Anti-Semitism and Twitter

Elizabeth Koh writes at McClatchy:

Twitter users have begun reclaiming an anti-Semitic indicator on Twitter by adopting it proudly — even if they aren’t Jewish.

Prominent figures and ordinary users alike have begun changing their profile names byencasing them in triple parentheses, which have been used by far right and anti-Semitic activists to identify and target Jewish figures online, the BBC reported.

The triple parentheses reference a trope in the far right movement of mocking Jewish names by modifying them with an echo effect, which the parentheses represent, according to Mic. In November of last year, Jewish writers like Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic began noticing tweets directed at them with their names in triple parentheses — and abuse that would often follow referencing the punctuation, the BBC reported.

The reason for the parentheses, according to a Mic investigation, was more sinister: they worked with a now-removed Google Chrome extension called “Coincidence Detector” to identify “anti-white” and Jewish identities for harassment.