From Syria to antisemitism: The new face of old lies, now on Substack

A report on missing Syrian women was derailed by raw Jew-hate. I traced it back to the source. Here's what I found.

It began with a simple, painful, underreported crisis: dozens of Alawite women have gone missing in Syria this year — abducted, trafficked, some never heard from again. I did not expect a response to this Note to come in the form of classic antisemitic conspiracy theories. But that is exactly what appeared in the comments: accusations that Jews are trafficking Syrian women for organs, followed by an unprovoked slur dismissing a reader’s challenge as “just Jew talk.”

Like many others, I have seen antisemitic comments on the streets of major cities, on the internet, even on Substack, in some of the comments to my articles and Notes. But this was the most vicious Jew-hate I have so far seen on this platform, a site that invites in-depth analyses and independent thought.

This is how Bird responded to my Note on the abductions and disappearances of Alawite women:

Jews at work. Bodysnatchers. Since Ukraine is not going so well and the Mexican border is finally somewhat closed, the kidnappers have also shown up in the Phillipines. So Syria also.

The Platform Problem

Graeme Bird’s content lives on Substack, a platform that prides itself on free expression and independent thought. But at what point does free speech become a tool for spreading hate and incitement? Bird’s posts are public. His comments are shared.

His lies are no longer whispered on fringe forums in some obscure place: they are republished, restacked, and normalized.

Will Substack recognize this kind of speech as dangerous before it’s too late? Will Substack allow hatred to disguise itself as independent analysis?

Why This Matters

I wrote about missing women. About human suffering. About the silencing of Alawite voices in Syria.

That should have been the story.

Instead, it became another data point in the age-old game of scapegoating Jews, even when they have nothing to do with the matter at hand. The hatred isn’t incidental. It’s reflexive. It hijacks the conversation and tries to render the truth unrecognizable.

When Jew-hate creeps into every unrelated conversation — from Syrian trafficking to Iranian defense policy — it reveals something fundamental: this isn’t about disagreement. It’s about worldview.

A Line in the Sand

There is no room for this kind of hate on my platform.

I report stories from difficult regions, from marginalized communities, and from the frontlines of ideological conflict. I welcome serious disagreement. I welcome critique. But I will not accept antisemitism, denialism, or hate speech.

Graeme Bird has been reported and blocked. If Substack takes its own values seriously, they should take further action.

Of course, there is no guarantee that he will not pop up again under a different name. (He is on social media but has not got as much traction on X and FB as he has here.)

In the meantime, let this serve as a reminder though we Jews do not need it: Jew-hatred is not gone.

It has simply learned how to rebrand.

And sometimes, all it takes is one article about Syria to bring it crawling out from the sewers again.

What we can do

Speak clearly. Report hate. Don’t let silence let it stand.

If we want truth to survive, we have to protect the spaces where it can still be told. That means calling out the lies. Even when they are wrapped in pseudo-intellectualism, and hiding in the comment sections.

Who Is Graeme Bird?

Graeme Bird is not a household name. He has been running a Substack for four months and has a modest following, around 50 subscribers; so you might ask why pay attention to someone like him?

In the digital age, fringe voices can travel far. They feed the algorithms, recruit sympathizers, and poison discourse under the guise of “alternative thinking.”

Bird’s rhetoric isn’t unique, but it is dangerous.

It’s part of a broader ecosystem in which Jew-hate is repackaged as political critique and spread across platforms with little resistance. Documenting it isn’t about giving him attention. It’s about exposing a mindset, one that festers and spreads when left unchallenged.

In a recent Note, he described Jews as global manipulators, claiming they will force America to spend “a Kings ransom” to rebuild Israel while plotting fresh attacks against Iran. He portrays Jews as both puppet masters and warmongers, exploiting war for profit and blood.

He ends his Note with this:

Then when the Jews do something really evil to Iran again, the Iranians get to smash up Israel again.

This is not political critique. It is not dissent. It is hate speech, plain and simple.

Beyond comments and Notes: The depth of the ideology

Yes, his content is loud, aggressive, and steeped in antisemitic rhetoric. But that is only the half of it.

Even his seemingly scientific articles reek of Jew-hate and conspiracy theories that would have been right at home in 1930s pamphlets.

One particularly revealing title: Anti-Semitic Plant Fusion And The Healthiest Natural Drink. Read it at risk of your sanity.

To illustrate the depth of his detachment from reality, here a summary of his most recent article (Team Fomenko Part One. The Baby Brother Analogy.):

Bird promotes the fringe theory of “New Chronology” popularized by Russian pseudohistorian Anatoly Fomenko, claiming that all of ancient history was fabricated after the invention of paper in the 12th century.

According to Bird, Jesus was actually a medieval emperor named Andronicus Comnenus, crucified in 1185, and the so-called Indo-European migrations occurred not in prehistory but in the Middle Ages.

But this historical revisionism is just a vehicle for a darker agenda: he asserts that Jews were “a 15th-century invention,” describes them as a genetically engineered “Golem” bred by elites to control the world, and calls for them to be “abolished.”

And he adds a comment to his own article:

The 1204 invasion of Constantinople was not really an invasion of Constantinople since Constantinople was built later. It was the invasion of another town on the Bosphorus. Later to be called Jarosh but now extinct. A shorter version of what earlier was likely called Jerusalem. The first of four cities called Jerusalem.

These are not eccentric ideas.

They are classic antisemitic libels, repackaged for digital-age conspiracists and couched in pseudo-intellectual language to bypass immediate detection.

(If you are up to it, you can try to randomly select one of his articles and see if he manages to keep his Jew-hate out of it. I just looked again and even this 1-minute read of something that seems to be scientific is a vehicle for promoting vilification of the Jews: No Quantum Part Three: Taxonomy Of Stupidity.)

The Rhetorical Pattern of Hate

Bird's posts follow a well-worn script, the same antisemitic libels recycled with updated references.

Returning to the original trigger for this article, his comment under my Note about the abductions and disappearances of Alawite women: according to him, Jews cause chaos in Syria to harvest organs, manipulate U.S. foreign policy to start wars, and lie to cover it all up.

There is nothing original here.

It’s just the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” with a Substack login: Jews control the world / Jews harvest organs from non-Jews / Jews control the media and use it to silence the truth.

The vocabulary may change.
But the structure remains the same:
Jews are always to blame.

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