For days in late 2022, the group posted itself outside Barclays Center, home to the National Basketball Association’s Brooklyn Nets.

They were supporters of then-Nets star Kyrie Irving, who was suspended in November for tweeting a link to an antisemitic documentary. Videos showed the supporters lining up in formation or marching the streets, yelling derogatory chants about Jewish people.

It was at one of these rallies that a man with a microphone confronted another man passing by, in an exchange captured on video that drew millions of viewers on social media. The white passerby had self-identified as half Jewish, something the Black demonstrator seized on.

“We support Hitler,” he said via microphone. “Because Hitler was killing your people, man. Hitler knew who the real Jews was.”

Cheers erupted from the supporters as the Jewish man balked. The tirade continued: “The real Jews are back on the streets. And you so-called fake Jews who stole our identity are going to go into slavery. Because you’re not a Jew.”

Flyers distributed by Black Hebrew Israelites outside Barclay’s Center. (@EricaSchachne was there and took these photos) pic.twitter.com/lWl3uh9UE6

— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) November 21, 2022

That rhetoric is part of a movement based on the false notion that Black people are the “real” Jewish people. The conspiracy theory, amplified by superstars like Irving, who was traded from the Nets to the Dallas Mavericks on Feb. 6, and the rapper Ye, has found a home on social media platforms including Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.

The theory first surfaced in the 1800s, according to academics, and through the years gained a foothold among members of the Black community, deepening a cultural divide between Black and Jewish people.

The theory aims to give Black people a new identity, culture and history. In doing so, it tries to strip Jewish people of their own heritage that dates back thousands of years to biblical days.

PolitiFact joined with MediaWise, a media literacy organization also based at the Poynter Institute, to take a closer look at the claim. We talked with analysts and history experts, as well as Black and Jewish people. Here’s what we learned.

What is this theory?

A screenshot of an Instagram video posted Dec. 3, 2022, by Tommy Marcus, who filmed an altercation with a supporter of Kyrie Irving.

The notion that Black people are “the real Jews” is shared by extremists within organizations such as the Black Hebrew Israelites, a group founded more than 100 years ago based on that belief.

“Black Hebrew Israelites ascribe to the idea that modern-day African Americans are the descendants of the Israelites in the Old Testament of the Bible,” according to a 2022 report from the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University. “However, an extremist fringe within the movement takes this idea one step further, arguing that white Europeans are the descendants of Satan and that white Jews are impostors.”

Other groups also spread this misinformation. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and others in his organization have shared claims that seek to discredit Jewish people, and white supremacy groups have also embraced the claim, the Anti-Defamation League reported.

The narratives shared on social media have similar characteristics, combining religion, myth and history. They commonly string historical anecdotes into an antisemitic and pro-Black message, using biblical scriptures and other holy texts to support these claims.

Where did the theory originate? 

Some historical texts point to an enslaved man named Gabriel Prosser, who in the 1800s led other Black Americans to revolt against slavery. In his speeches, Prosser told other enslaved people they were the Hebrews whom God would rescue from bondage.

Other sources such as the Journal of Religion say that the earliest form of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement began with the teachings of F.S. Cherry, a religious leader who started a church in 1886 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Those teachings were coupled with Black distrust of the Jewish community. In April 1967, Black American author James Baldwin delved into this distrust in a New York Times opinion piece headlined, “Negroes are Anti-Semitic Because They’re Anti-White.” The controversial piece described what Baldwin believed to be the roots of antisemitism among Black people — one he determined to be a byproduct of the legacy of religious and racial hatred that affected both groups.

Connie Burton, 67, is a member of the executive committee for the NAACP chapter for Hillsborough County in Florida, home to Tampa. She’s heard many times the claim that Black people are the “real” Jewish people — first in her 30s from members of the Nation of Islam and Farrakhan, and today from the mouths of people in a much younger generation.

Burton said she gives it no credence.

Who’s spreading the claim now? Social media followers are key

Between October and December 2022, analysts saw a maelstrom of social media posts expressing support for Irving and Ye, who had made a series of antisemitic comments. CyberWell, a nonprofit organization that monitors antisemitism online, saw a “massive increase” in antisemitic posts in response to Ye, said Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, the organization’s founder and chief executive.

In a November 2022 report, CyberWell wrote that its analysts identified posts on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok that depicted Jewish people with racist images or used hateful language. Narratives included the tropes that Jewish people are greedy, control the media, are purposefully exploiting Black people or are not “real Jews.” Twitter had the most antisemitic content among the platforms, Montemayor said.

Two percent of the antisemitic content CyberWell identified called for physical harm to Jewish people. However, 90% of that violent content originated on Twitter.

CyberWell “saw a tripling in antisemitic content that was specifically using the keywords ‘Black people,’ ‘Black folk,’ or ‘Black ppl,’ and increased content that was really trying to drive a wedge and increase tensions between the Black community and the Jewish community as a direct response to (Ye’s) attacks and to Kyrie’s tweets,” Montemayor said.

Günther Jikeli, associate director of Indiana University’s Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, published a research paper that analyzed antisemitism online between October and November 2022. There was a sharp increase in the use of the word “Jews” during those two months by people who used it either in a hateful manner or while denouncing antisemitism, he found.

Jikeli said Irving’s popularity drove the spread of his rhetoric. Many still view rhetoric from groups such as the Nation of Islam as fringe, he said. But when Irving shared antisemitic sentiments, it became more relatable for mainstream audiences. And Irving’s audience is vast; on Instagram alone, he has 18.5 million followers.

Jason Blazakis, director at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, has been tracking misinformation and conspiracies since 2018. He said the Black Hebrew Israelites and similar groups target young Black men with “self-help” narratives while also degrading and attacking Jewish people and others, including women.

That approach is evident on social media. For example, TikTok users “Brother Joshua”  and “Brother Willie,” both members of the Nation of Islam, have more than 95,000 followers between them. They share each others’ videos that seek to discredit Jewish people, distorting biblical scripture to erase Jewish history.

“See I know you read the Bible and thought that thousands of years ago, Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt,” said Brother Joshua during one video. “Hate to burst your bubble, but guess what? Never happened.”

This type of rhetoric “results in a range of denialism tactics that are deployed that are inherently antisemitic with an aim of defining in (and) out groups — the out group targeted are people of the Jewish faith,” said Blazakis. “This is a very dangerous conspiracy theory because we have seen it result in real-world attacks.”

Why this theory is harmful

As Cyberwell pointed out in its report, “Antisemitic hate crimes in the real world continue to mirror these same flagged online narratives of Jew-hatred.”

As antisemitism gained traction on social media in late 2022, news reports emerged of threatening incidents across the country, including:

• On Oct. 23 in Los Angeles, a group of people hung a banner from a freeway that said, “Kanye is right about the Jews,” and raised their arms in the Nazi salute.
• On Oct. 27 in New York City, a 15-year old dressed in what police described as “traditional Jewish garb” was egged and subjected to anti-Jewish statements, the New York Police Department reported.
• On Nov. 1 in Detroit, a Jewish community center academy was evacuated after a bomb threat that turned out to be a hoax.

Jewish communities are increasingly fearful that the danger is not just words, but could lead to deadly violence, such as a 2018 attack at the Tree of Life synagogue that killed 11 people. And in 2019, two attackers who had expressed interest in the Black Hebrew Israelites stormed a New Jersey kosher market and began shooting, killing three people.

“These ideas and conspiracies are older than Judaism,” said Florida Holocaust Museum Board Chair Mike Igel, whose grandparents, both survivors of the Holocaust, were founding members of the museum in 1992. He listed examples dating back to biblical days, when Jewish people were persecuted by other religious groups for their spiritual beliefs.

“It is important to learn the history of antisemitism and racism,” Igel said. “There are themes that can be compared, but there are also stark differences.”

This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this fact check here.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Mike Igel’s grandparents were founding members of the Florida Holocaust Museum, not sole founders.