Deconstructing Antisemitic Memes: Helping Students Critically View Online Hate

This lesson guides students in deconstructing images of online hate, with a focus on antisemitic memes. Students will identify the tropes and conspiracy narratives that are almost always embedded in expressions of antisemitism and consider the impacts of these memes. Practicing this critical examination in a contained classroom environment will help students identify, critically analyze, and deconstruct the antisemitic and racist content they likely do or will encounter on social media. 

Several of the techniques and concepts integrated into the following lesson are adapted from Monika Hûbscher's (University of Duisburg-Essen, University of Haifa) workshop on social media literacy and antisemitism, part of a German research project entitled "Antisemitism and Youth." Hübscher and her fellow researchers have concluded that social media literacy, and specifically the deconstruction of antisemitic material, is essential to the critical examination of and response to antisemitism on social media.

Guiding Questions

• Why is it important to be able to recognize hate when we encounter it?
• What antisemitic tropes and conspiracy narratives are embedded in antisemitism on social media?
• What forms does antisemitism take on social media?

Learning Objectives

• Connect contemporary antisemitic memes to historical antisemitic material.
• Identify antisemitic tropes and conspiracy narratives embedded in memes found on social media platforms.
• Deconstruct antisemitic imagery in order to uncover and analyze the intended messages, emotional appeal, target audience, and use of antisemitic tropes and conspiracy narratives.
• Decrease the susceptibility to consume antisemitic or racist content online without recognizing it as such or to internalize the false ideas such content promotes.

This resource is provided by Facing History & Ourselves.