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- Herausgeber: Open Book Publishers
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
This edited volume explores the evolving role of visual and multimodal expressions in spreading hate ideologies within digital communication. In digital spaces, hate speech is increasingly conveyed through memes, images, and videos, blending textual and pictorial elements to perpetuate harmful stereotypes and other exclusionary narratives. While historical perspectives on hate imagery are well-documented, this collection emphasises the pressing need for contemporary analysis of visual and multimodal communication in digital environments.
Featuring contributions from interdisciplinary experts, this volume investigates the content, structure, and dynamics of normalisation of visual hate speech. By examining memes, manipulated images, and other visual artifacts, it reveals how hateful content gains traction in digital public spheres, often blurring traditional boundaries of acceptability. Through rigorous case studies and theoretical insights, the anthology provides a comprehensive understanding of how multimodality shapes hate discourse and its societal impact.
Grounded in empirical research, this collection also addresses the challenges of defining and analysing hate ideologies, offering nuanced frameworks for distinguishing legitimate critique from hate-based narratives. Decoding Visual Hate is an essential resource for scholars, policymakers, teachers, and digital communicators seeking to combat the proliferation of visual hate and foster more inclusive online spaces.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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IMAGERY OF HATE ONLINE
Imagery of Hate Online
Edited by Matthias J. Becker, Marcus Scheiber, and Uffa Jensen
https://www.openbookpublishers.com
©2025 Matthias J. Becker, Marcus Scheiber, and Uffa Jensen (eds)Copyright of individual chapters is maintained by the chapter’s authors
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 Attribution 4.0 International. This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. CC BY includes the following elements: credit must be given to the creator. Attribution should include the following information:
Matthias J. Becker, Marcus Scheiber, and Uffa Jensen (eds), Imagery of Hate Online. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2025, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0447
Copyright and permissions for the reuse of the images included in this publication may differ from the above. This information is provided in the captions and in the list of illustrations. Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. Some images have been reproduced under fair dealing,
Further details about the CC BY license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web
Any digital material and resources associated with this volume will be available at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0447#resources
Information about any revised edition of this work will be provided at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0447
ISBN Paperback: 978-1-80511-500-7
ISBN Hardback: 978-1-80511-501-4
ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-80511-502-1
ISBN Digital eBook (epub): 978-1-80511-503-8
ISBN HTML: 978-1-80511-504-5
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0440
Cover concept and cover image: Matthias J. Becker
Cover design: Jeevanjot Kaur Nagpal
Contents
About the Authors
List of Figures
List of Tables
1. Introduction
Marcus Scheiber and Matthias J. Becker
2. The “Happy Merchant” as an antisemitic hate picture: A historical perspective on visual antisemitism
Uffa Jensen
3. Memetic antisemitism: How memes teach age-old hatred
Lev Topor
4. Extremist internet memes as a means of persuasion: A visual rhetorical approach
Eemeli Hakoköngäs and Otto Halmesvaara
5. Same tools, different target: Countering hate speech with memes
Carmen Aguilera-Carnerero, Matthias J. Becker, and Marcus Scheiber
6. Memefication of antisemitism: Antisemitic content on TikTok—a multimodal ethnographic analysis
Mohamed Salhi and Yasmine Goldhorn
7. Unveiling populist tactics on TikTok: A multimodal critical discursive psychology approach
Inari Sakki
8. Pictured hate: A visual discourse analysis of derogatory memes on Telegram
Lisa Bogerts, Wyn Brodersen, Maik Fielitz, and Pablo Jost
9. Studying soft hate speech online: Synthesising approaches from multimodality research and argumentation theory
Dimitris Serafis and Janina Wildfeuer
10. Analysing deepfakes: A discourse-semiotic approach
Marcus Scheiber
Index
About the Authors
Dr Carmen Aguilera-Carnerero obtained her degree and PhD at the department of English and German Philology at the University of Granada, Spain, where she currently teaches. Her post-doctoral research focused on the study of extreme speech online, especially on CyberIslamophobia, the online discourse of the post-war ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, the cyberrhetoric of the far right, the semiotics of terrorism and the communicative force of graffiti. She authored the Spanish section of the European Islamophobia report in 2016, 2017, and 2018. She has been a guest speaker at the University of Munich, Charles II University in Prague, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, at the European Foundation of Arab Studies, Casa Árabe in Madrid and the European Parliament, among others. She has spoken on her research topics for different national and international media.
Selected publications:
Aguilera-Carnerero, Carmen and Megara Tegal, 2023. “Multimodal Islamophobia. Gendered Stereotypes in memes”. Journal of Muslim and Media Research, 16 (2), 201–222.
Aguilera-Carnerero, Carmen, 2022. “From our sisters/To our sisters: the construction of ideal womanhood in the propaganda magazines of the Islamic State”. Pragmatics and Society, Special Issue: The Discourse of Terrorism, 13 (3), 453–476.
Aguilera-Carnerero, Carmen, 2021. On heroes and enemies: Visual polarization in the propaganda magazines of the Islamic State. In: L. Fidalgo-Llamas, E. Morales-López and A. Floyd (eds), Socio-Political Polarization and Conflict: Discursive Approaches. London: Routledge, 137–152.
Aguilera-Carnerero, Carmen, and Margarita Carretero González, 2021. The vegan myth: the rhetoric of online anti-veganism. In: L. Wright (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Vegan Studies. London: Routledge, 354–365.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7445-991X
Dr Matthias J. Becker is a linguist specialising in pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, (critical) discourse analysis, and social media studies, with a particular emphasis on researching prejudice and hatred. He studied linguistics, philosophy, and literature at Freie Universität Berlin and has contributed to several research projects focusing on the use of language in political and media campaigns. For over twelve years, his research has focused on the analysis of implicit hate speech—often normalised within mainstream political discourse—and the underlying conditions that enable its emergence. Matthias is the founder and lead of the Decoding Antisemitism research project and Postdoc Researcher at the University of Cambridge.
Selected publications:
Becker, Matthias J., Hagen Troschke, Matthew Bolton, and Alexis Chapelan (eds), 2024. Decoding Antisemitism: A Guide to Identifying Antisemitism Online. London: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature.
Becker, Matthias J., Laura Ascone, Karolina Placzynta, and Chloé Vincent (eds), 2024. Antisemitism in Online Communication: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Hate Speech in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0406
Becker, Matthias J., and Matthew Bolton, 2024. Images of Zionism in the Age of the Internet. In: Colin Shindler (ed.), Routledge Handbook on Zionism. London: Routledge, 520–537. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003312352
Becker, Matthias J., Laura Ascone, and Hagen Troschke, 2022. “Antisemitic comments on Facebook pages of leading British, French, and German media outlets”. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9, 339.
Becker, Matthias J., 2021. Antisemitism in Reader Comments: Analogies for Reckoning with the Past. London: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2847-4542
Dr Lisa Bogerts is a Berlin-based independent political scientist and visual culture professional. For eleven years she has been researching, teaching and working practically on political conflicts and protest as well as visual communication and art. She wrote her doctoral thesis at the Goethe University Frankfurt (Cluster of Excellence “Normative Orders”) and at the New School for Social Research, New York City.
Selected publications:
Bogerts, Lisa, and David Shim, forthcoming. Visuality. In: Rhys Crilley (ed.), Thinking World Politics Otherwise: A Textbook for International Relations Students. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bogerts, Lisa, and Maik Fielitz, 2023. Fashwave: The Alt-Right’s Aestheticization of Politics and Violence. In: Sarah Hegenbart and Mara-Johanna Kölmel (eds), Dada Data. Contemporary Art Practice in the Era of Post-Truth Politics. London: Bloomsbury, 230–245.
Bogerts, Lisa, 2022. The Aesthetics of Rule and Resistance. Analyzing Political Street Art in Latin America. Protest, Culture & Society Series. New York: Berghahn Books.
Bogerts, Lisa, and Maik Fielitz, 2020. The Visual Culture of Far-Right Terrorism. In: Global Network on Extremism & Technology (GNET) and PRIF-Blog (Peace Research Institute Frankfurt) (31.03.2020).
Bogerts, Lisa, and Maik Fielitz, 2019. Do You Want Meme War? Understanding the Visual Memes of the German Far Right. In: Maik Fielitz and Nick Thurston (eds), Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right. Online Actions and Offline Consequences in Europe and the US. Bielefeld: Transcript, 137–154.
Bogerts, Lisa, 2017. “Mind the Trap. Visual Literacy, Street Art, and Visual Resistance”. SAUC (Street Art & Urban Creativity) Scientific Journal, 3, 6–10.
Bogerts, Lisa, 2015. Bilder und Emotionen in der Sozialen Bewegungsforschung. In: Karl-Rudolf Korte (ed.), Emotionen und Politik, Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Politikwissenschaft (DGfP). Baden-Baden: Nomos, 225–246.
Wyn Brodersen is a sociologist and researcher at the Jena Institute for Democracy and Civil Society. His work examines the influence of digital interactions on radicalisation processes, focusing on digital subcultures, right-wing terrorism, and their intersections. He is part of the editorial team of the online magazine Machine Against the Rage (machine-vs-rage.bag-gegen-hass.net).
Selected publications:
Bogerts, Lisa, Wyn Brodersen and Maik Fielitz, forthcoming. Digitale Kulturen? Frag doch einfach. München: UTB, UVK.
Brodersen, Wyn, Maik Fielitz, Holger Marcks, Ann-Kathrin Rothermel and Harald Sick, forthcoming. Digitaler Hass. Formen, Kontexte und Gegenmaßnahmen. Bielefeld: UTB, Transcript.
Brodersen, Wyn, and Maik Fielitz, 2024. The ominous allure of online antisemitism. Ambivalent participation in the practice of digital hate. In: Florian Hartleb (ed.), The New Wave of Antisemitism. A Comparative Perspective. Wien: European Institute for Counter Terrorism and Conflict Prevention, 55–67.
Brodersen, Wyn, and Maik Fielitz, 2024. Hass durch Freude. Memetischer Humor als Gateway zu rechtsextremen Weltbildern. In: Melis Becker, Jessica Maron and Alladin Sarhan (eds), Hass und Hetze im Netz. Herausforderungen und Reaktionsmöglichkeiten. Frankfurt am Main: Wochenschau Verlag, 38–52.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9643-7746
Maik Fielitz is a social scientist and conflict researcher. He is the head of the research unit on digital conflict studies at the Jena Institute for Democracy and Civil Society, as well as co-editor of the online magazine Machine Against the Rage (machine-vs-rage.net). His research examines the ways in which digital technologies and digital cultures influence the emergence and evolution of right-wing extremism, as well as the strategies employed by liberal democracies to counter authoritarian tendencies in online contexts.
Selected publications:
Bogerts, Lisa, Wyn Brodersen and Maik Fielitz, forthcoming. Digitale Kulturen? Frag doch einfach. München: UTB, UVK.
Brodersen, Wyn, Maik Fielitz, Holger Marcks, Ann-Kathrin Rothermel and Harald Sick, forthcoming. Digitaler Hass. Formen, Kontexte und Gegenmaßnahmen. Bielefeld: UTB, Transcript.
Fielitz, Maik and Holger Marcks, 2020. Digitaler Faschismus. Soziale Medien als Motor des Rechtsextremismus. Berlin: Dudenverlag.
Fielitz, Maik, and Nick Thurston (eds), 2019. Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right. Online Activism and Offline Consequences in Europe and the US. Bielefeld: Transcript.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8257-5777
Yasmine Goldhorn is a master’s graduate in Sociology and a research assistant with the RelcoDiff research project. Her research interests broadly concern institutional antisemitism, antisemitism among teenagers, and gender inequality in labour markets.
Selected publications:
Rensch-Kruse, Benjamin, Saba-Nur Cheema, Yasmine Goldhorn and Isabell Diehm, 2024. Antisemitismus unter jungen Kindern. Forschungsgrundlagen und -reflexionen im Kontext einer Differenzforschung in Einrichtungen der frühen Kindheit. In: Emra Ilgün-Birhimeoğlu and Seyran Bostancı (eds), Elementarpädagogik in der postmigrantischen Gesellschaft. Theoretische und empirische Zugänge zu einer rassismuskritischen Pädagogik. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, 79–95.
Rensch-Kruse, Benjamin and Yasmine Goldhorn, forthcoming. Antisemitismus in Kindertagesstätten erforschen. Forschungsethische Perspektiven und Reflexionen dilemmatischer Herausforderungen. In: Sabine Andresen, Michael Fingerle and Helge Kminek (eds), Erziehungswissenschaft und Ethik – zu den Verstrickungen einer Disziplin. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
Dr Eemeli Hakoköngäs (D.Soc.Sci, Title of Docent) is a university lecturer in social psychology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. In his research, Hakoköngäs has focused on history politics, political psychology, and visual rhetoric in the Finnish context.
Selected publications:
Hakoköngäs, Eemeli and Inari Sakki, 2023. Multimodal nationalist rhetoric in Finland: From banal to extreme political persuasion. In: W. Wei, and J. Schnell (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Descriptive Rhetorical Studies and World Languages. London: Routledge, 234–248.
Sakki, Inari and Eemeli Hakoköngäs, 2022. Dialogical construction of hate speech in established media and online discussions. In: K. Pettersson and E. Nortio (eds), The Far-Right Discourse of Multiculturalism in Intergroup Interactions: A Critical Discursive Perspective. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 85–111.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4828-2276
Otto Halmesvaara (M.Soc.Sci) is a doctoral researcher in social psychology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Halmesvaara has studied far-right rhetoric, as well as topics such as shame and morality. In his forthcoming doctoral thesis, he addresses lay attitudes towards health information obtained from genetics.
Selected publications:
Halmesvaara, Otto, Ville J. Harjunen, Matthias B. Aulbach and Niklas Ravaja, 2020. “How bodily expressions of emotion after norm violation influence perceivers’ moral judgments and prevent social exclusion: A socio-functional approach to nonverbal shame display”. PloS One, 15 (4), e0232298.
Hakoköngäs, Eemeli, Otto Halmesvaara and Inari Sakki, 2020. “Persuasion Through Bitter Humour: Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Rhetoric in Internet Memes of Two Far-Right Groups in Finland”. Social Media + Society.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8519-817X
Prof. Uffa Jensen is a historian of modern history and serves as the deputy director at the Centre for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) at the Technische Universität in Berlin. In 2017, he received a Heisenberg Professorship from the German Research Foundation (DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). His research interests include the modern history of antisemitism, of German Jewry, of psychoanalysis, of the history of emotions as well as visual history. He has previously held positions at the University of Sussex, the Universität Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.
Selected publications:
Jensen, Uffa, 2022. Ein antisemitischer Doppelmord. Die vergessene Geschichte des Rechtsterrorismus in der Bundesrepublik. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Jensen, Uffa, 2019. Wie die Couch nach Kalkutta kam: Eine Globalgeschichte der frühen Psychoanalyse. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Jensen, Uffa, 2017. Zornpolitik. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Jensen, Uffa, 2014. Recht und Politik. Perspektiven deutsch-jüdischer Geschichte. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh.
Jensen, Uffa, 2005. Gebildete Doppelgänger. Bürgerliche Juden und Protestanten im 19. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
https://orcid.org/0009-0006-1267-1866
Dr Pablo Jost is a communication scientist at the Institute of Journalism at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, where he received his PhD in 2022 with a thesis on “Popularity Indicators in Political Communication Research”. He is currently a visiting professor at the Department of Journalism and Communication Research at the University of Music, Drama and Media, Hannover.
As co-founder and strategic advisor of the Federal Association for Countering Online Hate, he investigates the communication of radical and extremist protest movements on digital platforms and their offline effects. His research also focuses on the media representation of social controversies, how political actors communicate, and how they adapt to the conditions of digitalization.
Selected publications:
Jost, Pablo, 2023. “How politicians adapt to new media logic. A longitudinal perspective on accommodation to user-engagement on Facebook.”Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 20 (2), 184–197.
Jost, Pablo, and L. Dogruel, 2023. “Radical Mobilization in Times of Crisis: Use and Effects of Appeals and Populist Communication Features in Telegram Channels.”Social Media + Society, 9 (3).
Jost, Pablo, A. Heft, K. Buehling, M. Zehring, H. Schulze, H. Bitzmann and E. Domahidi, 2023. “Mapping a Dark Space: Challenges in Sampling and Classifying Non-Institutionalized Actors on Telegram.”M&K Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft, 71 (3–4), 212–229.
Jost, Pablo, M. Maurer and J. Hassler, 2020. “Populism Fuels Love and Anger: The Impact of Message Features on Users’ Reactions on Facebook.” International Journal of Communication, 14, 2081–2102.
Maurer, M., Pablo Jost, M. Schaaf, M. Sülflow and S. Kruschinski, 2023. “How right-wing populists instrumentalize news media: Deliberate provocations, scandalizing media coverage, and public awareness for the Alternative for Germany (AfD).”The International Journal of Press/Politics, 28 (4), 747–769.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9267-1773
Prof. Inari Sakki, D.Soc.Sc., is Professor in Social Psychology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Inari’s core interests lie in the field of societal and political social psychology, including research on political discourse, nationalism, populism, political and online hate speech, and discursive, visual, and multimodal methodologies. Inari’s work has been published in international peer-reviewed journals and volumes in the fields of social and political psychology, nationalism and memory studies, education, communication, qualitative research methods, and discourse studies.
Selected publications:
Sakki, Inari, ed. 2025. Qualitative Approaches to the Social Psychology of Populism: Unmasking Populist Appeal. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003492276
Sakki, Inari & Hakoköngäs, Eemeli. 2025. “Populism as Political Imagination: Theoretical Approaches.” In Qualitative Approaches to the Social Psychology of Populism: Unmasking Populist Appeal, 3–24. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003492276-2
Jaakkola, Jenni & Sakki, Inari. 2025. “Multimodal Persuasion in Right-Wing Populist TikTok Discourse: Crafting a Sense of ‘Us’.” In Qualitative Approaches to the Social Psychology of Populism: Unmasking Populist Appeal, 92–113. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003492276-8
Tormis, Helenor, Pettersson, Katarina & Sakki, Inari. 2025. “A Three-Step Approach to the Critical Discursive Psychological Analysis of Prejudice in Populist Gender and Sexuality Discourse.” In Qualitative Approaches to the Social Psychology of Populism: Unmasking Populist Appeal, 41–57. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003492276-5
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8717-5804
Dr Mohamed Salhi is a researcher and lecturer at the institute of Political Science, Goethe University in Frankfurt, specialising in critical discourse analysis, far-right populism, crisis discourse, and visual politics.
Selected publications:
Salhi, Mohamed, forthcoming. “Reinventing the Right in Morocco: Right-Wing Populist Discourses and Sentiments in Moroccan Online Spaces.” Middle East Law and Governance, Special Issue on Populism in the Arab World 17.01.
Salhi, Mohamed, 2023. What Explains the Absence of Transnational Far Right Ties between Lega Nord and AfD? In: T. Notermans, S. Piattoni, L. Verzichelli and C. Wagemann (eds), E La Nave Va: Italy and Germany in Turbulent Times. Lovorno Di Menaggio: Villa Vigoni Editore | Verlag, 63–90.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0220-2784
Marcus Scheiber is a discourse semiotician specialising in critical discourse analysis, internet linguistics, multimodal research and antisemitism research. He started his academic career at the Universities of Heidelberg and Bern, and as a visiting researcher and lecturer at the University of Mumbai. He received his MA from the University of Heidelberg in 2018 with a thesis about internet memes. He is currently working on a PhD project at the University of Vechta and the University of Vienna, in which he is investigating how the communication format of memes is used for antisemitic communication strategies in the digital sphere.
Selected publications:
Scheiber, Marcus, 2024. Multimodal cognitive anchoring in antisemitic memes. In: Matthias J. Becker, Laura Ascone, Karolina Placzynta and Chloé Vincent (eds), Antisemitism in Online Communication, Transdisciplinary Approaches. London: Palgrave, 159–184.
Scheiber, Marcus, Hagen Troschke and Jan Krasni, 2024. Vom kommunikativen Phänomen zum gesellschaftlichen Problem: Wie Antisemitismus durch Memes viral wird. In: Susanne Kabatnik, Lars Bülow, Marie-Luis Merten and Robert Mroczynski (eds), Pragmatik multimodal (Studies for Pragmatics), 7. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co, 257–284.
Scheiber, Marcus, 2019. Perspektivistische Setzungen von Wirklichkeit vermittels Memes. Strategien der Verwendung von Bild-Sprache-Gefügen in der politischen Kommunikation. In: Lars Bülow and Michael Johann (eds), Politische Internet-Memes – Theoretische Herausforderungen und empirische Befunde. Berlin: Frank & Timme, 143–166.
https://orcid.org/0009-0006-1714-2015
Dr Dimitris Serafis is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts/Center for Language and Cognition (CLCG), Department of Communication and Information Studies, at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. His research interests lie at the intersection of critical discourse studies, social semiotics and multimodality, and argumentation studies, with his current focus being on topics such as racism, hate speech, populism and authoritarianism.
He has published internationally on these topics in journals such as Discourse & Communication, Critical Discourse Studies, Journal of Language and Politics, Social Semiotics, Topoi, Informal Logic, Journal of Argumentation in Context.
He is the Editor of the CADAAD Journal – Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines as well as sits at the Editorial Board of academic journals such as Argumentation (Springer) and Journal of Argumentation in Context (John Benjamins)
Selected publications:
Serafis, Dimitris, 2023. Authoritarianism on the front page: Multimodal discourse and argumentation in times of multiple crises in Greece. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Serafis, Dimitris, Jolanta Drzewiecka, and Sara Greco, 2021. “Critical perspectives on migration in discourse and communication”. Studies in Communication Sciences, 21 (2).
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0335-6796
Dr Lev Topor is a policy-oriented researcher and a private consultant in the fields of antisemitism and cyber policy. He teaches Cybersecurity at the School of Information Systems at the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo, Israel. He is a fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). Lev is a former visiting ISGAP fellow at the Woolf Institute, Cambridge, United Kingdom, a former Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Cyber Law and Policy (CCLP), University of Haifa, Israel, and a former Visiting Scholar at the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.
Lev received his PhD from the Bar Ilan University, Israel (supervised by Prof. Jonathan Rynhold). His works have won several awards like the Honors Award from The Association of Civil-Military Studies in Israel (2020), the Presidential Prize from the President of Bar Ilan University, Israel (2019), and the Robert Wistrich Award from the Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Antisemitism (2019). He has published dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and reports on cyber policies, anonymous communications, racism, antisemitism, and anti-Zionism.
Selected publications:
Fox, Jonathan and Lev Topor, 2021. Why Do People Discriminate against Jews? New York: Oxford University Press.
Topor, Lev, 2023. Phishing for Nazis: Conspiracies, Anonymous Communications, and White Supremacy Networks on the Dark Web. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge.
Topor, Lev, 2024. Cyber Sovereignty: International Security, Mass Communication, and the Future of the Internet. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1836-5150
Dr Janina Wildfeuer is a multimodalist with a multi-faceted background in linguistics, semiotics, and discourse analysis. She has more than fifteen years of experience in working with visual and audiovisual communication and has built particular expertise in films and audiovisual data, comics, social media and games.
In her position at the University of Groningen, Janina teaches classes on multimodality, digital communication, visual and audio-visual analysis, and works as programme coordinator of the Communication and Information Studies Master’s. She is also the Chief Editor of the journal ‘Visual Communication’, one of the key journals in the field of visual and multimodal communication, and Associate Editor for the speciality section ‘Multimodality of Communication’ with Frontiers in Communication.
Janina has contributed to several edited collections and papers focused on the theoretical and methodological development of multimodality studies. Her work also provides valuable insights into corpus-analytical and empirically oriented projects on various media, including film, comics, and social media.
Selected publications:
Wildfeuer, Janina, John A. Bateman and Tuomo Hiippala, 2020. Multimodalität: Grundlagen, Forschung und Analyse – Eine problemorientierte Einführung. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Bateman, John A., Janina Wildfeuer and Tuomo Hiippala, 2017. Multimodality: Foundations, Research and Analysis – A Problem-Oriented Introduction. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Wildfeuer, Janina, 2014. Film Discourse Interpretation: Towards a New Paradigm for Multimodal Film Analysis. London: Routledge.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1330-8800
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1
Image known today as the “Happy Merchant”
Fig. 2.2
Cartoon by “A. Wyatt Mann” (1992)
Fig. 2.3
Advertisement in “WAR” (2001)
Fig. 2.4
Use of the “Happy Merchant” on “JRBooksOnline” (2001)
Fig. 2.5
Image called “Aaron, Son of the Devil” (1277)
Fig. 2.6
Markers on the image of the “Happy Merchant”
Fig. 2.7
E. Goodwyn Lewis, The Merchant of Venice (1863)
Fig. 2.8
John Hamilton Mortimer, Merchant of Venice (ca. 1750)
Fig. 2.9
Holbein the Elder, The Kiss of Judas (1494-1500)
Fig. 2.10
“Happy Merchant” variations
Fig. 2.11
Charles Léandre, Rothschild (1898)
Fig. 3.1
A poster advertising the antisemitic Der Ewige Jude film, The Netherlands, 1942. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Samuel (Schrijver) Schryver
Fig. 3.2
Nazi propaganda cartoon by Seppla (Josef Plank), a political cartoonist. Germany, date uncertain [probably during World War II]. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Fig. 3.3
An antisemitic poster by the Soviet magazine Krokodil, 1972. Source: Secondary source, by the journal Fathom. This can also be viewed in the archives of Krokodil (further information in: Tabarovsky 2019, 2022)
Fig. 3.4
The killing of Gaza by Jews. Source: Al-Quds, 14 October 2023 (Palestinian Authority)
Fig. 3.5
The “Happy Merchant” sticker from the “White Lives Matter Official Chat” Telegram channel
Fig. 3.6
“Keep on Hoaxin’…” meme from “Holohoax Memes and Info” Telegram channel
Fig. 3.7
The “Jewish Octopus” shared on “ WLM MEME’S Ƶ” Telegram channel (it includes a watermark from Dvatch as well, unlike the original BMI from 2 June 2013)
Fig. 3.8
A seemingly harmless hug
Fig. 3.9
The “Happy Merchant” optical illusion
Fig. 3.10
The “Happy Merchant” optical illusion, another version, shared on the “/BMW/—The Bureau of Memetic Warfare” Telegram channel
Fig. 3.11
“Jews did it!” octopus, shared on the “/BMW/—The Bureau of Memetic Warfare” Telegram channel
Fig. 3.12
“Only people of culture can see it”, as shared on X by @dookysan (16 July 2023). The post is no longer available
Fig. 4.1
Boss vs. Leader (Nordic Resistance Movement in Finland). (2018). Retrieved from https://www.vastarinta.com/viikon-meemit-1/
Fig. 4.2
The evolution of the Boss vs. Leader meme between 2013 and 2018, with a particular focus on the source of the components of the 24.8.2018 version of the meme
Fig. 4.3
The resistance movement opposes the police (2018). Retrieved from https://www.vastarinta.com/viikon-meemit-6-kielto-edition/
Fig. 5.1
Meme on dating problems for young Muslims
Fig. 5.2
Meme on fasting during Ramadan
Fig. 5.3
Meme on the practice of daily prayers
Fig. 5.4
Meme on the use of religious phrases in daily discourse
Fig. 5.5
Meme that mocks the idea of Muslim women’s oppression
Fig. 5.6
Meme subverting the idea that the veil implies submission
Fig. 5.7
Satirical meme on Islam internet experts
Fig. 6.1
Collectively produced dog whistle under an antisemitic post (22.09.2023, https://www.tiktok.com/@trol1080alt/video/7280595155529370888)
Fig. 6.2
Memetic references to Jews under an antisemitic post (19.09.2023, https://www.tiktok.com/@trol1080alt/video/7280595155529370888)
Fig. 6.3
Memetic references to Jews under an antisemitic post (01.10.2023, https://www.tiktok.com/@trol1080alt/video/7280595155529370888)
Figs. 6.4a and 6.4b
Instances of the “Jewish things” meme trend (04.09.2023, https://www.tiktok.com/@bayayanka/video/7274971819445144834?lang=de-DE)
Figs. 6.5a and 6.5b
Comments under the post in Figure 6.4 containing remixed versions of the “well well well” sound bite, both translated (into Greek, Russian, Spanish, Italian, and Arabic) and distorted (“wel x3”)
Figs. 6.6a and 6.6
Selected antisemitic slides in a multi-slide memetic post on TikTok (03.09.2023, https://www.tiktok.com/@girahym/video/7274677364355861792?lang=de-DE)
Figs. 6.7a and 6.7b
Meme deploying a Nazi figure (Joseph Goebbels) to express anti-Jewish contempt (18.06.2023, https://www.tiktok.com/@girahym/video/7245993948399914267?lang=de-DE)
Fig. 6.8
Caption of an antisemitic post containing Nazi symbolism
Figs. 6.9a and 6.9b
Nazi glorification using emojis and emoji art under an antisemitic post and a Jewish content maker’s post
Fig. 6.10
Call for violence under an antisemitic post. To avoid explicit language, which would lead to the post being censored, the commenter exchanges the first letters of the main words (“gas” and “Jews”) (10.10.23, https://www.tiktok.com/@gtarsss/video/7288375886255033632)
Fig. 7.1
Screenshot of Purra’s TikTok video (18 November 2022)
Fig. 7.2
Screenshot of Purra’s TikTok video (19 March 2022)
Fig. 8.1
Visualisation of the multi-stage sampling process
Fig. 8.2
Meme prevalence divided into ideological sub milieus (n=2.158)
Fig. 8.3
Relative frequency of hate categories
Fig. 8.4
Pie chart of narratives identified as misogynistic, segmented by percentage
Figs. 8.5, 8.6 and 8.7
Misogynistic memes depicting women as sexual objects
Fig. 8.8
Rhetoric of hate categories segmented by percentage
Fig. 8.9
Meme about the conspiracy theory of the “great reset” with antisemitic connotations
Fig. 9.1
Screenshot of the online news article under analysis (Kathimerini, 10 July 2015)
Fig. 9.2
Logical forms built as semantic representations of the main events and actions described in the news item in Figure 9.1
Fig. 9.3
The interplay of the “procedural-inferential component” and the “material-contextual component” of the AMT (adapted from Rigotti and Greco 2019: xiv)
Fig. 9.4
The AMT quasi-Y reconstruction of the argumentative inference
Fig. 10.1
Deepfake Gaza
Fig. 10.2
Happy Merchant rats
List of Tables
Table 5.1
Taxonomy of memes according to their content
Table 6.1
Semiotic resources used in the essentialist representations of Jews on TikTok (01/2022–11/2023)
Table 6.2
Semiotic resources for the use and romanticisation of Nazism under antisemitic/Jewish posts on TikTok (01/2022–11/2023)
Table 6.3
Semiotic resources in the celebration, denial, and relativisation of the Holocaust and celebrations of violence under antisemitic/Jewish posts on TikTok (01/2022–11/2023)
Table 6.4
Discursive communities and their prototypical semiotic resources
1. Introduction
Marcus Scheiber and Matthias J. Becker
©2025 M. Scheiber & M. J. Becker, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0447.01
In any given society, there are a variety of different propositions that are held to be true at any given time and that guide the actions of the society. These propositions are not constant, but usually present themselves in the form of epistemic competition for claims to validity. Likewise, social actions do not necessarily take place in a consensual manner, as is quickly apparent from the number of divergent views held by a wide range of actors. Only the heterogeneity of social structures forms the basis of our democracy, because only “where heterogeneous use of semiotic acts between competing [...] groups is recognisable, [...] there is a debate and no dictatorial continuation of views of reality, patterns of interpretation and truths” (Niehr 2014: 47). But it is precisely in this everyday competition for claims to validity that the enormous explosiveness of sign actions is revealed: they can polarise, radicalise, and ultimately, they can kill. The Holocaust did not begin with the Nuremberg laws and the construction of crematoria; rather, it was rooted in centuries of persistent use and society-wide normalisation of certain semiotic acts, preserved within the collective reservoir of shared ideas for centuries (Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz 2017). Today, the visual stereotypes of Jews from the Middle Ages persist, for instance, in the Happy Merchant meme, while accusations of blood libel and conspiracy myths have evolved into distorted representations of Israel as the Jewish state (for the distinction between criticism of Israel and Israel-related antisemitism, see below). Similarly, other hate ideologies—such as racism or misogyny—, reiterated in public communication in often elaborate ways, gain increased persuasiveness through renewed visual or multimodal patterns that carry related hateful ideas, surpassing their tabooed predecessors.
This volume is dedicated to digital spaces and the unique forms of communication within them, as it is precisely in these contexts that age-old hateful and exclusionary ideas—and their associated communication patterns—are proliferating at an alarming rate in new ways. The communicative reach and influence of individuals who endorse certain hate ideologies (or uncritically propagate them), are expanding like never before. In the early phase of digital communication, known as Web 1.0, only a limited number of users had the ability to create and share media content. With the advent of Web 2.0, however, digital technologies now enable almost anyone to produce and distribute their own (hateful) content.
These developments are particularly problematic, as the erosion of boundaries in digital communication through network connectivity significantly amplifies the spread—and thus normalisation—of hateful discourse in society (Troschke and Becker 2019): network connections allow hateful ideas to gain global validation and be strategically embedded in moderate areas of the digital public sphere (Ebner 2023). In these spaces, repeated exposure to such ideas in familiar contexts gradually imparts a sense of normalcy, leading to their acceptance even within environments previously regarded as moderate.
Moreover, digital communication increasingly relies on visual content, with meanings often conveyed more directly through images than words (Sachs-Hombach 2003, Engelkamp 2004, Nöth 2016). This trend is particularly relevant for hate communication, as hatred and other forms of resentment as well as exclusionary attitudes can be encoded in visual artefacts that make these ideas seem tangible and validated. Such images appear to affirm prejudiced beliefs by invoking traditional stereotypes. For instance, an image that portrays people of colour in a racist manner may, to a racist viewer, seem like an “authentic” depiction of reality, reinforcing their biased perspectives.
Despite their relevance in contemporary digital communication, approaches to the analysis of hate imagery are primarily undertaken from a historical perspective (Hauser and Janáčová 2020, Königseder 2020 and 2022). When examining hate ideologies in digital communication spaces, the focus is usually on verbal forms of communication (for antisemitism studies see Grimm and Kahmann 2018, Schwarz-Friesel 2020, Becker 2021, Becker et al. 2024; for racism studies see HateWatch (Southern Poverty Law Center); for social media studies with regard to various forms of hate communication, see HateLab; for extremism studies, see Hammer, Gerster, and Schwieter 2023 (ISD); for gender hostility, see KhosraviNik and Esposito 2018). This focus is particularly striking, as the pictorial dimension within digital communication—especially on social media platforms—plays a pivotal role in the spread of hateful content (Nagle 2017, Hübscher and von Mering 2022, Ebner 2023, see also Siever 2015). The use of images in everyday online hate communication has become commonplace, as the interplay between pictorial and verbal sign modalities in a concrete language-image relationship evokes its own communicative dynamics: memes, for example, represent a form of communication that constructs a shared sphere of cultural knowledge (Breitenbach 2015) and, as such, function as a communicative template for online social interaction, which is then adapted to advance various hate ideologies.
The interplay of pictorial and verbal signs is not a novelty of digital communication, but rather a natural feature of human communicative action. This phenomenon can be conceptualised through the lens of multimodality. On the one hand, multimodality describes the observation that all actions and communicative artefacts (such as antisemitic memes) draw on different sign modalities, interweaving them both productively and receptively in formal, discourse-semantic, and argumentative terms (Stöckl 2019: 50). On the other hand, multimodality refers to the methodological approaches used to analyse the interaction between different sign systems—such as language, image, or even music.
Understood as an approach to the simultaneous analysis of all semiotic resources in an artefact, multimodality is seen […] as one of the most influential concepts for semiotization of diverse forms of communications, providing a range of frameworks for the detailed analysis of meaning construction within and across several modes (Wildfeuer 2015: 14).
Multimodality thus aims to analyse the mutual integration of different sign potentials of verbal and non-verbal sign modalities. For as soon as sign modalities are interwoven, their specific qualities are also merged. This integration gives rise to an emergent meaning that is not inherent in the sign modalities involved or that can be derived from them alone. In other words: multimodality seeks to grasp and explain the fact that within multimodal sign actions the “sum of all components [...] cannot be determined by the simple addition of all the separate components—text, image, layout, etc.—as they often do not acquire an independent meaning of their own” (Wetzchewald 2012: 129; for a discussion on the principle of emergence in the context of understanding metaphors, see Skirl 2009); however, this only emerges from the dialectical interaction of the sign potentials involved in the sense of an overarching (communicative-semiotic) action structure. With regard to the mutual integration of verbal and pictorial sign modalities in the context of digital hate communication, the specific communicative and semiotic contributions that images and language make to a specific hate artefact are therefore of particular interest. Through the strategic placement of hateful, multimodal content, previously “niche positions can be carried from the margins into the public digital sphere, where they not only appear highly salient through mass distribution, but also function successfully as mobilising agents” (Schulze et al. 2022: 42). Research on contemporary visual and multimodal expressions of hate in digital communication is therefore urgently needed in order to understand the phenomena and their underlying dynamics and to counter them effectively. However, a multimodal approach to hate communication—like any other empirical work involving both online and offline datasets—should not be understood as an instrument for (morally) evaluating individual statements against a supposed standard of acceptable communication, as such standards are shaped by the epistemes of a given time and are therefore variable. Instead, the analytical value of a multimodal approach lies in identifying the semiotic contexts within (the specifics of) digital communication that both constitute and reinforce hateful content in all its forms.1
In addition to these structural communication-related specifics, it is crucial to offer a precise definition of the underlying conceptual layer when examining hate ideologies. This becomes especially challenging in the case of antisemitism, as the classifications used reveal how expressions related to Israel, as well as anti-capitalist statements and anti-elitist remarks, are framed. The latter two often emerge during online debates about figures like George Soros, Jewish celebrities in Hollywood, or during the COVID-19 pandemic, when anti-Jewish rhetoric was widespread. Antisemitism is a hate ideology that is often surrounded by grey areas. The same applies to anti-Muslim racism, where questions often arise about its relationship to criticism of political Islam, Islamism, Jihadism, and, in extreme cases, religiously legitimised terrorist organisations such as Hamas, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Hezbollah.
The authors of this introduction, together with the Decoding Antisemitism team, emphasise that legitimate criticism of Israel is not synonymous with antisemitism. In defining antisemitic concepts—whether related to Israel or other contexts—it is crucial to assess claims based on contextual knowledge and to determine the extent of essentialisation and generalisation attributed to a particular characteristic or practice. As outlined once more in our recently published Lexicon (Becker et al., 2024)—a comprehensive guide informed by the operationalization of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition (2016)—clear distinctions exist between criticism of Israel and Israel-related antisemitism, as well as the other related phenomena mentioned above. Criticism of right-wing populism in the Knesset, structural racism in Israeli society, injustice, loss of life, and destruction in the Gaza strip is legitimate, provided it remains grounded in genuine critique and does not devolve into stereotypical, reality-distorting, one-sided statements that reflect a double standard, which have been a constant feature of many international narratives surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1948.
We do not wish to suggest that there are no grey areas—indeed, there are. However, our argument is that, for decades, discursive rituals have sought to convince us that the field of Israel-related antisemitism is an impenetrable minefield, beyond any form of analysis. We believe that many of the frequently cited “grey areas” were already thoroughly discussed and academically classified years, if not decades, ago. The current Gaza war does not alter this reality. Rather, some of the discursive responses we observe today in traditional and social media continue to reflect familiar patterns of bias and/or demonisation of Israel that have long been embedded in the antisemitic repertoire, such as in the former Soviet Union or among both left-leaning and conservative circles in Germany, France, Spain, and the UK. Thus, the same classificatory frameworks can still be applied to identify patterns that are immediately recognisable to the informed reader of historical sources (for claims of genocide and apartheid, see Bolton et al. 2023, Bolton 2024; for claims of Nazism and colonialism, see Becker 2021). What remains lacking, however, is broader recognition of these classifications by other sectors of the academic community, politics, the media, and civil society.
As previously mentioned, definitional precision is equally crucial when critiquing Muslim or Islamist individuals and organisations (and here it is important to clarify that we do not equate these entities with the Israeli government, as these are fundamentally different entities). Such statements cross the boundary of legitimate discourse when the inherent patterns reflect derogatory, racist attitudes toward all Muslims (see Henzell-Thomas 2001, Pintak et al. 2021, and Aguilera-Carnerero et al. in chapter 5 of this volume). This kind of distorted demonisation of all Muslims lacks any basis in truth and compels those targeted by such rhetoric to answer for terrorist attacks like those of October 7 or September 11, or for other acts committed in the name of Islamism.
Any research project on hate speech, or more broadly on hate communication, whether in online or offline contexts, must clearly define the conceptual characteristics of the phenomenon being studied. Based on empirical data, these definitions should be expanded with inductive categories, enabling the systematic and consistent classification of the multimodal communication strategies employed by hateful actors, as demonstrated in this book. Our edited volume also seeks to operationalise the contexts in which hate manifests by offering a multidisciplinary overview of the range of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of visual and multimodal hate communication. The aim is to gain insights and provide an overview of established research practices and the challenges they face. As part of the analysis of multimodal dimensions, several contributions will further illuminate how the findings from these case studies relate to broader public discourse.
In chapter 2, Uffa Jensen explores the affective dimension of the use of images and attributes independent agency to images. He illustrates this affective dimension by analysing the “visual markers” of the “Happy Merchant” meme.
Lev Topor in chapter 3 outlines how antisemitic users employ a variety of memes, drawing on established antisemitic patterns to spread antisemitism. The chapter provides insight into why antisemitic, or more generally radical and hateful, content becomes normalised within digital communication, drawing on the knowledge of an insider community.
Chapter 4 byEemeli Hakoköngäs and Otto Halmesvaara provides an overview of qualitative rhetorical analysis of internet memes created and disseminated by various extremist groups. They show that memes possess strategic potential for right-wing extremist actors, which they are aware of and therefore actively use for their communicative purposes.
Carmen Aguilera-Carnerero, Matthias J. Becker, and Marcus Scheiber in chapter 5 explore how the same mechanisms that enable the spread of hate speech can be repurposed to promote counter-speech, specifically focusing on memes combating Islamophobia.
Chapter 6 by Mohamed Salhi and Yasmine Goldhorn presents a fine-grained analysis of antisemitic communication in coded form on all semiotic levels, showing how multimodal resources are used in different ways and how they differ in their use to convey an antisemitic meaning.
Inari Sakki’s chapter 7 presents a fine-grained analysis of right-wing populist communication strategies within TikTok, drawing on multimodal critical discursive psychology analysis to show how populist groups use multimodal communication to propagate hate and hostility.
In their study in chapter 8, Lisa Bogerts, Wyn Brodersen, Maik Fielitz, and Pablo Jost analyse the visual propaganda of far-right and conspiratorial actors using computational and interpretive methods. They reveal significant differences in how these actors target specific groups or audiences, focusing on polarising issues in current public debates in ways that amplify divisions.
Chapter 9 by Dimitris Serafis and Janina Wildfeuer outlines an integration of approaches from multimodality studies and argumentation theory to provide a systematic approach to the analysis of online forms of soft hate speech that is also generally applicable to other forms of (online) communication.
Marcus Scheiber in chapter 10 outlines the epistemic danger of antisemitic deepfakes and presents a qualitative approach that promises to complement existing quantitative AI-based approaches to deepfake identification with a discourse-semiotic perspective.
References
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―, Hagen Troschke, Matthew Bolton and Alexis Chapelan (eds), 2024. Decoding Antisemitism: A Guide to Identifying Antisemitism Online. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
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―, Matthias J. Becker, Laura Ascone, and Karolina Placzynta, 2023. “Enabling concepts in Hate Speech: The Function of the Apartheid Analogy in Antisemitic Online Discourse about Israel”. In: Isabel Ermida (ed.), Hate Speech in Social Media: Linguistic Approaches. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 253–286. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38248-2
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Grimm, Marc and Bodo Kahmann (eds), 2018. Antisemitismus im 21. Jahrhundert. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Hammer, Dominik, Lea Gerster and Christian Schwieter, 2023. Inside the Digital Labyrinth – Right-Wing Extremist Strategies of Decentralisation on the Internet and Possible Countermeasures.2022 Annual Report for the Research Project “Countering Radicalisation in Right-Wing Extremist Online Subcultures”. Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).
Hauser, Jacub and Eva Janáčová (eds), 2020. Visual Antisemitism in Central Europe. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Henzell-Thomas, Jeremy, 2001. “The Language of Islamophobia. Paper presented at the ‘Exploring Islamophobia’ Conference at The University of Westminster School of Law”. London, 29 September. http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/misc/phobia.htm
Hübscher, Monika and Sabine von Mering (eds), 2022. Antisemitism on Social Media. London: Routledge.
IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance), 2016. “Working Definition of Antisemitism”. https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antisemitism
KhosraviNik, Majid and Eleonora Esposito, 2018. “Online Hate, Digital Discourse and Critique: Exploring Digitally-Mediated Discursive Practices of Gender-Based Hostility”. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, 14 (1), 45–68. https://doi.org/10.1515/lpp-2018-0003
Königseder, Angelika, 2020. “In eigener Sache: Arthur Langermans Sammlung visueller Antisemitika am Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschungl”. Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung, 29, 17–25. https://doi.org/10.14279/depositonce-15580
―, 2022. “Arthur Langerman’s Collection of Visual Antisemitica at the Center for Research on Antisemitism, Technische Universität Berlin“. In: Kazerne Dossin (ed.), #FakeImages. Unmask the Dangers of Stereotypes. Berlin: Metropol, 108–112.
Nagle, Angela, 2017. Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right. Winchester: Zero Books.
Niehr, Thomas, 2014. Einführung in die Politolinguistik. Gegenstände und Methoden. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht.
Norris, Pippa, 2017. Democratic Deficits: Critical Citizens Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nöth, Winfried, 2016. “Verbal-Visuelle Semiotik”. In: Nina-Maria Klug and Hartmut Stöckl (eds), Handbuch Sprache im multimodalen Kontext.Berlin: De Gruyter, 190–216.
Nussbaum, Martha C., 2010. Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pintak, Lawrence, Brian J. Bowe and Jonathan Albright, 2021. “Influencers, Amplifiers, and Icons: A Systematic Approach to Understanding the Roles of Islamophobic Actors on Twitter”. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 99, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990211031567
Sachs-Hombach, Klaus, 2003. Das Bild als kommunikatives Medium. Elemente einer allgemeinen Bildwissenschaft. Köln: Herbert von Halem.
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―, and Jehuda Reinharz, 2017. Inside the Antisemitic Mind: The Language of Jew-Hatred in Contemporary Germany. Waltham: Brandeis University Press.
Schulze, Heidi, Simon Greipl, Julian Hohner and Diana Rieger, 2022.“Zwischen Furcht und Feindseligkeit: Narrative Radikalisierungsangebote in Online-Gruppen“. In: Uwe Kemmesies, Peter Wetzels, Beatrix Austin, Christian Buscher, Axel Dessecker, Sven Hutter and Diana Rieger (eds), Motra-Monitor 2022. Wiesbaden: MOTRA Bundeskriminalamt – Forschungsstelle Terrorismus/Extremismus, 40–67.
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Wildfeuer, Janina, 2015. “Bridging the Gap between Here and There: Combining Multimodal Analysis from International Perspectives”. In: Jens Runkehl, Peter Schlobinski and Torsten Siever (eds), Building Bridges for Multimodal Research. International Perspectives on Theories and Practices of Multimodal Analysis. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 13–33.
Williams, Matthew, 2019. Hatred Behind the Screens: A Report on the Rise of Online Hate Speech. Cardiff University and Mishcon de Reya.https://hatelab.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Hatred-Behind-the-Screens.pdf
1 In terms of scientific ethics, we, in agreement with Pippa Norris (2017) and Martha C. Nussbaum (2010), regard science as indispensable for upholding democratic values and promoting public discourse, objective and analytical. However, we acknowledge that scientific findings—although they should neither serve as the basis for nor bear responsibility for moral judgments and solutions—do influence moral and political decisions. The responsibility for these matters should instead be entrusted to democratic institutions and public debate.
2. The “Happy Merchant” as an antisemitic hate picture: A historical perspective on visual antisemitism
Uffa Jensen
©2025 Uffa Jensen, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0447.02
Abstract
The “Happy Merchant” serves as a prominent example of visual antisemitism, reflecting a long and complex history of anti-Jewish imagery distinct from textual traditions. While antisemitic texts date back to late antiquity, the visual representation of Jews began to emerge significantly in the 9th and 10th centuries, and evolved into more aggressive forms by the 13th century. This chapter explores the historical development of the “Happy Merchant” and its role in contemporary digital communication. The image, which combines various antisemitic markers—such as stereotypical physical features and behaviour—aims to evoke negative emotions towards Jews, thereby reinforcing harmful stereotypes. This contribution highlights the need to understand the affective dimensions of hate imagery and its impact on contemporary antisemitic discourse.
Keywords:Happy Merchant, internet memes, hate pictures, affective agency, historical visual analysis
Introduction
The long and complex history of anti-Jewishness and antisemitism has produced a long and complex tradition of visual material.1 However, this tradition of images, while certainly closely related, is not identical with the textual one. Anti-Jewish texts go back at least as far as the Christian polemics of late antiquity—and some scholars assume that the beginnings reach back even further into the ancient world (see Schäfer 1997). Yet, the visual tradition emerged much later. The first examples—mostly juxtapositions of the figures of Synagoga and Ecclesia in Christian art—appeared in the 9th and 10th century (see Jochum 1993). By the 13th century, the visual representation of Jews had already reached a rather aggressive level, with the emergence of the “gothic Jewish face” (see Lipton 2014). Moreover, the textual and visual traditions diverged not only at this early stage, but also during the second half of the 20th century. While antisemitic texts and statements were fundamentally transformed in Central Europe after the Holocaust, they continued to exist. From all we know, this was not the case with the rich visual culture of prewar antisemitic imagery. In the immediate postwar era, these images seemed to have vanished from the public eye, at least in Central Europe. Obviously, this has changed again with the advent of the digital age and especially with communication on social media formats. Here, antisemitism has attained again a very visual quality.
Given the observation that antisemitic textual and visual traditions have different trajectories, how can we understand such differences? Do we need to treat these distinct forms as related or as separate entities? Do antisemitic text and images work entirely differently or are they essentially similar? As I will argue in this chapter, the answer is both. Answering such questions, in my view, involves interrogating the complex issue of what we believe images do. I propose, in order to do so, to rethink their affective dimension.
For this, I suggest using the concept of hate pictures. The antisemitic version of such pictures, I argue, mobilise specific forms of visuality against Jews in order to create, nurture and sustain negative emotions about them.2 The connection between image and emotion is particularly important for such an approach, and we should consider three different levels of this connection. First, we can question the emotions that play a role for the image producers. Here, it is often implied that these producers visualise such emotions in the image because they are also moved by them and/or because they want to convey them through this image. Secondly, we might also ask what emotions arise during the reception of an antisemitic image, i.e. whether viewers resonate emotionally with the image that they see. Sometimes we can learn about such reception directly, i.e. through ego-documents like diaries, memoirs etc. Sometimes we can study the reception through the ways in which the recipients use the image or react to it, as is often the case in online communication. The final dimension is, arguably, the most controversial: in my understanding, we need to also ask about the affective quality of these images. Here, the assumption is that images can have a direct – and possibly different, in comparison to text – effect on our emotions. Thus, I would propose to carefully ascribe an affective agency to these hate pictures.3
Currently, a prominent example of visual antisemitism in online communication is the “Happy Merchant”. This image has a suggestive history and is conceptually significant, which is why I would like to use it as a point of departure for my discussion of hate pictures.
Fig. 2.1 Image known today as the “Happy Merchant”4
Today, it is relatively certain that the cartoonist Nick Bougas produced this image and published it under the pseudonym “A. Wyatt Mann.”5 The American neo-Nazi and white supremacist, Tom Metzger, began publishing such caricatures in his newsletter “WAR: White Aryan Resistance” from 1989 onwards.6 In general, Metzger very skilfully used many different media formats: radio and television shows, videos, booklets, stickers, an early website and even an early computerised bulletin board.7 Thus, it is not surprising that he started to use caricatures as a particularly aggressive method of visual communication. Already in the second edition to which A. Wyatt Mann contributed, he was allowed to design an entire page full of cartoons: an “A. Wyatt Mann collection”. It contained “honest depictions of conditions that exist!” and the reader was asked to: “Post ‘em… Copy ’em... Color ‘em… Spread ‘em around!”8
All of the images published in WAR are deeply disturbing, radically racist or antisemitic. In addition, “A. Wyatt Mann” also used aggressively homophobic, anti-Mexican, anti-immigration and sexist images. Moreover, the image later known as “Happy Merchant” originally did not stand alone, but was combined with an equally vicious, racist, anti-Black image. Both figures were dehumanised with comparisons to rats and vermin.
Fig. 2.2 Cartoon by “A. Wyatt Mann” (1992)9
At least one commentator has suggested that Bougas was not a white nationalist and that his original intention was to protest against political correctness, as it emerged in the early 1990s in the United States (see Bernstein 2015, appendix). However, it must be stressed that “A. Wyatt Mann” regularly contributed the most aggressive and derogative images to WAR, which declared itself to be the “most racist and hateful newspaper on this planet”.10 To be sure, it is important to understand that, in their aggressive language, these images were meant to be satirical attacks—and, thus, to be “funny”.11 Still, if one looks at all the images by “A. Wyatt Mann” in WAR, one cannot convincingly acquit Bogas of the charge of radical racism and antisemitism.
Fig. 2.3 Advertisement in “WAR” (2001)12
Eventually, the antisemitic part of the original image became separated from the anti-Black image. While it is not entirely clear when this happened, we have some indicators. In later years, adverts appeared in WAR for little booklets with collections of A. Wyatt Mann’s cartoons, which its readers were encouraged to order.13 Some of his caricatures were also turned into stickers that were available on Metzger’s website. In July 2001, one of the advertisements for these publications in WAR featured the separate antisemitic image.
In the same year, this version also appeared for the first time in an online context, when it was used on “JRBooksOnline”, an antisemitic, racist website and online bookshop.
Fig. 2.4 Use of the “Happy Merchant” on “JRBooksOnline” (2001)14
This specific combination also related the contemporary image to the long history of anti-Jewish imagery. The image later known as “Happy Merchant” was juxtaposed with a historical image from 13th-century England in the centre.
Fig. 2.5 Image called “Aaron, Son of the Devil” (1277)15
This historically informed antisemitic website frequently stressed the long tradition of antisemitic slander and, thus, tried to give its users a sense of the permanence of visual antisemitism. The caption under the “Happy Merchant” in this version reads “Hymie showing his real side”. The implication is that Jews—for whom “hymie” is a derogatory term—are usually hiding their ‘real’ nature which, therefore, must be disclosed through such images. Ever since the high medieval period, anti-Jewish image production has revealed an obsession with Jewish invisibility—either that of the individual Jewish person or of the Jews’ ‘real’ intentions.16 Such anti-Jewish and antisemitic images were thus intended to make Jews and, by implication, their evilness visible. Ever-present as contrasts, but not observable, were non-Jews who were simply different by implication from what was revealed as Jewish. In the following two decades since 2001, the “Happy Merchant” has become one of the most influential hate pictures in the digital age. It is significant that it was this antisemitic image, and less the complete image with the racist cartoon included, that became popular.
Fig. 2.6 Markers on the image of the “Happy Merchant”
To examine this image from the point of view of visual history, it is helpful to use the concept of the visual marker.17 The image of the “Happy Merchant” includes several different kinds of markers.
One category of markers relates to dress and/or physical qualities which are usually associated with Jewish religious practices: in this case (red), these often include beards, payot, or various kinds of headgear such as a kippah etc. Another denotes behavioural patterns that are associated with typical Jewish conduct. In the case of the “Happy Merchant”, the rubbing of hands (green) can be classified in this way, as I will discuss later. The final category of markers is connected to physiognomic characteristics, which have become associated with Jews over a long period of time.18 In the “Happy Merchant”, we can detect such elements (blue), i.e. the distorted body with a hump, the bad, large teeth, the puffy lips, the piercing eyes and the hooked nose. While all of these groups of markers contribute to the overall negative and aggressive impression of the image, the last set is arguably the most problematic, because it attaches essentializing features to the body. By dissecting the different markers in this way, we attain a better perspective on why the “Happy Merchant” is a particularly aggressive image, for two reasons. First, the sheer number of markers in this image is remarkable. Thus, the Jewishness of the “Happy Merchant” seems overdetermined by them. Second, it contains several markers of the particularly problematic physiognomic category, which helps to explain the aggressive appearance of the image. Such bodily features contribute substantially to the unpleasant, ugly, and alien expression of the figure. We can certainly speculate about the influence of this threatening appearance on the spectacular success of the “Happy Merchant” once it entered the digital world. Arguably, its aggressive nature helped to make it popular, because much of its usage relies on this quality.
Some of these markers play a role in the later history of the image. Eventually, the image became known as “Jew-bwa-ha-ha.gif”, a usage that again stressed its humorous dimension. Surely, with this name an unmistakeable identification with its subject—a distorted Jewish person—was also established. This is significant because it is at least possible to imagine a viewer who is ignorant of the history of antisemitism and who, thus, cannot identify the depicted person as Jewish. As far as we know, the image became known as “Happy Merchant” by 2012.19 In many ways, this change narrowed the possible interpretations of the image and, at the same time, placed it into an additional visual tradition. With the new name, the image now could be read as depicting a particular economic behaviour that was often assumed to be Jewish. The term “merchant” associated the image with a long tradition of vilifying Jews as deceitful traders and bankers.20 The word “happy” underscored the dimensions of greed and malice. The visual tradition of antisemitism is full of such examples, e.g. the numerous portrayals of the figure Shylock in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Thus, the behavioural marker of the rubbing of hands gained even more force with the new name.
Fig. 2.7 E. Goodwyn Lewis, The Merchant of Venice (1863)
Fig. 2.8 John Hamilton Mortimer, Merchant of Venice (ca. 1750)
What is the function of these different markers in the image? Overall, they aspire to induce negative emotions against Jews by illustrating their fundamentally alien and aggressive nature. Primarily, this alien look is established aesthetically, as well as morally. The fact that this image was also called “Jew face” underlines these aspects21 because, in general, the visual representation of the face has long been described as the essential location to discern the emotional qualities of the depicted individual.22 This is certainly illustrated by the history of visual representations of Jews: since the high medieval period, the ‘Jewish face’ has been the site for the denigration of Jews. Thus, it became a convention to portray the ‘Jewish face’ in profile, which helped to accentuate those characteristics considered to be ugly. As the face was described as the site of truth, beauty and trustworthiness, the Jewish face appeared as ugly and evil, warning any observers to affectively keep at a distance.
While it is necessary to study the use of the “
