How the world game became a vehicle for online antisemitism
“One of the marks of antisemitism is an ability to believe stories that could not possibly be true” – George Orwell
Executive summary
The 2026 FIFA World Cup hosted old conspiracies in updated garb.
Disputed refereeing decisions, distrust of FIFA, and hostility towards Argentina were assembled into conspiratorial claims that a “Zionist” network had scripted the tournament. Lionel Messi’s visits to Israel and President Javier Milei’s support for Israel were presented as proof of secret influence over FIFA.
The narrative survived contradiction. Spain ultimately won the tournament, yet posts alleging Zionist control continued to circulate. Their reach reveals how major events allow antisemitic ideas to travel through sporting commentary, humour and political solidarity. Event-driven hatred can move faster than systems built around reports submitted after publication.
From sporting grievance to conspiracy
George Orwell described international sport as “war minus the shooting”. Today, international football concentrates national identity, political history and tribal rivalry into a single global spectacle. The World Cup’s scale intensifies that dynamic: every disputed decision can be read as a narrative about power and control.
Distrust in FIFA is well-earned, the peak body mired in decades of corruption. Arguments about Video Assistant Refereeing (VAR) and general refereeing standards, hydration breaks, and political access to referees, bridge pre-existing misgivings into modern political tensions and conspiracy theories.
These dynamics aren’t produced by focal events. They’re already there, waiting for controversy or emotionally charged moments to latch onto. The immediate aftermath of Argentina’s contentious 3–2 victory was like the breaking of a dam. A disallowed goal saw Egypt’s coach Hossam Hassan invoking FIFA’s anti-racism gesture. Supporters experienced the defeat as an injustice with geopolitical relevance, bolstered by centuries-old conspiracy theories about Jewish power and political interference.
Online accounts constructed the defeat as a morality play. Egypt became a proxy for Palestine and Argentina became a proxy for Israel. A football result was described as organised dispossession. “Israel gave them the call”, read one comment that received more than 14,000 likes.
A widely-endorsed comment converts a disputed refereeing decision into Israeli interference.
The conspiracy’s architecture
The story developed through a short chain of association:
· FIFA is corrupt, so major results may be manipulated.
· Argentina benefited from contentious decisions, so its progress must have been arranged.
· Milei supports Israel and Messi has visited Israel, so Argentina becomes “Zionist”.
· A “Zionist” victory becomes evidence that Jews secretly control FIFA and global institutions.
Each step removes the need for evidence. Public meetings, photographs and political statements become fragments of a hidden system. Fabricated claims then complete the story: Milei was described as Netanyahu’s cousin, a French referee was falsely identified as an Orthodox Jew, and Argentina was accused of transferring Patagonia to Israel.
A “promised 3,000 years ago” joke imports an established antisemitic meme into football discourse.
Four recurring narratives
1. Argentina cheated
Claims that Argentina received favourable fixtures or refereeing decisions were stated as settled fact. Disagreement over individual calls expanded into certainty that the entire competition had been arranged. This provided the bridge from ordinary sporting suspicion to allegations of political control.
2. Argentina represented Israel
Milei’s description of himself as a strongly Zionist president and photographs of Messi in Israel were circulated as evidence that Argentina acted for Israel. Images of Messi with other political leaders received little attention because they disrupted the narrative.
A post describes Argentina and Messi as “Israeli lapdogs” and Milei as a “globalist Jewish weirdo”.
3. Egypt‘s loss as a proxy for injustice and dispossession
Posts cast Egypt as the moral representative of Palestine and Argentina as the agent of a hostile global order. The sporting contest became a battle between humanity and evil. Argentina’s three goals in fifteen minutes disappeared from accounts organised around theft and dispossession.
Football is reframed as a struggle between Palestine and a hostile international system, controlled by shadowy forces.
4. Jewish association proved control
Messi’s visit to the Western Wall, his meeting with Netanyahu and Milei’s support for Israel were edited into montages alleging that Argentina had been “promised” the World Cup. The inference followed a classical antisemitic structure: any relationship with Jews becomes evidence of covert Jewish power.
A post presents Netanyahu as secretly backing Argentina’s World Cup campaign.
Reach and amplification
The examples were distributed through high-reach accounts and recommendation systems. A video asking whether the World Cup was rigged received millions of views. An imam with 825,000 followers drew approximately 2.4 million views for a video addressing whether supporting Messi was religiously permissible because he was allegedly a Zionist. Comments pushing the conspiracy beneath mainstream sports posts received tens of thousands of endorsements.
The comments section performed a central role. Publishers could frame a post around sport or refereeing while users supplied the antisemitic explanation beneath it. High engagement then increased the visibility of the claim and produced the appearance of consensus.
A high-reach religious influencer asks whether support for Messi is permissible because he is allegedly a Zionist.
Why event-driven antisemitism spreads
Major events provide three conditions that favour rapid transmission: intense attention, strong group identities and uncertainty about contested outcomes. Antisemitic explanations arrive as ready-made causal stories. They identify a secret actor, connect unrelated events and convert defeat into deliberate persecution.
The format protects the prejudice. Memes, jokes and sporting insults can carry claims about Jewish control without adopting the tone of ideological propaganda. Users encounter the conspiracy through familiar cultural material, often beneath content produced by outlets and personalities they already follow.
| ASSESSMENT The evidence documents a diffuse ecosystem of opportunistic amplification. It does not establish a centrally coordinated campaign. The common structure arises from established antisemitic ideas that many users can reproduce independently. |
Implications
· Antisemitic conspiracies gain mainstream reach by attaching themselves to global events.
· Repeated claims about Jewish control weaken public trust in sport, media and civic institutions.
· Online abuse can migrate from prominent individuals such as Messi and Milei towards Jewish communities generally.
· Reactive manual moderation arrives after high-engagement narratives have already shaped public interpretation.
OHPI will publish a longer-form follow-up to this analysis later this week, examining further examples of this narrative’s spread and setting out potential policy responses for platforms and institutions.
Media contact:
Online Hate Prevention Institute
Email: joshua@ohpi.org.au
Website: www.ohpi.org.au
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