The enthusiasm with which the right-wingers have taken up the cause of Israel and Zionism would be laughable if it were not so outright cruel, at a time when many Gazans do not even know if they will live to see another morning.
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI — Morphed pictures, fabricated videos, and fictitious claims that Hamas fighters are beheading babies, raping women, and putting children in cages have helped fuel hatred against Palestinians and the Hamas resistance.
Several videos from gameplay simulations and the war in Syria to screengrabs from Netflix shows and short films, social media is inundated with misinformation as well as active disinformation.
Many of these claims are emerging from fake and anonymous accounts from India, especially those who otherwise claim allegiance to right-wing ideologies.
Then, there are layers of disinformation within disinformation. BOOM Live, the fact-checking website revealed how a scene from a Palestinian short film Empty Place is being shared on social media with a false claim that it shows Palestinians staging a scene using child actors to show Israeli soldiers killing children. Boom also added that “the same video is being shared by several right-wing Indian X users with the same false claim.”
Empty Place is based on the story of imprisoned Palestinian activist Ahmed Manasra.
Disinformation on X (formerly Twitter) has taken over with alarming speed.
In the latest outbreak of violence between Palestine and Israel, this has been truer than ever. Videos, clips, screenshots – it is a free-for-all, with little verification. While the platform has allowed the besieged Gazans a voice as they face increasingly terrifying bombing and the cutting off of electricity, it has also led to the mass participation of right-wing accounts, especially from India, who are especially keen to throw their support behind Israel.
Inexplicably, many of them support both Adolf Hitler and the Jews, all in one breath. They have been repeatedly extending their support to Israel, to the extent that this tendency has been noticed and humorously mocked on social media platforms by users of other countries as well.
These days, news buffs are finding it much harder to authenticate the source of information and distinguish between what is fake and what is actually relevant ground reporting.
From videos that claim that a celebrity has supported Palestine, to firecrackers being passed off as rockets, there is an unstoppable barrage of ‘news’ that really isn’t. With blue ticks being up for sale, for a price, anyone can claim to be authentic and, on the ground, passing off fake news as fact. This is further fuelled by the fact that blue tick accounts are eligible for monetisation of their posts.
If one were to repost a particularly egregious or problematic post, as is often done to condemn or criticise it, the original owner of the post still earns money off it. Forbes has compiled a partial list of posts on X about the conflict that are in fact, fake. While Zionist accounts run amok still, many social media companies, including X, have banned Hamas-affiliated accounts and politicians.
X is known to easily bow under government pressure as it has done so in the past with the Indian government being one of the most common offenders with regards to demanding censorship of posts. It is also true that there has been a degree of misinformation from Palestinian-affiliated accounts with regard to possible attacks by Zionist forces, such as a wrongly labelled video of a mosque being demolished which turned out to be from Syria. Ironically, the video was shared — by right-wing accounts in India, including by a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson in Uttar Pradesh — in a mocking and celebratory way, with the caption that Israel should have at least allowed the azaan to complete. @MrSinha_, a known right-wing account also shared a video claiming it was of a Muslim chanting Allah-o-Akbar and beheading a boy, which also turned out to be a video from Syria.
Deliberate disinformation in the era of social media is common in times of conflict. However, what is unique about the current wave of active disinformation, is how a decades-long conflict, and the gruesome reality of the occupation of Palestinian people in what is effectively an open-air prison, is being used for domestic politics.
The enthusiasm with which the right-wingers have taken up the cause of Israel and Zionism would be laughable if it were not so outright cruel, at a time when many Gazans do not even know if they will live to see another morning. It has long been understood that there are many parallels between Hindutva and Zionism — especially in their dual character to both play exemplary victims (and always, victims of alleged Muslim violence or presence), as well as promote a rather muscular, dominant and all-powerful image. But this latest chapter shows that right-wing groups and individuals in India are willing to attach themselves to any possible ideology that dominates or harms Muslims, even if it contradicts their inherent sympathy for ideologies like Nazism.
