Lucy Lipiner is no stranger to antisemitism. A 90-year-old Holocaust survivor, she was forced to live through one of the worst atrocities to ever take place in human history. Yet her lived experience still hasn’t prevented the torrent of antisemitic abuse that she, and all Jewish people, currently are experiencing on social media – in particular on Elon Musk’s “X” (formerly known as Twitter). This week was no exception.
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Lipiner, who boasts just under 30,000 followers on the platform, says she regularly uses social media to engage and push back against the rising antisemitism that she is seeing.
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Holocaust survivor Lucy Lipiner regularly uses social media to call out Holocaust denial and revisionism
(Photo: Tel Aviv Institute)
“I was appalled at the rise in antisemitism that seemed more blatant – less hidden than in the past and more like what we had seen before the war in Europe. … I felt, as a survivor, compelled to speak up,” she told Ynet.
And she has definitely spoken up. Lipiner regularly uses social media to call out Holocaust denial and revisionism, using her own personal story from Nazi-occupied Poland, as well as her own collection of family photos from the Holocaust, to share the truth.
From taking on former UFC fighter Jake Shields for spreading antisemitic conspiracies to calling out anti-feminist right-wing pundit Pearl Davis for her antisemitic song, to exposing the antisemitism in UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s tweets, Lipiner is extremely active in the conversation on the X platform.
Lipiner considers anti-Zionism a form of antisemitism.
“I also thought the rise of BDS was simply a veiled form of antisemitism in the guise of anti-Zionism, which increasingly felt like nothing less than today’s version of age-old hatred of Jews,” she said.
This week, when she published a post on X about the anniversary of the lynching of Leo Frank, she was met with a massive onslaught of white supremacist antisemitism in response. The result was a community note – a fact-checking tool meant to add context to tweets - which incorrectly stated that Leo Frank, the victim of the lynching, murdered and raped a 13-year-old girl. In fact, Frank was wrongly convicted for the rape and murder of Mary Phagan, in a case that is widely believed to be permeated with blatant antisemitism akin to the Dreyfus affair.
“I tweeted about the 108th anniversary of the lynching of an innocent Jewish man Leo Frank who was accused of murder amidst a horrifically antisemitic community environment. His lynchers were never brought to Justice. A community note says it all: antisemitism is still alive and kicking today,” she said.
Beyond the community note, the responses to her tweet were also antisemitic. One comment read: “Gee it’s almost like they were kicked out of 109 countries for a reason…” Another: “You don't have to be in colonized Palestine to defend the indefensible, you simply have to be a zionist.”
While hundreds pushed back and eventually the X platform removed the community note, the evidence of the antisemitic mob remains. Lipiner said that she routinely receives ugly antisemitic threats and messages in her private messages on social media as well, including users mocking her with Holocaust jokes about gas chambers.
“Hate-filled trolls seem to enjoy engaging with me. Mostly they deny the Holocaust ever happened or diminish it, compare it to other events- or a favorite of trolls is to co-opt the term Nazi, using it to describe Israel and its right to defend itself against terror,” she said.
In another message, Lipiner shared with Ynet, an X user wrote to tell her that she is “not a real Jew” and that “the Torah says the Jews were and are a black race of people. You're not black so stop spreading lies to the public. …We are sick and tired of you stealing our history.” Not the real Jews is a phrase most commonly used by Black supremacists – including Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam and the Black Hebrews movement - claiming Black people, and not Jews, are the true chosen people of God.
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Holocaust survivor Lucy Lipiner pushes back against antisemitism on social media
(Photo: Tel Aviv Institute)
Yet in the face of such vile conversation, Lipiner isn’t backing down; instead, she’s doubling down.
“The trolls honestly don’t bother me. I’ve dealt with so much worse, and I guess I must be relevant,” she joked. But she is concerned about the level of vitriol on social media, in particular X.
“On paper, these platforms may look fair and as if they are searching for the correct balance on the fine line between free speech and hate speech, but in Elon Musk’s case I think he has shown his true personal feelings and that is influencing what he allows to stand on X,“ she explained.
Concerns of antisemitism and other forms of cyberbullying have only intensified over the past week, with Musk announcing that he intends to do away with the blocking feature completely.
Despite the challenges, however, Lipiner sees participation in social media as a critical tool.
The role of social media is simple, she said, "to educate, educate, educate. People are reacting to this instantaneous, immediate gratification with less thought than ever before. Slogans carry enormous weight on social media allowing people to latch on to antisemitism and racist attitudes as if it’s the flavor of the month.”
To help push back against the harassment, threats and intimidation, which have become almost expected for a Jewish person on social media today, Lipiner has partnered with the Tel Aviv Institute to help Jewish and non-Jewish influencers combat antisemitism online.
Hen Mazzig, co-founder of the Tel Aviv Institute told Ynet: “We work with over one hundred Jewish online content creators and influencers, but no one has the stamina that Lucy has to fight antisemitism online. Every time she speaks at our signature content creator laboratories the participants are blown away by her courage, tenacity and tireless dedication to speaking truth to power.”
Lipiner’s best advice for those in the fight against antisemitism is to: “Have a thick skin, do your research, be as honest as possible, and always work toward a greater good, even if it seems like an impossible dream.”