Journalist Eve Barlow speaks about the impact fighting antisemitism has had on her life and mental health
On the most recent episode of Podcast Against Antisemitism, Eve Barlow, a music and culture journalist who has written for The Telegraph, The Guardian and the LA Times, opened up about how tackling antisemitism online has affected her life and mental health.
Ms Barlow revealed that in response to her increased advocacy for the Jewish community and opposition to antisemitism, she had received a torrent of antisemitic abuse and was isolated from her friends. “I found myself more and more pushed to the fringes and to the sides of people’s social circles to the extent that I really was winding up spending most of my time either with a select one or two close friends or completely alone.”
Ms Barlow added that as a result of her income decreasing due to her ever-growing profile as an activist against antisemitism, she began focusing more of her time on raising awareness of anti-Jewish racism. “I had been fighting [antisemitism] for so many years, so by the time that war happened last year, I had all the verbiage. I had experienced all of the trolling. So I found myself in a place where my verboseness and my preparation to know what to say and how to say it with effect created so much noise and attention around me that…it was kind of out of control, and my numbers were growing like mad because people suddenly needed a voice.”
Speaking on the online trolling that she has received, Ms Barlow said that when she did not take the necessary precautions to place restrictions on her social media posts, “thousands upon thousands” of people would reply with hateful comments, adding “I’ve had to take precautions to make sure that my personal security is a lot tighter.”
When asked about her mental health, Ms Barlow said that “on the whole, I put up a pretty affronted and assured and unapologetic stance” and that she felt the need to “set an example,” but acknowledged that her mental health “ebbed and flowed”. Ms Barlow also said that at times, she worried about the impact the online trolling was having on her real life.
“This viral hatred of me online…what is it reducing me to? Because people don’t see you as a person anymore, they see you as this thing…they have this idea of you…and then people who were your ‘friends’, they stop seeing you as a person and they run away from you. The amount of people who abandoned me in that moment and who have never come back to me…it speaks volumes about how humanity has been manipulated and disaffected by social media,” she said.
However, despite all of the online trolling she has received, Ms Barlow said: “I really have to keep believing in people, and keep believing in the power of community, and the power of truth.”
The podcast with Ms Barlow can be listened to here, with the full, hour-long version available here.
Podcast Against Antisemitism, produced by Campaign Against Antisemitism, talks to a different guest about antisemitism each week. It streams every Thursday and is available through all major podcast apps and YouTube. You can also subscribe to have new episodes sent straight to your inbox. Previous guests have included comedian David Baddiel, The Sunday Telegraph columnist Zoe Strimpel and actor Eddie Marsan.
