Open AccessAntisemitic or Bordering on Antisemitic? Grey Areas in Romanian Fake News Discourses in the Wake of the Covid-19 Pandemic
Author(s) -
Anca-Simina Martin
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
transilvania
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.186
H-Index - 5
ISSN - 0255-0539
DOI - 10.51391/trva.2021.11-12.18.
Subject(s) - antisemitism , the holocaust , pandemic , alliance , covid-19 , romanian , political science , history , media studies , judaism , sociology , law , virology , medicine , linguistics , philosophy , disease , archaeology , pathology , outbreak , infectious disease (medical specialty)
Jews as a collective have long served as scapegoats for epidemics and pandemics, such as the Bubonic Plague and, according to some scholars, the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic. This practice reemerged in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when more and more fake news outlets in the US and Europe started publishing articles on a perceived linkage between Jewish communities and the novel coronavirus. What this article aims to achieve is to facilitate a dialogue between the observations on the phenomenon made by the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania and the latest related EU reports, with a view to charting its beginnings in Romania in relation to other European countries and in an attempt to see whether Romania, like France and Germany, has witnessed the emergence of “grey area” discourses which are not fully covered by International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism.