Online Antisemitism Targets All Three Key Finalists In New York Mayoral Race As 'Jewish Puppets,' Cyberwell Report Finds

The report found that all three mayoral hopefuls—Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani, Independent candidate Andrew Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa—were targeted online with antisemitic conspiracy theories portraying them as “puppets” of Jewish or “Zionist” interests.

CyberWell’s analysis found that these antisemitic narratives circulating during the New York City mayoral race closely mirrored trends observed in recent national elections in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. The dominant narrative across all elections falsely accused Jews or “Zionists” of secretly controlling candidates, manipulating governments, and rigging elections—claims that align with the second example of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism.

Other common narratives included classic antisemitic tropes and imagery such as the “happy merchant” and blood-libel accusations, which also align with IHRA’s second category of antisemitism. Additional narratives reflected Israel-related antisemitism consistent with the seventh and ninth examples of the working definition, including posts asserting that Israel has no right to exist and depictions employing classic antisemitism toward Israelis. Imagery depicting blood libel conspiracies used to demonize Jews by platform users was sometimes enhanced with AI-generated content combining racist caricatures and antisemitic symbols to suggest political manipulation.

Collectively, these narratives were widely amplified online, underscoring the persistence and adaptability of conspiratorial antisemitic tropes in digital spaces. Although the verified dataset contained only dozens of examples, the content nonetheless amassed more than 200,000 total views across major platforms— for context, NYC’s population is approximately 8.5 million, demonstrating its disproportionate reach and potential impact during the elections period.

Despite existing hate speech policies, platform enforcement during the New York City mayoral election was inconsistent. X (formerly Twitter) hosted the largest volume of antisemitic posts with few removals, reflecting a permissive stance toward extreme election-related content. While TikTok, X and Meta maintain election integrity policies, none explicitly address election-related hate speech—a gap that may contribute to uneven moderation. In contrast, YouTube’s explicit policy guidance against election-related hate speech aligned with CyberWell’s findings, which identified no violative election-related content on the platform ahead of the NYC mayoral race.

“Accusations portraying Jews as controlling political figures transcend both party lines and national borders,” said CyberWell Founder and CEO Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor. “Our research consistently shows that antisemitic conspiracies targeting minority groups surge during politically sensitive periods, yet enforcement of policy remains inconsistent across Social Media platforms. The online narratives related to the New York City mayoral race trends consistently with patterns we saw in the recent United States federal elections, as well as elections in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, demonstrating the global scale and alignment of conspiracies against a common target and scapegoat during free elections—the Jewish people.”

CyberWell is calling on platforms to strengthen their response to election-related antisemitism. The organization recommends refining enforcement guidelines, improving moderator training and deploying advanced detection tools capable of identifying coded language, symbolic imagery and other visual cues commonly used in antisemitic content designed to evade detection.

CyberWell’s report on the 2025 New York City mayoral election is available here: https://cyberwell.org/antisemitic-narratives-echo-through-new-york-citys-mayoral-election/

CyberWell is an independent, internationally focused, tech-rooted nonprofit combating the spread of antisemitism online. Its AI-technologies monitor Social Media in English and Arabic for posts that promulgate antisemitism, Holocaust denial and promote violence against Jews based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. Its analysts review and report this content to platform moderators while indexing all verified posts in the first-ever open database of antisemitic social media posts – democratically cataloging it for transparency at: app.cyberwell.org. Through partnerships, education and real-time alerts, CyberWell is driving the enforcement and improvement of social media policies and safety practices, promoting proactive steps against online Jew-hate.

For more information, visit: https://cyberwell.org/.