Comment-section codes, a decades-old conspiracy theory on the House floor, a Senate primary shadowed by antisemitism allegations. What connects this week’s items is language: who’s using it, what it’s actually saying, and whether the people hearing it can tell. That’s a skill, and it can be taught. This issue is partly a lesson in it, starting with our new field guide.
Join The Nexus Project for a timely panel discussion commemorating the 250th anniversary of American independence on Wednesday, June 17 at 7:30 p.m. ET. As powerful forces work to undo long-fought battles for civil rights, Nexus is doubling down on its role as a pro-democracy organization. This conversation gathers leading voices to discuss what the next 250 years of American democracy could look like when we protect and strengthen our shared values.
Panelists include Fatima Goss Graves, CEO of the National Women’s Law Center; Idit Klein, Founding President and CEO of Keshet; Justin Florence, Co-Founder and Legal Director of Protect Democracy; and Adama Bah, Founder and Executive Director of Afrikana.
A juice box emoji. Two lightning bolts. “271,000.” “Early life check.” These are antisemitic codes, and they’re built to do two jobs at once: signal to those who know, and slip past everyone who doesn’t, including the content moderation systems that would flag the words they replace.
Our field guide to these codes, memes, and phrases now lives on our website, with examples from the actual comment sections where they appear. The codes only work when people can’t read them.
Rep. Thomas Massie took to the House floor Monday to call for a new investigation into Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, claiming it was “intentional murder.” Israel mistakenly struck the American ship during the Six-Day War, killing 34 crew members. It apologized, paid damages to the U.S. and the victims’ families, and multiple American investigations, including the CIA’s, concluded the attack was a mistake.
The myth that it was deliberate has spent decades as a recruitment funnel into antisemitism, amplified by Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, and Tucker Carlson as supposed proof of Israeli control over the American government. As we wrote this week, what lives on 4chan and InfoWars now gets dedicated time on the House floor. Marjorie Taylor Greene cheered the speech. Congressional leadership should be calling it out.
Graham Platner won Maine’s Democratic Senate nomination this week and will face Sen. Susan Collins in November. His campaign ended the way it began, attacking AIPAC, including the claim that Collins is “bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu” because a third of her quarterly fundraising came through the pro-Israel lobby.
Nexus President Jonathan Jacoby told JTA: “The insinuation that the government of Israel is ‘buying’ or directly controlling any politician who receives AIPAC funding or any American political donor that donates through a pro-Israel conduit is reductive and wrong.”
Debate over AIPAC’s political spending is legitimate. Recasting American Jewish donors as instruments of a foreign government is something else, and the distinction matters in a race already shadowed by the candidate’s Totenkopf tattoo.
The House Appropriations Committee approved a $40 million increase for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, bringing its 2027 proposal to $355 million, the highest funding level ever to pass out of committee. Reps. Juan Ciscomani, Celeste Maloy, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Lois Frankel secured the bipartisan amendment.
Every extra dollar helps ensure people of all faiths can gather to pray, learn, celebrate, and mourn without fear of violence. But $355 million remains far below the $1 billion advocates say is needed, and the proposal still has to survive a chaotic appropriations process. We still have a long way to go.
In the Forward, UCLA historian and Nexus Task Force member David Myers takes apart the Justice Department’s second lawsuit against his university, writing that it “succumbs to the Trumpian instinct to alter the facts to fit one’s political proclivities.” Myers, one of six UCLA chairs in Jewish studies left off the university’s own antisemitism task force, argues the fight against campus hate needs more education, not less speech.
A viewer in Nick Fuentes’ Rumble chat posted an offer to pay in cryptocurrency for the murder of fellow far-right streamer Sneako. Primetimer’s coverage cited our statement from earlier this year, when the two were filmed singing along to Ye’s “Heil Hitler” track: glorifying Hitler and the Nazis is cause for grave concern, doubly so when the participants have the ear of the President.
This is what we do: track real antisemitism, call out when it’s weaponized, and make clear the difference. If you’d like to support this work, you can donate here. We’d love to connect.
We’ll continue offering clear responses, frameworks, and resources as these stories develop.
The conspiracy theories that recruit people into antisemitism rarely announce themselves as hate. They show up as history you were never taught, a war you have every right to question, a death that feels too clean.
Antisemitism is getting easier to say out loud, and easier to invoke when it’s convenient.
