Beijing, Other Foreign Powers Promote Anti-Semitism Online, Ben Shapiro Says

TORONTO—American pundit Ben Shapiro warned a Toronto audience that anti-Semitism isn’t just alive and well on the streets, but helped along by overseas agents.

The Chinese regime, Russia, and Iran are “still promoting extraordinary levels of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism online,” he told 1,000 attendees at the World Symposium Against Antizionism on May 17.

“This is just a reality. So, pretending there’s no foreign aspect as to what’s happening here is untrue. It’s also true that the West has imported a huge number of people from countries that were dominated by this ideology for decades,” he said.

Different studies have shown Chinese regime-linked operations promoting anti-Semitism online. This includes a 2024 study by Taiwan’s Doublethink Lab and VOA Mandarin identifying “spamouflage” networks with connections to China posting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on social media, suggesting that America’s institutions are controlled by Jewish people.

Another report by the Jewish People Policy Institute found that anti-Semitic “waves washed over China’s social and official media following the Gaza conflicts of 2021 and 2023-25.”

In keeping with the theme of the event, Shapiro argued that the belief in anti-Zionism is predicated on untruths. Anti-Zionism is broadly characterized as opposition to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.

“Anti-Zionists must lie. It is required, because you see, Israel is not, in fact, uniquely evil. In fact, Israel is uniquely good. Israel does more to protect civilian life, including the lives of those who overwhelmingly support the people who want to destroy it, than any other country on planet earth,” he said.

Anti-Zionism, he continued, “is a conspiracy theory about Israel. It says that Israel somehow controls world events, that Israel uses its nefarious doubts to harm others and benefit itself. That Israel preys on people who don’t have lives that they want to have.” As such, he concluded, “it is inherently anti-Jewish to oppose Zionism.”

Among the 20 other speakers at the event included Syrian-born Rawan Osman and UAE-based Loay Alshareef, bestselling author and Canadian professor Gad Saad, Canadian lawyer Leora Shemesh, and Canadian media entrepreneur Jesse Brown.

Brown, the founder of Canadaland, who spoke alongside influencers Lizzy Savetsky, Eve Barlow, and broadcaster Emily Austin, said he was “grateful” that so many anti-Zionists admit their “hate” openly.

“Because when did it become okay to hate a country, and in any other context, is that okay? I hate Mexico? I hate China? I don’t ever hear that… or ‘I hate Zionism’ as a way to cloak it,” he said.

“The only thing to do right now is to is to shine a light on that, expose it, and say, ‘do you really want to be with this crowd?’ Is this who you want to be?’ Because it’s a pro-violence, dehumanizing, hateful campaign.”

Author of “Parasitic Mind,” and recently released “Suicidal Empathy,” Saad compared anti-Semitism to a virus invading the immune system, in that it “evolves into new variants.”

“Now, anti-Zionism is simply the latest mutated form of a longstanding Jew-hating virus,” he said.

Toronto-based author and academic Natasha Pein, who came up with the initial idea for the event with Naya Lekht, founder of Stop Antizionism, said the symposium “achieved exactly what we set out to do.”

“We came together to name what the world has been reluctant to name: anti-Zionism is not politics, not dissent, not criticism — it is the third era of Jew-hatred, and it is a civilizational threat,” she told Epoch Times. “We gave our audience a framework for understanding how Jew-hatred mutates across eras from anti-Judaism to anti-Semitism to anti-Zionism — and why naming each mutation precisely is the first act of defeating it.”

Amir Epstein, director of Tafsik, who teamed up with Stop Antisemitism to produce the event, said the conference was designed to help “people be educated and informed” about anti-Zionism.

“While others are ignoring it, and tending to a wound that is 1,000 years old, we’re saying it’s time to focus on this new one that is blowing up, and making hatred towards us completely acceptable and normalized,” he told Epoch Times. “So it’s time to take away the weaponization of our identity. And that’s what we’re trying to do by going after anti-Zionism.”

Montreal-based student Anastasia Zorchinsky was hopeful that with allyship, the needle can move in Israel’s favour.

Speaking as the co-founder of StartUp Nation Montreal, an Israeli organization at Concordia and McGill University, she told Epoch Times that her group tries “to do lots of events that collaborate between different cultures.

“So I think the first step is really to take that step to reach out to those other communities,” she said.

The Concordia Student Union Councillor—who also moderated the panel, dubbed NXT GEN Future Advocates, alongside activist Eyal Yacoby, and non-Jewish video journalists Jacob Smith and Nick Matau—echoed the panel’s discussion points.

“If we just approach people with the thought, with the optimism, that ‘yes, they will accept us,’ or maybe they don’t have to agree, but we can still talk, then maybe that’s that’s something that we should keep in mind,” Zorchinsky said.

For his part, Matau told Epoch Times “our job as individuals is just to keep pushing out that truth, even if it is hard.”

“And I think people will naturally just kind of stem towards our side a little bit,” he said.