There is a truth so obvious that it remains invisible only because we are all scrolling. The American right has not simply flirted with anti-Jewish rhetoric; some of its most influential factions have fallen straight into it. But this descent is not spontaneous. It is mechanical, economic, engineered. It is what happens when an algorithm is allowed to treat hatred as engagement, and engagement as profit.
Here is how the machine works. You start with legitimate grief. You see the suffering in Gaza, the funerals, the rubble, the children. You want to understand. You want justice. The platform nods, smiles, and takes your hand. Then it begins to adjust the feed. It shows you sharper edges, darker thumbnails, louder music. It learns your pulse. It learns what keeps your eyes from blinking. Your grief turns into rage, and the system rewards rage. Because rage is sticky, rage stays longer, rage clicks more ads.
You get recommended a video. It starts with “Free Palestine” but ends with “global control.” Another one claims to expose “media lies” and blames “the same people” without naming them. You do not notice the shift at first. You tell yourself it is just another creator with a different perspective. But the algorithm notices. It noticed the microsecond longer you lingered. It noticed the comment you almost posted. It noticed the one you did post. And now you are in a funnel.
The funnel ends with a smiling grifter who monetizes your anger. It ends with someone like Candace Owens or Nick Fuentes pretending to offer truth while spoon-feeding ancient conspiracies about Jews and power. The conveyor belt works the same way it always has, except now it is digital. It starts with empathy, ends with hate, and the transition feels like research.
This is not new. It is the same sleight of hand that built radio demagogues, televangelists, and political strongmen. The only difference is speed. What used to take years of indoctrination now happens in a weekend binge. And if you think this only happens to the other side, you have not been watching your own feed closely enough.
Because algorithms do not have morals. They have metrics. They do not care whether your post is about ceasefires or conspiracies. They care about dwell time. The machine only asks: do you look longer when you are angry? And the answer is always yes. That is how outrage becomes currency, and how bigotry becomes branding.
Here is where liberals have to grow up. Criticizing the Israeli government is not antisemitism. Opposing occupation, condemning bombing campaigns, challenging Zionism as a political project are legitimate acts of conscience. But blaming Jews as a people for the behavior of a state is not critique; it is the oldest bigotry on earth wearing a new coat. We have to hold that line clearly, publicly, and without fear of being called pedantic. Because the distinction between policy and people is the entire wall between justice and hate.
Real antisemitism looks like blaming Jews collectively for conspiracies. It looks like denying the Holocaust. It looks like vandalizing synagogues or harassing Jewish journalists online. It looks like turning centuries of scapegoating into memes. None of that is critique of a government. All of that is what every autocrat in history has used to justify violence.
And now the right, addicted to grievance, has rediscovered antisemitism as a political flavor. They call it anti-globalism. They call it traditional values. They call it free speech. They say they are just asking questions. But the questions are the same ones that were asked in Germany in the 1930s, in Russia in the 1880s, and in the Middle East when regimes needed a distraction from their own cruelty.
We can see it happening. We can watch the algorithm do it in real time. The same system that once radicalized men into misogyny with “self-improvement” content now does it with geopolitical rage. It rewards anyone who can turn pain into clicks. It does not care what the pain is about, only that it continues.
So what do we do with this? First, we stop pretending that platform design is neutral. Watch-time optimization, recommendation ladders, and cross-platform migration loops are not accidents. They are engineered for profit. The more you hate, the longer you stay. The longer you stay, the more you click. The more you click, the richer someone becomes. Hatred is not a byproduct. It is the business model.
Second, we have to fight for language. We have to say, out loud, that criticizing the state of Israel is not antisemitism, and that antisemitism is not critique. We have to defend the vocabulary of justice against the people who twist it into poison. We have to teach how to recognize the pivot: when policy critique turns into people hate, when activism turns into targeting, when solidarity turns into supremacy. The pivot is always there if you know where to look.
Third, we have to reject both antisemitism and Islamophobia with the same force. They are not opposites; they are siblings. Both rely on the idea that entire communities are defined by the worst thing someone has done in their name. Both thrive on fear and lazy generalization. Both turn neighbors into suspects. And both can be defeated by the same thing: solidarity built on shared humanity instead of algorithmic tribalism.
The antidote is not silence; it is speech with precision. It is calling out hate wherever it lives. It is protecting Jewish and Muslim communities with the same moral clarity. It is understanding that every “Free Palestine” sign loses its power the moment it becomes a license to dehumanize Jews, and every “Stand with Israel” slogan loses its legitimacy the moment it becomes an excuse to bomb civilians. Moral consistency is not weakness. It is the only form of strength that survives propaganda.
Now, to the part no one likes: this is not just a social media problem. It is a systemic one. The algorithm is a symptom of a culture that confuses outrage with engagement and attention with influence. The influencers who profit from bigotry are simply performing what the market rewards. They are salespeople for an economy that values virality over truth. They do not need to believe what they say; they just need you to.
That is why regulation has to be more than symbolic. Platforms should not get to hide behind “free speech” while amplifying incitement. Transparency should not be optional. Recommender systems should be audited. Repeat violators should lose their monetization privileges. Hate speech rules should be enforced whether the creator has ten followers or ten million. None of this requires censorship. It requires courage.
The press, too, has a role. Newsrooms cannot keep treating algorithmic radicalization as a quirky tech story. It is a civil rights issue. When the conveyor belt turns a humanitarian impulse into a recruitment funnel for hate, journalists need to cover it as systemic misconduct. Use verbs. Print names. Follow the money. Show who benefits from division. Because someone always does.
And politicians, for once, need to grow a spine. They need to say clearly that opposing the Israeli government is not antisemitism, that hating Jews is not patriotism, that Islamophobia is not national security. They need to stand up for Jewish and Muslim citizens equally, not just when cameras are on. The moral floor should not shift with polling numbers.
Meanwhile, we have to take personal responsibility for what we watch, share, and repeat. Every click is a vote. Every view is a micro-donation to the machine. Every share helps shape the world we live in. If we continue to feed the conveyor belt, it will continue to build more hate. If we unplug, question, and verify, it starves. The machine dies without us.
There is a phrase I keep returning to: “turning pain into prejudice.” That is what the algorithm does. It takes your empathy and repackages it as anger. It takes your need for justice and sells it back to you as suspicion. It teaches you to aim your rage at the nearest minority instead of the power structure that caused the pain in the first place. It convinces you that moral clarity is naivety, that compassion is weakness, that cruelty is truth.
That is why the conveyor belt must be broken. Not because the internet is evil, but because the current economy of attention is. We can no longer pretend that these are neutral systems. We must build platforms that reward accuracy, not volume. We must invest in education that teaches discernment, not reaction. We must rebuild community outside of algorithmic walls so that human contact can counter digital propaganda.
And finally, we have to name the irony. The people who claim to be defending civilization are the ones trying to erase its moral core. They speak about protecting the West while resurrecting the hatreds that once burned it down. They speak about truth while flooding the market with lies. They speak about faith while weaponizing it against every vulnerable group they can find.
But civilization is not defended by rage. It is defended by responsibility. It is defended by the ability to tell empathy from manipulation, justice from vengeance, and truth from engagement bait. If we cannot do that, we do not deserve the civilization we claim to protect.
So here is the bottom line. You can oppose Israel’s policies without hating Jews. You can support Palestinian rights without supporting terrorism. You can call for ceasefire without joining conspiracy threads. You can hold empathy for everyone caught in the machinery of war without letting yourself become a cog in the machinery of hate. You can do all of this if you remember that algorithms are not teachers, and creators are not prophets. They are salesmen, and the product is you.
That is the part the machine will never tell you. The algorithm does not care who wins the argument. It cares who keeps scrolling. And as long as we keep scrolling, the conveyor belt keeps moving, feeding on outrage, spitting out bigotry, and calling it engagement.
We can break it. But only if we decide that staying human matters more than staying online.