Exploring Antisemitic Tropes in Further Depth

This is the second lesson in a unit designed to help teachers have conversations with their students about contemporary antisemitism in a safe, sensitive and constructive way. Use these lessons to help your students reflect on antisemitism – how it manifests in contemporary society and its impact – and consider what needs to be done to challenge it.

In this lesson, students explore antisemitic tropes, their troubled history, their evolution and their present manifestation in further depth. The activities provide students with the opportunity to reflect on the destructive dangers of misinformation; to explore what led to the creation of antisemitic tropes, and how they have been used to exploit societal situations and target human emotions; and to consider the harm that the circulation of antisemitic tropes can cause.  

Understanding the ways in which misinformation can be challenged and debunked is important when it comes to challenging antisemitism, particularly as many antisemitic tropes have gained wide currency on social media platforms. Teaching students about antisemitic tropes and their history helps them understand the roots of these malicious rumours and myths, as well as how they have been adapted to retain relevance in the present. These explorations can both mentally prime students to be critical consumers of antisemitic content they might encounter in the future and help counter any pernicious misinformation that may have already shaped their world view. 

Teaching students about the tools deployed to help spread these tropes can also help them challenge antisemitism. Content spreading antisemitic tropes often seeks to provoke an emotional response and/or uses tactics such as dog-whistling (when people use code words to express racist and/or hateful feelings and content to avoid being called out on what they are saying). Helping students understand the means through which antisemitic content is spread is particularly important in the age of social media, when memes, images and ideas spread with incredible speed, as it encourages students to think critically about the information that they are consuming and sharing, and can prevent students from unsuspectingly sharing antisemitic content.

We recommend that you do preparatory work on discussing antisemitic tropes with students using the lesson Introducing Antisemitism and Antisemitic Tropes if you have not already done so.

Before teaching this lesson, please review the following information to help guide your preparation process.

Activity 1 Reflect on Misinformation and Disinformation

Before you begin engaging with the content of the lesson, we recommend that you create a classroom contract or revisit a previously created one. You can use our contracting guidelines for creating a classroom contract or another procedure you have used in the past.

Ask students to reflect on misinformation by responding to the following prompts in their journals:

Misinformation is false information that is spread either by mistake or with intent to mislead. When there is intent to mislead, it is called disinformation. Misinformation has the potential to cause substantial harm to individuals and society. … [It] is often steeped in emotional language and designed to be attention-grabbing and have persuasive appeal. ¹

1. Why might misinformation have ‘the potential to cause substantial harm to individuals and society’? 
2. Why might misinformation be ‘steeped in emotional language and designed to be attention-grabbing and have persuasive appeal’?
3. Have you, or anyone you know, ever been exposed to misinformation/disinformation? 
   • What happened?
   • How did you learn it was misinformation/disinformation?
   • What, if anything, were the consequences? 
4. How do you think people can be protected against misinformation and disinformation? 

Invite students to share any responses they feel comfortable sharing with the class.

Activity 2 Explore Antisemitic Tropes

Next, inform students that they will be exploring the antisemitic tropes which were introduced in the previous lesson in further depth using the Jigsaw teaching strategy, which contains two key steps. Explain that antisemitic tropes are a form of both misinformation and disinformation. 

1. First, students will be divided into ‘expert’ groups and each group will be given a different reading that explores one antisemitic trope and how it has manifested throughout history. These ‘expert’ groups will review and discuss the assigned materials together.
2. Students will then be divided into ‘teaching’ groups, in which they will give an overview of what they learnt in their ‘expert’ group, and discuss new questions to consolidate their learning.

Divide the class into ‘expert’ groups of four to five students (there are six separate readings). Then, pass out a different reading contained in Antisemitic Tropes to each ‘expert’ group. 

Explain to students that each ‘expert’ group will read the group’s assigned reading together out loud, taking it in turns to read, and will then briefly discuss and respond to the connection questions in their books. Let the students know how much time they have for this first task and circulate around the room to check in with groups as they are reading and discussing the questions together.

Then, divide the class into new ‘teaching’ groups. All of the members of each ‘teaching’ group should have read a different reading in their ‘expert’ groups.

Project these ‘teaching’ group prompts on the board:

1. Briefly summarise 2–3 key findings of your ‘expert’ group to your ‘teaching’ group (take it in turns). 
2. How and why have antisemitic tropes persisted over centuries and millennia? 
3. How do antisemitic tropes appeal to people’s emotions and fears? What impact does this have?
4. Has learning about antisemitic tropes impacted your ability to help stop the spread of antisemitism? How might you use what you have learnt about tropes to stand up to antisemitism?
5. What else might it take to overcome these false antisemitic beliefs?

Invite groups to share key ideas and insights from their discussions with the class.

Activity 3 Reflect on Challenging Antisemitic Tropes

Finally, invite students to reflect on the following prompt in a Think, Pair, Share, before inviting them to share their thoughts with the class.

Read the following perceptions of two European Jews concerning antisemitism, which are taken from a survey on discrimination and hate crime against Jews in the EU, and then discuss the questions: 

• ‘Some forms of antisemitism (especially in social media) have become so commonplace that they are almost accepted. These are the sort of things that you can’t report to the police or even to the media platform, but strengthen a hostile culture. For example, references to Jewish bankers, Rothschild cults, etc etc.’

(Man, 40–44 years old, UK)

• ‘Antisemitic thoughts that slowly enter everyday “acceptable” thinking is the biggest danger for me. There will always be someone who will let it go further and when it becomes too crude or hard to ignore, it‘ll be too late.’

(Man, 55–59 years old, Belgium)

• How might working, studying or living in a ‘hostile culture’ in which antisemitic references are ‘commonplace’ and ‘accepted’ impact Jews?
  • What might the man from Belgium mean by ‘when it becomes too crude or hard to ignore, it’ll be too late’? 
  • How do these statements highlight the importance of understanding and challenging antisemitic tropes? 

• 1Lewandowsky, Cook et al., The Debunking Handbook 2020, 4–5.