Antisemitism Advertising
Antisemitism Advertising
Presentation & Advocacy Network
Summary
A new antisemitism campaign with a slant to the business community is going viral signed by multiple business leaders, politicians and prominent public figures which though for a good cause has a few questions on presentation and subsequent use.
In this article:
How the presentation of the campaign can be misleading as generic end racism v antisemitism-led
Concerns on the future use of personal data
US antisemitism campaign site
Contents
Introduction
A new antisemitism campaign with a slant to the business community is going viral signed by multiple business leaders, politicians and prominent public figures which though for a good cause has a few questions on presentation and subsequent use.
Antisemitism is of course unacceptable, just as is Islamophobia or any other racial or sectarian hatred and should be actively condemned.
I did this myself in a small way at a pro-Palestinian rally last Sunday, when I noticed one person (out of thousands) with an appalling sign saying “Netenyahu is worse than Hitler”. I spoke to the person at length and explained why, we shook hands and in the end they put the placard away.
“End Hate” v “End Antisemitism”
The campaign is particularly prominent on LinkedIn as a professional platform - the petition asks for your LinkedIn URL in addition to name, position, company details and email.
The way the adverts are presented could be construed as misleading with potentially mixed signalling and unknown follow-on use of emails.
There is also currently no statement anywhere on the website who is organising or funding the campaign, never mind collecting the data.
I'm aware of someone leading a very large multi-cultural team at a large corporate who was about to sign on LinkedIn. They read it as an inarguable generic statement with "hate" #endhate standing out and assumed it was an Amnesty International campaign or some such other global unaffiliated rights group.
At the last moment they noticed the small print website name https://www.saynotoantisemitism.org at the bottom of the image and after some deliberation did not sign - feeling that it in fact would indicate a form of favouritism of one type of racism over an other, whether intended or not.
To be fair “all forms of hate” including Islamophobia, Asian and Indigenous hate are mentioned in the body of the statement on the website and briefly mentioned by some signatories - however the focus here is clearly specifically on antisemitism, and most people are sharing with purely pro-Israel hash tags or sentiment.
I don't want to be too disingenuous, but can you imagine how a similar anonymous campaign advert "saynotoislamaphobia.org" mentioning other forms of racism in the body would go down in the broader community?
The small print - future use of personal data?
As noted the petition is gathering people's name, company, role, linkedIn URL details. A LinkedIn URL is valuable as this gives a longer term professional contact if you used your current business email address.
The small print notes how your information can be used:1
"The collected information will be used to acknowledge your commitment to the statement and for future campaign collateral.”
“[may be used in] Future campaigns which relate to statement, which may include the use of your name, company, and title in campaign collateral (e.g., print ads, outdoor, press)"
It's unclear which organisation is gathering the data as it's currently stated nowhere on the website or the whois domain entry (created 12/11/2023).
Regardless, that's a pretty compelling mailing list.
Don’t mistype the URL!
You'd want to ensure the site isn't confused with US site: https://www.stopantisemitism.org founded by social media influencer Liora Rez2 in 2018 which outs "antisemite of the week/year" (Kanye West) - I do hope that isn't a "future campaign"!
Related Articles
Sleekit Scotsman Antisemitism statement: I am not antisemitic. Here is an article on my own statement with some detail, defining from a variety of sources what it is and what it isn’t:
Guardian 28 Nov “Hundreds of prominent Australians sign letter condemning ‘abhorrent’ rise in antisemitism“: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/28/australia-open-letter-condemning-rise-in-antisemitism
Campaign page and register: https://www.saynotoantisemitism.org
Stopantisemitism website - Use of Personal Data: https://www.saynotoantisemitism.org/privacy-policy
US website - StopAntisemitism.org overview - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StopAntisemitism