Hate Speech Goes Galactic as Jewish Astronaut Attacked: Iran's Month in Hate Speech

Hate speech may start with words but it can end in more than just tears – it can end with violence and even death. IranWire's "Iran's Week in Hate Speech" series tracks Persian-language social media posts and articles targeting religious groups in Iran with derogatory language, conspiracy theories and calls for violence. Our tracking is not exhaustive: we focus on influencers and websites with large followings and wide reach. The series is designed to inform the general public and to help social media companies exercise their responsibility to monitor and remove hate speech on their channels.

More than 72% of social media posts tracked by IranWire this past December targeted Jews with anti-Semitic hate speech material.

The finding shows there is no decrease in the high levels of content vilifying Jews that IranWire tracked in the final quarter of last year.

Iranian Baha'is were also singled out for significant amounts of digital hate, at about 17%, while the remaining 11% of social media hate speech targeted Sunni Muslims, Sufis, Christians and Zoroastrians, with Sunnis the most targeted part of that wider group.

Antisemitic social media posts and state media articles over December reached up to approximately 26 million direct followers on Twitter, Instagram and through official outlets such as Mehr News and the Islamic Republic News Agency.

Dozens of antisemitic posts reaching hundreds of thousands of users resorted to abusive language, conspiracy theories, and violent speech. IranWire reproduces limited examples of this antisemitic hate speech to demonstrate the brutality of posts published by many Iranian influencers.

One post that reached more than 12,000 users called Jews "dirty Zionist rats" while another, reaching more than 20,000 users, referred to a Zionist "dog".

A separate post reaching 20,000 online said that Judaism as a religion has "nothing to do" with Moses – a form of ahistorical propaganda necessary for fundamentalist Muslims who accept Moses as a prophet that preceded Muhammad.

Other posts called Zionists "savages" and said that their guns were like "family members". One user said that women in Islam were not obliged to do housework but in Judaism they were meant to be "like a dog". And another called a Jewish user a "catamite" and a "johoud" which is a slur for a "hidden Jew".

One of the most other-wordly hate speech attacks of the month came in an X/Twitter post that called the Iranian-American NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, who is Jewish, a "murderer" when she celebrated Hanukkah aboard the International Space Station.

The post was seen by at least 59,000 direct followers as well as indirect users on the platform. The American politician and presidential candidate Nikki Haley, meanwhile, was labeled a "Zionist Hindu" in a post reaching more than 20,000 followers.

Several X posts celebrated Israeli military casualties of the Gaza conflict – reaching at least about 800,000 direct followers on the platform. Two other posts (reaching about 40,000 followers apiece) also called for the elimination of Israel as a state.

Iranian state media outlets Mehr News and the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reaching audiences of over ten million people also broadcast articles publicizing alleged Iran-backed actions against Israel while also declaring that the "barbaric Zionist regime" would soon be "destroyed".

One IRNA article claimed that the "Zionist authorities" wanted to "bury Palestinian prisoners alive". Other pieces denounced universal human rights as a ploy to "maintain [western] power and arrogance".

Anti-Baha'i material over the month also covered routine topics for the Iranian government's purveyors of hate speech. One influencer, whose post reached about 20,000 users, praised the Iranian government for blocking Baha'is from using a cemetery and thereby ensuring that they are not buried close to Muslim. The post refers to ongoing difficulties Baha'is experience in Iran in using their own grave sites.

And a handful of anti-Baha'i posts on Instagram in early December accused ManotoTV, the London-based Persian language satellite broadcaster, of being a "Baha'i TV channel".

The accusation mirrors past claims by Islamic Republic propagandists that the UK's BBC was the "Baha'i Broadcasting Corporation". One such claim produced by Iranian state media remains on YouTube today.