This year’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a global reminder of the dangers of hatred, bigotry and antisemitism, is taking place amidst growing antisemitism, hate speech, violence and Holocaust distortion.
The United Nations recognised Day held on 27 January marks the liberation of Auschwitz. The United Nations says it is a call to remember, reflect and take action to ensure such atrocities never happen again.
Rising antisemitism, a dangerous threat
However, in recent years, there has been an alarming rise in antisemitism, with violent attacks highlighting the need for stronger action.
Global Jewish leaders warned in December that a sharp spike in antisemitic incidents in Australia – which are almost five times the pre-7 October 2023 levels – is part of a dangerous global pattern threatening Jewish communities and democracies worldwide.
In December, an attack at an event marking the Jewish festival of Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Sydney, killed 15 people. And in January 2026, in the state of Victoria, five teenage boys were subjected to antisemitic abuse, when Nazi slogans and threats to stab them were shouted at them.
Other countries have also witnessed a rise in antisemitic incidents since October 2023. In Germany, they almost doubled in 2024 according to the Federal Research and Information Point for Antisemitism (RIAS), which registered 8,627 incidents of violence, vandalism, and threats against Jews.
In the UK, a synagogue in Manchester was attacked in October 2025 on Yom Kippur killing two people. CST (Community Security Trust) says it has seen an increasing rate of antisemitic incidents in the country since the Hamas terror attack in Israel in 2023. In the six months leading up to 7 October, the organisation recorded a monthly average of 161 antisemitic incidents. In the first six months of 2025, the monthly average stood at 254 incidents.
Finding solutions to tackle antisemitism
The need for effective measures to counter hate speech and antisemitism couldn’t be greater.
Media Diversity Institute has led and worked on projects combatting antisemitism and hate speech and promoting inter-ethnic and inter-religious understanding for more than two decades. The projects’ successes highlight the need for projects and activities that raise awareness, increase local community effectiveness in tackling the problem, and lead to significant behavioural change.
Fighting antisemitism in Europe
Get the Trolls Out! was launched in 2015 to empower civil society groups, including young people, to combat discrimination and religious intolerance in Europe. Phase V of the project, from December 2023 to April 2025, enabled civil society groups to identify and highlight intolerance and xenophobia, challenge stereotypes, debunk antisemitism, anti-Muslim and anti-Christian narratives across the European media landscape, and to extend networks combatting this type of hate speech.
During the latest five-year period, the project identified more than 2,000 incidents of hate speech – almost half of them on news media and the remainer on social media. Most of those incidents were anti-Muslim (47%) and antisemitic (37%). The project was also able to respond to current flash points and conducted specific media monitoring of media coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict. A report examining the media coverage on the Israel-Gaza conflict across several GTTO countries of operation, involved reviewing more than 500 reports about the events in Israel and Gaza since October 7th, 2023.
The value of GTTO extended beyond identifying cases to successfully advocating and achieving action from the media. The media was persuaded to take action and responsibility over comment sections on their websites, removing images that were inappropriate or misleading. Social media operators removed videos that spread hate. GTTO also produced The Role of the Media in Promoting Tolerance, and Tips for Journalists, which features a series of recommendations for the media to deepen understanding of the Holocaust and combat myths. Alongside this, the project produced a youth friendly guide to antisemitic narratives and tropes in the media including measures and steps to be taken to report hate speech on social media.
The project leaves behind a legacy of trained media monitors, holding the traditional and social media accountable for hatred, discrimination and stereotypes against religious groups, and guiding media editors on the importance of accurate and sensitive terminology.
Fighting antisemitism in Egypt and Iran
Salam Online, was created in 2022 to combat hate speech in Iran and Egypt in response to a growing tide of religious intolerance and incitement in digital spaces
The project was able to respond to a dramatic escalation in hate speech across the MENA region, fuelled by renewed regional conflicts and rising sectarian tension.
It documented almost 5.5 million instances of hate speech in Egypt and the broader MENA region, and 2.5 million in Iran during the project duration. Like GTTO, Salam Online provided a critical platform for elevating marginalised narratives, equipping grassroots monitors, and building cross-border resilience among civil society actors in Egypt, Iran, and the broader region.
Both projects illustrate the value of dedicated projects monitoring and countering antisemitism and other hate speech. They have pushed for accountability and trained thousands of journalists and human rights defenders.
Holocaust distortion
The task of tackling online hate speech is facing the growing challenge of AI-generated content which has elevated Holocaust distortions on social media.
In an open letter in January 2026, memorial sites and places of learning in Germany and Austria said AI-generated content (AI slop) distorts history by minimising and trivialising it, changing the viewing habits of users, who increasingly question even authentic historical documents. The posts devalue the work and undermines the credibility of memorial sites, archives, museums and research institutions.
The AI- generated content features supposed situations in Nazi concentration camps or during their liberation, including alleged reunions between prisoners and liberators, or fictional scenes of crying children behind barbed wire.
As GTTO wrote: “Far-right groups are leveraging artificial intelligence to generate dangerous pro-Nazi content by reanimating Adolf Hitler as a “misunderstood figure”. This hateful and problematic content has spread to tens of millions on social media, fuelling the already growing trend of pro-Hitler material online.
“Holocaust distortion and denial invalidate the suffering of survivors, creating feelings of alienation and insecurity. As antisemitism continues to grow both online and offline, Jewish communities face heightened anxiety and vulnerability, increasing their sense of being targets of hate.”
Academics Dr Mykola Makhortykh and Maryna Sydorova wrote that in the case of Holocaust denial and distortion, “the concerns are particularly pronounced regarding the potential of generative AI tools to propagate antisemitic hate speech, as in the case of the recent debacle with Grok referring to itself as MechaHitler and spreading hate speech, or Google’s Bard inventing fake eyewitnesses of the Holocaust and their testimonies”.
Erasing marginalised voices
The Index on Censorship has also warned about AI having a negative impact on the past, saying “our history runs the risk of being skewed towards what’s most accessible online: mainstream narratives drawn from popular databases, digitised books, encyclopaedias, widely-read history books and even crowd-sourced portals”.
It warned that marginalised voices – Indigenous people, minorities, or communities without digitised records – risk being erased further.
The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) released a Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey of Irish Adults in January 2026. It showed that younger adults are significantly more likely to encounter Holocaust denial or distortion online, with 50 per cent of young adults saying they have seen denial or distortion online, compared to only 32 percent of adults overall.
Call to action
At a time when so many younger adults are exposed to Holocaust denial and distortion and antisemitism has moved from an existence on the margins to a growing mainstream threat, more programmes that engage civil society, the media and young actors are needed.
These initiatives not only benefit the Jewish community, but also other minority groups including other victims of the Holocaust: Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and people with disabilities. As the Jewish leaders warned, democracy itself is at risk if hate and discrimination prevail.
