A quarter century after al-Qaeda terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001, a new study reveals that the anniversary itself became a vehicle for spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories to tens of millions of people.
The Combat Antisemitism Movement’s Antisemitism Research Center (ARC) documented 174 high-reach social media posts published between September 11 and 13, 2026, during commemorations marking the 25th anniversary of the attacks. Together, those posts generated at least 56.5 million views, 1.2 million likes, 122,000 shares, and 46,000 comments. The posts recast the deadliest terrorist attack in modern history as a “false flag” plot orchestrated by Jews and Israel.
The report, titled “Hijacking History: The Antisemitic Campaign to Distort the Truth of 9/11,” identifies two conspiracy narratives that reinforced each other across platforms. The first used classic antisemitic tropes to portray Jews and Israel as the hidden architects of the attack, focusing heavily on Larry Silverstein, the Jewish American real estate developer who held the lease on the World Trade Center. The second broadened that libel into an anti-American narrative, accusing U.S. officials of deliberately steering the country into Middle East wars on Israel’s behalf.
ARC researchers found that these theories are no longer confined to fringe corners of the internet. The report shows them being actively repackaged for mainstream consumption through the algorithmic feeds of X, Instagram, and TikTok, reaching audiences who never sought out extremist content in the first place.
“The 25th anniversary of September 11th should have been a universal moment of remembrance and reflection,” said ARC Research Associate Oliver Marks. “Instead, our study showed how antisemites exploited the moment to resurrect and amplify familiar conspiracy narratives falsely blaming Jews and Israel for the attacks.”
Marks pointed directly to the role Silverstein’s name played in giving the conspiracy theories a veneer of legitimacy. “By weaponizing the figure of Larry Silverstein and distorting basic facts about 9/11, these narratives transform antisemitic mythology into seemingly credible ‘alternative history.’ We must confront these distortions with facts, historical truth, and an unambiguous rejection of the hatred underlying them.”
Based on the findings, CAM is calling on social media platforms to strip algorithmic amplification from antisemitic 9/11 conspiracy content. The organization is not demanding removal of the posts themselves; instead, it wants recommendation engines, discovery features, and autoplay systems to stop pushing the material to new viewers. CAM is also urging platforms to publicly disclose how often their systems served this content during the anniversary period, a transparency measure aimed at forcing companies to reckon with the scale of their own algorithms’ role in spreading the libel.
The full ARC analysis is available on the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s website.
