From Silly to Silence – A Digital Pogrom in 5 Episodes

Introduction

In 2025, Jewish identity online is not only a matter of cultural expression. It has become a test of how resilient digital platforms and societies are against antisemitism, censorship, and erasure. What happened over the last months to Namasthay – Belgo-Israeli artist, founder of Ajinomatrix and ISPCR co-director – illustrates how systemic fragility, unconscious bias, and symbolic violence intertwine. This is not just anecdotal: it is the story of how “Never Again” meets the digital age.

Episode 1 – Silly Silence: Banned by Catherine Torrekens

It began locally. After sharing his music and ISPCR initiatives in the Facebook group Citizens of Silly, François Wayenberg (artist name Namasthay) was banned by administrator Catherine Torrekens – a known academic voice often associated with indulgence towards Islamist narratives.

The exclusion wasn’t about tone or spam. It was about identity: a Jew affirming cultural presence in his own commune’s online forum. A symbolic silencing, local but heavy with meaning.

Episode 2 – The Shrinking Audience on SoundCloud

Then came the numbers. After publishing two deeply Jewish albums – one in Ladino (the tongue of Sephardic exile) and one in Judeo-Piedmontese (a nearly extinct dialect of the Italian Jews) – an unexplained collapse in plays followed.

What had been organic reach turned into silence. It felt like the algorithmic version of being told: “your heritage does not belong here.”

Censorship does not always arrive as a ban. Sometimes, it arrives as invisibility.

Episode 3 – Explicit Ban as Israeli Artist

It did not stop at silence. Three albums were then explicitly blocked on SoundCloud, flagged and censored simply because they bore Jewish and Israeli identity marks. Covers with the Magen David (Star of David) were pinned, albums celebrating Israel were shut down.

It was no longer algorithmic drift. It was active erasure: the Jewish artist was unwelcome, while other political and cultural expressions flowed freely.

Episode 4 – A Tattoo of Numbers: 17 July 1942

Then came the most chilling marker. All albums on SoundCloud were suddenly given the exact same fake release date: 17 July 2025.

Why that date? History speaks: 17 July 1942 was the start of the rafle du Vel d’Hiv in Paris – the mass arrest and deportation of 13,000 Jews, including 4,000 children, towards Auschwitz.

The symbolic parallel was unbearable: Jewish albums tagged as if deported together, assigned a single date like tattooed numbers. Erasure turned into digital deportation. A pogrom in metadata.

Episode 5 – Proximus and the Ghost Account

The last episode unfolded at the Haverim villa in Rebecq. Suddenly, internet service was cut off by Proximus, Belgium’s largest telecom provider. On calling the helpdesk, the answer was chilling in its absurdity: “Your number no longer exists in our database.”

A number active for over 50 years, with all bills paid and funds available, simply erased. As if the digital world could decide that existence itself could be revoked at a keystroke.

The house was cut off, ghosted by its own provider.

Conclusion – From Pogroms to Programs

Taken together, these episodes form not just a personal anecdote but a systemic pattern:

• Local exclusion (Episode 1).

• Digital invisibility (Episode 2).

• Explicit censorship (Episode 3).

• Symbolic deportation (Episode 4).

• Total erasure of reference (Episode 5).

What once happened with pogroms in the streets now happens through programs in the servers. The forms differ, but the logic is familiar: silence, exclude, erase.

As ISPCR, we document these patterns because they are not coincidences. They show how antisemitism mutates in the digital age. From metadata to moderation, the threat persists – unless we face it, name it, and resist it.

Never Again is not just about memory. It is about vigilance – even in the code.