Recently, online discussion around antisemitic claims that Jews spread disease has found new footing. We identified and tracked themes relating to Jews spreading diseases and found that mentions of Jews being involved in various diseases have risen over the past year. The largest theme contained posts that connect Jews to COVID-19 with nearly half of all mentioned on this topic.
This theory claims that Jews either contributed to the creation or spread of COVID-19 or have benefitted from the events of a global pandemic The recent surge stems from renewed attention to these ideas following conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s October 20th podcast, which revived older conspiracy claims linking Jewish communities to the virus.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, these same prejudices re-emerged online in new forms. One theory, originally spread by Robert F. Kennedy Junior (RFK Jr.), suggested that the COVID-19 virus was “tailored” and had different effects on different populations. This 2023 report by the New York Post claimed that RFK Jr. said that COVID was “ethnically targeted to spare Jews.”
RFK Jr denies making this statement, but the report was brought back into the spotlight in a recent podcast with popular conservative commentator Tucker Carlson. Carlson’s guest, Dr. Huff, suggested that RFK Jr’s findings were “scientifically true” and points to the study which suggests that two different sects of Jewish people had different levels of susceptibility to COVID-19, with one (Askenazi) more likely to catch the illness than the other (Sephardi).
The 2023 report and this recent interview both feed into a larger conspiracy that centered around Jewish people and the origins of COVID-19. Ever since COVID-19 shut down the world in March of 2020, theories have popped up on social media that Israel, Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency) or the international Jewish community were somehow responsible for the spread of the virus.
Scapegoating efforts linked Orthodox Jews in NYC to COVID’s spread, citing early cases and a few quarantine violations within the community. That aside, there is no evidence to accurately suggest that the Jewish community were responsible for spreading COVID-19, nor is there proof that Jewish people are somehow more immune to the disease.
Similar claims resurfaced during more recent health crises, including the AIDS epidemic, when Jews were portrayed as promoting a “degenerate lifestyle” that supposedly fueled the spread of the disease. This blame isn’t new, Jewish communities have been falsely accused of spreading diseases for centuries.
These accusations first appeared during the Black Death in 14th-century Europe, when Jews were blamed for “poisoning wells”. Jews were blamed en masse for contributing to the spread of the plague through public drinking wells, leading to mass killings.
These conspiracies are part of a deep prejudice that goes back centuries, looking at Jewish communities as the root cause of epidemic and death. While the disease may change throughout the ages, the hate and blame remain the same as it was back in the 14th century, allowing people to justify their violence and persecution against Jews.
