(OSV News) — Many of the online antisemitic attacks against scholar Amy-Jill Levine, the newly appointed president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, appear to be part of ongoing anti-Israel, anti-Jewish social media campaigns — with several actors already known to extremism experts, according to sources consulted by OSV News.

Specifically, a number of the CBA-related social media posts attempt to correlate Levine, the association’s first Jewish president, with the Israeli government amid the war in Gaza, and to vent opposition to the war using Levine as a target.

“They have this anti-Israel government issue, and they end up lumping in all Jewish people with that,” CBA executive director Archie Wright told OSV News. “And that turns to antisemitism against all Jewish people.”

In addition, numerous posts denouncing Levine’s appointment repeat common antisemitic tropes, with others also invoking fears of heresy while upholding hardline traditionalist Catholic stances critical of Pope Leo XIV and several bishops. 

Anti-Israel, antisemitic, and monetized

Several of the posters — including two interviewed by OSV News, who both espouse anti-Israel and, in the case of one poster, deeply antisemitic views — monetize their content on social media through one or more common strategies, such as direct subscriptions, ad revenue sharing, paid posts or online brand-building that can be transferred to revenue gained from merchandise and appearances.

The social media attacks against Levine — which have included at least one post shared with OSV News that expresses a graphic wish for her harm — highlight the global acceleration of antisemitism.

The controversy also reveals the deliberate amplification of many so-called viral social media posts and the financial incentives for promoting such content online. Social media platforms continue to provide “safe spaces for the spread of hate, conspiracy theories and disinformation,” as an April 2024 report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate noted.

In particular, as the CCDH report detailed, a number of social media accounts have gained both prominence and profit by uploading “hateful content in the context of the Israel-Gaza conflict,” since, as the report’s title states, “hate pays” on social media.

An unlikely target

The swift backlash against the appointment of Levine, a New Testament expert highly regarded in academic and Vatican circles, contrasts starkly with the world of biblical scholarship, in which scholars of various Jewish and Christian denominations have routinely collaborated for decades without attracting media attention.

A Google Trends query shows the name “Catholic Biblical Association” has been the subject of few Google searches for the past two decades, with a sharp spike (a comparative increase of more than 5,000%) occurring in August — after news of Levine’s appointment and the subsequent backlash emerged.

The CBA was founded in 1936 to further biblical scholarship and research in related disciplines. Wright admitted to OSV News that the organization has remained largely unknown to “a majority of Catholics,” who are also “unaware of the Catholic (biblical) scholarship that’s out there.”

In fact, said Wright, the CBA has been making “a concerted effort to try to correct” that lack of awareness. It also hopes to educate Catholics on “how Catholic (biblical) scholarship can help the Church,” he said, particularly in fostering the Jewish-Catholic dialogue called for by the Second Vatican Council.

News of Levine’s appointment initially unfolded in quiet fashion. A longtime CBA member, she was named president during the organization’s July 20 annual general meeting, with the association making the announcement public Aug. 7.

Camillo Barone, a New York-based staff reporter for the National Catholic Reporter, and NCR news editor Carol Zimmerman told OSV News that Barone’s Aug. 12 article likely marked the first media coverage of Levine’s appointment. 

Once NCR’s story was published to its website and social media, several online accounts began commenting on the piece.

‘Spiderweb’ of posts with ‘identical, scripted text’

OSV News confirmed with a researcher at the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism that the spike in antisemitic posts against Amy-Jill Levine showed a “tight cluster of accounts that posted verbatim, identical scripted text within minutes of each other” on Aug. 14.

 The posts — made across X, Telegram and Instagram — were led in particular by accounts that appear to be operated by Erik Warsaw, Joel Webbon and Enior Jiménez. Posts by these users about Levine were then reposted and amplified by smaller social media accounts, expanding the “spiderweb” of posts, said the researcher.

Warsaw is an anti-Jewish and anti-Israel social media content creator, while Webbon is a controversial Texas-based pastor and ministry leader known for his support of Christian nationalism and anti-Jewish views. Jiménez’s X profile describes the account holder as a Christian conservative. 

‘Infiltration,’ ‘intentional subversion’ and Holocaust denial

Webbon and Jiménez did not respond to requests for comment from OSV News. Warsaw spoke by phone with OSV News for approximately 35 minutes Sept. 4 before abruptly hanging up.

Describing himself as “Catholic, born and raised,” Warsaw said he began posting about Levine’s appointment “at the very beginning peak of it going viral.”

Warsaw said he “initially assumed” the CBA was “with the Vatican,” but then came to regard the association — an independent nonprofit promoting biblical scholarship — as “a tiny little group” that is aiming to engage in “infiltration.”

“I really feel that there’s a lot of stuff going on in the Catholic faith that is intentional subversion,” said Warsaw.

Referring to Levine as “extremely Jewish” and “biased,” he alleged she was “using the position” as CBA president “to influence us politically.”

Asked by OSV News, Warsaw admitted he was unfamiliar with “Nostra Aetate,” the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on the Catholic Church’s relationship with the Jewish people and those of other faiths.

The text denounced antisemitism in all its forms, with post-conciliar Vatican writings distinguishing between the modern state of Israel as a political entity and the religious attachment most Jews feel toward the land of their forebears, which finds its roots in the Bible and is enshrined in Jewish liturgy and prayer. In 1975, the Vatican invited Christians to understand that attachment without making “any particular religious interpretation of this relationship.”

Conflating Israel nation-state with all Jewish people

Like Warsaw, other social media account holders also sought to associate Levine’s appointment with both the Vatican and the modern nation-state of Israel.

One of several social media graphics about Levine posted on X by Sign of the Cross Media — a self-identified Catholic website affiliated with LifeSiteNews that provides “up-to-date information” on an “international conflict” driven by “global de-population secularists” — showed side-by-side images of an unsmiling Pope Leo XIV and the national flag of Israel.

The graphic was reposted by multiple accounts, including that of former Trump supporter Breck Worsham, who under the X social media handle “The Patriotic Blonde” and its associated website rails against Trump administration policies, particularly with regard to Israel.

Speaking to OSV News, Warsaw reviled Christian Zionists and Zionism, saying those who hold such views “absolutely hate us.”

Warsaw declared he “did not believe” that 6 million Jews (the internationally recognized figure) died in the Holocaust, or Shoah, the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and killing of Jews by Germany’s Nazi regime and its collaborators.

A review of Warsaw’s social media posts over the past few years shows extensive antisemitic content, which he continues to publish multiple times per day.

From ‘absolute nobody’ to paid influencer

In a December 2024 podcast interview, Warsaw admitted that he was “an absolute nobody” on social media prior to the start of the Israel-Hamas war, after which he gained an audience.

He explained he had “learned the computer algorithm” to “make the video the best for search engine optimization.”

Warsaw said he “also had to learn the human algorithm” to “put your hook in the first few seconds,” “draw the audience in” and make his content “fast” and “entertaining.”

In a text message sent after he ended his call with OSV News, Warsaw said his posts about Levine were unmonetized, as his “work protecting Christians is free.”

Jeremy Johnson, another admittedly monetized social media personality who reposted two of Warsaw’s videos about Levine, also told OSV News that he was “not paid to share” those posts, saying he is not compensated for content about “the messages I read in the Bible.”

Johnson — a trucker turned online influencer, who posts under the X handle “The Disrespected Trucker” (@DisrespectedThe) — often interprets such messages in an apocalyptic light. He commented in an Aug. 16 repost of a Warsaw video denouncing Levine, “Satan has entered the Catholic Church.”

Speaking to OSV News for almost an hour Aug. 29, Johnson said he had seen news of Levine’s appointment in an X post and “researched a little bit.”

Raised Lutheran but not affiliated with any denomination, Johnson said he had a recent “spiritual awakening” and seeks to promote belief in Jesus Christ while, among other causes, protesting Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip.

“I don’t like Israel’s government because they’re committing genocide,” said Johnson, who has also questioned the events and death tolls of the Holocaust, while maintaining he is not antisemitic but “anti-Zionist.”

New antisemitic campaigns for 9/11

A few hours before speaking with OSV News on Sept. 4, Warsaw launched a social media campaign blaming Israel and Jewish persons for the 9/11 attacks. His subsequent posts — which included live footage of him in New York on Sept. 11 — used conspiratorial text almost identical to that uploaded by other account holders, including Jiménez.

In particular, Warsaw and other accounts urged followers to burn the Israeli flag as part of what Warsaw called “a new American tradition” to “remember who really did 9/11.”

With the flag-burning campaign apparently initiated in part by X account @2RAW4TVRADIO, Warsaw promised participants he would “repost” such videos “and tell people to Follow you too!”

In posts on Sept. 11 and 12, Johnson repeated several well-known conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks, blaming them on the U.S. and Israel, with numerous accounts doing the same amid this year’s observances of the event’s 25th anniversary.

The 9/11 posts by Warsaw and Johnson align with campaigns identified by the Antisemitism Research Center in its Sept. 10 report, which found that the “9/11 libel” is a gateway to “a broader antisemitic worldview” in which “every major trauma, from presidential assassinations to pandemics to terror attacks on three continents, is attributed to Jews or to Israel.”

Hatred at home and abroad

Wright said experts he consulted regarding the attacks on Levine pointed as well to foreign efforts — some based in Russia — to foment antisemitism and “divisiveness, particularly here in the U.S. and around the world.”

Those who endorse antisemitism “speak hatred and ignorance,” said Wright.

He stressed the need to counter “ignorance of biblical scholarship” and “ignorance of the difference” between Jewish persons and the modern nation-state of Israel and its government.

For Catholics and other Christians, that task takes on even greater significance, he said.

Those who profess to follow Jesus Christ but nurture antisemitic views “don’t know where Christianity came from,” said Wright. 

Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X @GinaJesseReina.