Eight teenagers laid down on a sports field in San Jose and formed a swastika with their bodies, which they photographed and posted to social media last week, along with a quote from Hitler. A storm of shock and outrage followed.
It’s not the first time that teens in Northern California have been caught posting flagrantly antisemitic images, but coming amid the swell of antisemitism since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, some experts say this new incident reflects a disturbing shift in norms when it comes to expressing hatred of Jews.
“I think it’s always been the case that students, teenagers, can derive social status from things like bullying or harassing or other things that adults would say are not pro-social behaviors,” said David Shriberg, a professor of school psychology at Indiana University Bloomington who has done research on supporting Jewish students. “But I do think that we’re in a climate where antisemitic acts have become more normalized, and, in some cases, seen as desirable. That creates a situation where teens are more likely to do things like this.”
“Let’s face it,” Shriberg added. “Hating Jews does not have the same social consequences in most places as it might have had even a few years ago.”
Anti-hate groups have long sounded the alarm about the proliferation of antisemitism on social media, on video game platforms and in other online communities where teenagers hang out. And while it isn’t known yet what was going through the minds of the Branham High School students when they gathered on that field and then publicized what they’d done, their actions raise a question: What would make a group of teenagers express antisemitic sentiments in such a public fashion? Why step outside of social bounds like that, and seemingly be proud of it?
Ellie Pelc, director of clinical services at S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services and a licensed child psychologist, said that while it’s essential to acknowledge how the incident has caused harm to the Jewish community, it is also important to recognize what drives adolescent behavior, such as social pressure.
“It’s a developmental time where you’re doing new things, you’re trying new things, you’re making mistakes, you’re trying to fit in, you’re trying to get laughs and likes. And you often do so in some hurtful or harmful ways that you don’t always have the capacity to think through in advance,” Pelc said.
Transgressive behavior in teens is “related to the risk-taking” common during adolescence, said Frank Worrell, a professor at UC Berkeley’s school of education who studies school psychology.
While he couldn’t comment specifically on the students at Branham, Worrell said such displays are often “a performance” for other teenagers.
“You’re getting positive feedback from your peers for being transgressive,” he said.
Spurning what they’ve been taught at school — about the horrors of the Holocaust, for example — is also a way for teens to assert autonomy and independence, Worrell said.
“We need to remind students of the consequences of their actions,” he said. Not only personal consequences, but how those actions might impact the wider community — something they likely have not considered.
At a time when parental approval is no longer an absolute and the craving for attention from peers is a driving force, teens may act in ways that don’t align with their true feelings or values, according to Jasmin Zeger, director of the Child Training Institute at the JFCS Center for Children and Youth.
“You need to also look at, where are these kids getting their information? What streams of information are validating this kind of behavior, and how do we start to challenge it?” said Zeger, a therapist with experience counseling teens.
“We don’t know what [these students] believe,” she said. “I don’t know the purpose of this act. But we know the impact. They’ve hurt a lot of people.”