100 red plastic cups that have clearly been set up for an anti-Semitic game of beer pong.

Many people online are adding the names of the individuals who attended the party and therefore are responsible, a move that is garnering some criticism from people that think the teens are too young to have their identities released.

The president of the school board, Charlene Metoyer, said, “as a school board, we’re not only concerned by the underage drinking, but also the mental health of the students who participated in this horrendous act and all their fellow students who will be affected by it. This is appalling to not just our Jewish student community, but to all of us who care about human rights.”

Many of the students have since apologized for their behavior and have publicized their apologies. Many students have not. Among the the party-goers, many have said that it was a joke that, while executed poorly, was not meant to offend anyone and shouldn’t be taken to mean that those students are bigots.

So how does this tie in to a larger picture?

According to Keegan Hankes, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Project, the number of hate groups in Orange County is on the rise. Within the last year, there have been eight newly formed groups. Many groups are making calculated efforts to recruit younger members.

Hankes also says that there has been a change in age demographics in a lot of these groups all over the country. “It wasn’t that long ago that we were having conversations about whether the movement was going to age out. You would go to conferences and it would be an audience full of white men in their late 30s and up. Now, you go to the same conferences and they’re sold out and the average age has dropped by 20 years,” Hankes explained.

Not only do groups like these recruit at high school and college campuses, gaining a large amount of support from people in their teens and early 20s, but they also use the internet and many social media platforms to help spread their racist ideas to a broader audience.

The Anti-Defamation League (an international group that helps fight anti-Semitism) has noted that, since the start of them tracking anti-Semitic incidents in 1979, the largest single-year increase took place in 2017.

A reporter for NPR, Emily Sullivan, shared that, “K-12 schools surpassed public areas as the locations with the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents.” According to Sullivan, there were 457 incidents of reported anti-Semitism in 2017, which is a 94 percent increase from the year before. “On college campuses, there were 204 incidents: an 89 percent increase,” Sullivan reported.

In November of 2018, a photo was posted online of over 60 students, many of which were doing the Nazi salute before their junior prom. The caption of the photo is “we even got the black kid to throw it up.”

Incidents like these are on the rise and can be attributed to the relatively recent change in executive command, which is to say that the number of these incidents dramatically increased after Trump won the presidential election. Perhaps the most memorable incident like this was the Unite the Right rally that took place in Charlottesville, Va. in August of 2017.

This kind of anti-Semitic behavior is both the cause of and a symptom of other anti-Semitic behavior. The same idea can be used to explain acts of racism and terrorism. Someone does one thing, which normalizes the behavior. Even if they claim that it’s a joke, when other people see that it’s happening, it makes it seem okay to do. When people draw swastikas on the walls of a building, it makes the swastika seem like a normal thing to see. When people say something racist, it makes it seem like saying racist things is okay. This isn’t something that we should normalize. Don’t let these acts of hate go unpunished. Don’t let these acts brainwash you into thinking hate is normal and okay. It’s not.