32 | MAY 21 • 2020 

Arts&Life

documentary

‘Viral’ Anti-Semitism

Filmmaker Andrew Goldberg talks about his new documentary
that premieres on PBS May 26.

T

he new documentary Viral: 
Antisemitism in Four Mutations
examines four different iterations, 
or “mutations,
” of anti-Semitism across 
the globe today. Its director, Emmy-
winning filmmaker Andrew Goldberg, 
trains his focus on the political far-right 
in the U.S., the far-left members of the 
United Kingdom’
s Labour Party, a gov-
ernment-backed propaganda campaign in 
Hungary and Islamic extremism in France. 
Goldberg has directed 
and produced other films on 
Judaism and anti-Semitism, 
including 2007’
s Anti-Semitism 
in the 21st Century: The 
Resurgence. He spoke to the 
Jewish News ahead of Viral’
s
TV debut. 
This interview has been condensed and 
edited. 

JN: What was the inspiration behind this 
film? Why did you decide to make it?
Goldberg: After the [2016] election, there 
were a number of indicators that showed 
anti-Semitism was on the rise … And it just 
sort of suddenly raised eyebrows that there 
was a change in tenor in the conversation, 
certainly here in the United States. And 
when we looked internationally, we started 
to see the same thing was happening, but 
each different country had its own variant, 
if you will, and its own mutation. And that’
s 
kind of what gave us the idea for “viral” — 
that this affliction in each country was the 
same premise but a different expression.

JN: How did you decide which countries 
— which mutations — to include?
Goldberg: We looked at a lot of countries, 
but these… were just four very clear exam-
ples. We had anti-Semitism on the right in 
the U.S.; on the left in England. We had it 
from the government in Hungary and then 
we had it from Islamists in France… We felt 
that these four were the most emblematic, I 
think, of where the conversation was today. 

JN: How did making this movie feel dif-
ferent or similar to making your first film 

about anti-Semitism?
Goldberg: Every year at the seder, my rela-
tives would bring up other examples of hate, 
other examples of bigotry, other examples 
of racism, other examples of anti-Semitism 
… I find that it’
s all kind of similar. I mean, 
people just continue to spew hate, and we 
do our best to report on it and try to cover 
it. And there’
s an awful lot of overlap. So it 
was different in the architecture and it was 
different in the structure, it was different 
in some of the technology, but the stories 
are very similar. We’
re interviewing perpe-
trators and victims and experts, and that 
doesn’
t really change. 

JN: How long did it take to film this 
movie, from start to finish? 
Goldberg: Three years, but it would 
have been shorter if we didn’
t have [the] 
Pittsburgh and Poway [synagogue shoot-
ings] because that really sort of changed the 
conversation. Keep in mind that when we 
started this film, those things hadn’
t even 
happened yet. 
In the process of making this film, a 
woman was thrown from her window to 
her death in France, and more and more 
statistics came out of France, and then the 

MAYA GOLDMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER | PHOTOS COURTESY OF VIRAL: ANTISEMITISM IN FOUR MUTATIONS

Rabbi Elisar Admon of 
the Jewish Burial Society 
discusses the 2018 
Pittsburgh shooting in the 
documentary Viral. 

Goldberg