Canary Mission - Arguably the single most effective effort against BDS and hate speech - by Edwin Black

Canary Mission monitors, spotlights, and reports cases of online hate speech – a vital service, as hate speech often precedes hateful acts of violence. It remains to be seen whether this undertaking will be embraced by the people it is designed to defend and protect.

Canary Mission website, photo by author

Edwin Black..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,054..
02 January '19..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/canary-mission-bds/

The Canary Mission organization has several locations from which it conducts endless social media searches, refreshes, clicks, video reviews, forwards, and saves in an effort to capture the worst of the openly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) agitation and hate speech erupting across America’s campuses. Its work also encompasses white nationalism.

BDS advocates often spew some of the most venomous hate speech visible on the Internet, hate speech that Canary Mission captures and re-publishes in personal profiles. For example, it exposed a Chicago activist with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) who tweeted this joke: “Why did Hitler commit suicide?…….. He saw the gas bill. Pahhahaha.” It also captured this tweet by a UCLA student protestor: “Mmmaaaannnnnnnnnnn what’s with all this peaceful approaches!?? F**k that. I want terrorism and another intifada.” The same UCLA student reportedly added a photo close-up of a gun and bullets.

After the massacre at Pittsburgh, calls went out broadly to monitor, spotlight, and report hate speech, especially since hateful acts of violence are often preceded by hate speech. That is precisely what Canary Mission does. Canary Mission tracks social media and videos, capturing BDS, anti-Zionist, and anti-Semitic expressions. It then triangulates those expressions into individual profiles: permanent, publicly visible records of the words and images really used by BDS and SJP leaders. The profiles are almost always incontestable because Canary Mission links to actual videos, tweets, and other open documentation. Its intent is to shine an indelible light on students, faculty, and others trafficking in this kind of online hate, thus creating a negative incentive – or at least a consequence for anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hate speech.