{"id":93007,"date":"2026-06-25T18:22:02","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T23:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/?p=93007"},"modified":"2026-06-26T04:27:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T09:27:31","slug":"take-a-look-at-the-antisemitism-command-center-inside-gillette-stadium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/take-a-look-at-the-antisemitism-command-center-inside-gillette-stadium\/","title":{"rendered":"Take a look at the antisemitism command center inside Gillette Stadium"},"content":{"rendered":"

By JACKIE HAJDENBERG<\/p>\n

(JTA) \u2014 FOXBOROUGH, Massachusetts \u2013 For the past five years, a specialty \u201ccommand center\u201d that researches antisemitism has been operating inside the New England Patriots\u2019 home stadium in this Boston suburb.<\/p>\n

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Steven Fransblow (left) and Adam Katz (right) look at the real-time dashboard at the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate command center in Foxborough, Massachusetts. (Jackie Hajdenberg)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Wall-sized screens, refreshed every minute, show live updates on public conversation topics related to antisemitism. Tweets featuring antisemitic dog whistles are also blasted onto an enormous dashboard \u2014 hand-me-down technology formerly used by the Patriots during team practice to run plays.<\/p>\n

The command center is where the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate monitors more than 1 billion social media posts every day.  It\u2019s a project of the Patriots\u2019 Jewish owner Robert Kraft, the Boston-area philanthropist who founded the alliance in 2019.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the nonprofit anti-hate organization announced the formation of a new advisory board featuring a slate of high-profile names: former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav; Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan; Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff; and Dentons CEO Kate Barton.<\/p>\n

The advisory board will guide the organization on strategy and \u201cdeepen institutional relationships,\u201d its website said.<\/p>\n

The statement said the board will help further the mission of the roughly dozen analysts who staff the command center. They monitor trends in antisemitic rhetoric online, craft research reports based on their findings, and use search engine optimization to make links with their resources float to the top of Google search results. The wall-sized screens are filled with word clouds, pie charts, bar graphs, tweets, and Facebook posts, detailing what everyday Americans encounter online.<\/p>\n

Since Oct. 7, 2023, the Blue Square Alliance has been on particularly high alert, monitoring shifts in the online conversation around antisemitism, which often included ordinary social media users swapping the word \u201cZionist\u201d for \u201cJew\u201d in derogatory ways, the group says. But in late February, when the United States and Israel entered the war with Iran, the Blue Square Alliance began noticing new trends in their data.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we saw, especially right after the operation began, is Hitler glorification was the first thing to spike,\u201d Rotem Leiba, a lead analyst at Blue Square Alliance said. \u201cIn terms of all the antisemitic things we\u2019ve seen happening at this time, Hitler glorification was the first to spike.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using Brandwatch, the social media monitoring software, the team found that terms like \u201cHitler was right,\u201d \u201cWe owe Hitler an apology,\u201d and \u201cHitler knew what he was doing\u201d appeared with increasing frequency \u2014 more than it did in the aftermath of Oct. 7. A new term, \u201cHitler in heaven,\u201d also began popping up across social media, topping similar sentiments at 21.4 million impressions.<\/p>\n

One area they are still investigating is bots: studies have shown that automated software programs frequently amplify levels of hate speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are starting to talk to other partners that can help us understand who are the actors behind these conversations and \u2026 their echo chambers, and who\u2019s the one publishing it,\u201d Leiba said.<\/p>\n

Efforts to manipulate public opinion and inflame social tensions are often pinned on Russia, Iran and other countries, although most of those bots Blue Square is tracking appear to be homegrown, Leiba explained. \u201cEven some of the bots that we have seen in some reports amplifying content are bots that are created domestically, not necessarily from foreign actors.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Israel and the United States joined forces to attack Iran, and Israel pursued its proxies in Lebanon, rhetoric dehumanizing Jews also spiked. CyberWell, a compliance partner to social media organizations that helps them follow content moderation and regulatory policies, also found similar results.<\/p>\n

Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, founder and executive director of CyberWell, said the users would compare Jews to \u201crats, pigs, monkeys, or cockroaches in the comments section \u2014 that\u2019s human beings being really disgusting.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A close-up view of the real-time dashboard at the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate command center in Foxborough, Massachusetts. (Jackie Hajdenberg)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Foxborough-based command center resembles that of the Secure Community Network in Chicago, where the group that coordinates security for Jewish institutions set up an office in 2021 to monitor antisemitic threats.<\/p>\n

At the stadium, which will also have hosted seven matches by the end of the current FIFA World Cup, it\u2019s clearly Kraft\u2019s team\u2019s turf. Photos of Kraft, framed op-eds he wrote about antisemitism on college campuses and pictures from his alma mater, Columbia University, decorate the office. Blown-up images of the Patriots\u2019 Super Bowl rings adorn the hallways leading into the command center.<\/p>\n

The alliance is part of a crowded field of antisemitism watchdogs that includes Cyberwell, the Combat Antisemitism Movement, the Secure Community Network and the Anti-Defamation League\u2019s Center for Antisemitism Research. The ADL and Blue Square Alliance announced the formation of a partnership in February to expand educational programming on antisemitism prevention in schools and providing support for synagogues and faith communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve built delivery trucks going to all these different places, and the trucks aren\u2019t full,\u201d Katz said, referring to their blue square pins and other \u201cblue square content\u201d and \u201cblue square messaging.\u201d \u201cWe have stuff we\u2019re trying to get onto delivery trucks to get to these places. It\u2019s an obvious match.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their efforts are based on the idea that monitoring can help identify rising risks of violence and detect dangerous trends before they escalate. Susan Benesch, who directs the Dangerous Speech Project at Harvard University, has written that such early warning systems are helpful, but only so long as they are matched by actions.<\/p>\n

In a working paper for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Benesch suggested steps like promoting \u201ccounterspeech\u201d by influential members of a community, changing the design of social media platforms that amplify such speech, or strengthening social norms in the communities from which the hate speech and misinformation emerges.<\/p>\n

Blue Square may be the most public-facing of these monitoring efforts, and, with Kraft\u2019s money and platform, the best known, thanks to its Super Bowl ads and its association with America\u2019s most popular sport.<\/p>\n

Having captured the public\u2019s attention, the alliance is seeking to shape its discourse. When regular internet users look up an antisemitic conspiracy theory or a trending dog whistle, Blue Square wants its results to be the first they see.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur default use case is: what does mainstream America see and hear on this topic?\u201d explained the group\u2019s president, Adam Katz.<\/p>\n

Steven Fransblow, chief data and technology officer at the Blue Square Alliance, provided a typical example.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to crack the code on: how can we continue to be surfaced when Candace Owens says, \u2018go research this,\u2019\u201d Fransblow explained. \u201cThey\u2019re finding us, versus Reddit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Owens, a far-right commentator who frequently promotes antisemitic conspiracy theories, has nearly eight million followers on Twitter, and nearly six million subscribers on YouTube. Once a well-regarded voice in the conservative political space, she has been disavowed by her former supporters in more recent years as her content has become increasingly anti-Israel and antisemitic.<\/p>\n

In January, Owens suggested that her former employer, the conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro, who is Jewish, sought to grab the mantle of Turning Point USA\u2019s slain founder Charlie Kirk, saying Shapiro was acting as if he was promised the role \u201c3,000 years ago.\u201d  The \u201c3,000 years ago\u201d phrase is an antisemitic meme, mocking Jews for claiming ancestral ties to the Land of Israel and alleging they exploit history to assert a nefarious agenda. That phrase, which Blue Square says arose as early as 2014, but took off after Oct. 7, is one that the organization is working to counteract with its web presence.<\/p>\n

Search \u201c3,000 years ago\u201d and \u201cJews\u201d in Google and hits explaining its antisemitic intent pop up from the American Jewish Committee, CyberWell, the Times of Israel and social media sites like Reddit and Quora. This week, anyway, Blue Square\u2019s explanation of the term showed up on the second page of search results.<\/p>\n

The alliance has its critics. A controversial $15 million Super Bowl ad, which aired in February, featured a Jewish high school student who discovers a Post-It note scrawled with the words \u201cDirty Jew.\u201d Critics of the word choice found it outdated or unrealistic, or called the ad spending outlandish, arguing that there are better ways to address antisemitism or help the Jewish community.<\/p>\n

Katz defended the ad, saying it was a vindication of the \u201ccommand center\u201d and its data-driven  approach to monitoring antisemitic language and memes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were looking at what are the most ubiquitous slurs on social media that are happening with high volume and frequency and are understandable by everybody,\u201d Katz said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s why we went with \u2018dirty Jew.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

According to BSA\u2019s research, the phrase \u201cdirty Jew\u201d made nearly 500 million impressions across 140,000 posts on X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Reddit, Bluesky, and 4Chan between 2023 and 2025 \u2014 an increase, Fransblow said, of 174% from the previous three years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the Super Bowl, you have 30 seconds,\u201d Katz added. \u201cIt\u2019s got to hit and land with as close to 140 million people as possible. So you\u2019re trying to find language that is recognizable, that is ubiquitous, that is common, that is inarguably antisemitic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Added Katz, \u201cWe can\u2019t afford to be too subtle.\u201d<\/p>\n

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