Over the past couple of weeks, you may have been seeing parentheses popping up on Twitter. If you have, you are probably wondering what that is all about. It is a longstanding practice of neo-Nazi’s and white supremacists on social media to out Jews, and signal them for harassment. It’s a modern day analog to slapping a Star of David on the clothes of Jewish people.
According to the New York Daily News the practice has been going on for over two years. Jason Silverstein at the Daily News explains, “in the past two years as a way to identify Jews on the internet, so that their hateful flock know who to attack. For a long time, those ‘echoes’ remained a baffling detail in endless streams of disgusting messages.”
Mic wrote about how the deeply disturbing trend was uncovered.
Neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and white nationalists have begun using three sets of parentheses encasing a Jewish surname — for instance, (((Fleishman))) — to identify and target Jews for harassment on blogs and major social media sites like Twitter. As one white supremacist tweeted, “It’s closed captioning for the Jew-blind.”
Jonathan Weisman, deputy Washington editor for the New York Times, wrote about his experience as a victim of this harassment in a May 26 story.
“Hello ((Weisman)),” it began after Weisman tweeted a Washington Post article about Donald Trump titled “This Is How Fascism Comes to America.”
Weisman asked his harasser, @CyberTrump, to explain the symbol. “It’s a dog whistle, fool,” the user responded. “Belling the cat for my fellow goyim.”
As the practice became widely known, due to the publicity it received from Mic, social media users started using the symbols in a show of solidarity with those being targeted. Many users are using the echoes in their name, much like many changed their profile picture to the Arabic script for Nazarene, to stand with Christians in the Middle East.
The practice has even been used to target some at Conservative Review, including Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin, as you can see in the recent Tweet below.
@marklevinshow Mark Levin is an (((agent))) of a hostile foreign power. All such (((agents))) should be deported immediately
— Haxo Angmark (@HaxoAngmark) June 10, 2016
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Thanks @RobEno for this story.
— TRON SIMPSON (@TRONSHOW) June 10, 2016
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