Antisemitism on Substack is Gaining Ground

Antisemitism on Substack was the last thing on my mind when I shared a painful story about how dozens of Alawite women in Syria have gone missing this year: kidnapped, trafficked, many never heard from again.

However, this simple Note about the tragedy led me to discover one of the ugliest antisemitic tirades I’ve yet seen on Substack. Not from a nameless troll, but from a newsletter writer with public posts and subscribers.

Here’s how he responded to my writing about the disappearances of Syrian women:

Jews at work. Bodysnatchers… So Syria also.

The commenter was Graeme Bird.

He cloaks his conspiracy theories in pseudo-intellectual language and historical revisionism. This make his Jew-hate easier to dismiss as harmless fringe content than what we have come to recognize as antisemitism in pro-Palestinian activism.

But it isn’t harmless. And it isn’t fringe.

The Platform Problem

Substack says it’s a home for writers who think independently and challenge the status quo. That’s one reason I write there.

But when open antisemitism spreads unchecked, the line between independent thought and hate speech begins to blur.

Bird’s content is public. His subscribers can restack, share, and engage. Some of his posts read like direct reboots of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion dressed up with modern references, junk science, or obscure historical tidbits to try to make them seem thoughtful.

What triggered me was that his vile comment was prompted by my Note about Syrian women. It had nothing to do with Jews. But Jew-hate doesn’t need relevance. It just needs an excuse.

What This Reveals

I didn’t write about religion or about politics. I wrote about women who were abducted. About human suffering. About families searching for answers and silence where there should have been outrage.

But in the mind of a conspiracist, Jews are always to blame. Even for crimes with which they have nothing to do.

This is not disagreement. This is not “another point of view.”

This is a worldview built around one obsession: to blame Jews for everything, then call it truth.

And when platforms like Substack let it fester, that worldview spreads.

Why Name Him?

Graeme Bird isn’t famous. He has a few dozen subscribers. He’s been on Substack for several months.

So why write about him?

Because in 2025, content like his moves quickly. It gets recommended by algorithms, shared in groups, linked to other fringe voices. And the next thing you know, someone who starts by reading about “alternative history” ends up reading about how Jews were invented in the 15th century to control the world.

That’s not a slippery slope. That’s a funnel. And people are being pulled into it.

Bird claims Jesus was a medieval emperor. He calls Jews a genetically engineered “Golem.” He says they should be “abolished.”

He links Jews to every war, every manipulation, every act of violence.

He describes the abductions of Syrian women as a Jewish plot to harvest organs. He says Jews orchestrated the Ukraine war, manipulate the Mexican border, and provoke Iran just to profit from war.

This is not nuance. It’s not critique. It’s hate speech.

How Antisemitism Spreads

Bird’s followers may be few, but he’s not isolated. He’s part of an ideological web where antisemitism disguises itself as truth-telling.

And it keeps popping up in new forms.

He writes articles on physics and philosophy, but even in a piece on “quantum stupidity,” he manages to smear Jews. He compares Jewish history to engineered plants. He says Israel is a parasite state. He imagines historical cities replaced with Jewish fakes.

These aren’t one-off comments. They’re patterns.

And the pattern is familiar: Jews cause the problem, Jews profit from the suffering, Jews must be stopped.

What We Can Do about Antisemitism on Substack

This is the part where I step back and remind you: I don’t write hit pieces. I write because I want the truth out in the open.

So here’s what matters:

• Report hate, even when it’s dressed as “deep thought.”

• Don’t give it silence.

• Don’t let it hide in footnotes and comments.

• Protect the spaces where hard stories can still be told. Stories about Syria, Iran, or the rise of a new brand of old hatred.

Because what starts as one Note about missing women can become a battleground for truth itself.

And because even when it seems absurd, hatred this unfiltered still finds ears. And sometimes, if it isn’t exposed early, it finds followers too. In this case, 51 people who subscribed to receive his hatred in their email inboxes.

A longer version of this article first appeared on Substack on 29.6.2025.