Richard Strocher "Vindication" Jewish Tunnels Post

About

Richard Strocher Jewish Tunnels "Vindication" Post refers to a viral post on X / Twitter in early January 2024 that was made by a right-wing humorist troll posting under the name Richard Strocher, which claimed that he heard Yiddish spoken underneath his home in New York City in the weeks prior to the uncovering of the Chabad Synagogue Tunnels. Many online posted that he was vindicated or spread screenshots of the tweet as if it were real, but reporting by Taylor Lorenz and an investigation of the posts in the following days indicated that Strocher likely neither lived in New York nor had made the posts about hearing Jews underneath his home.

Origin

On January 9th, 2024, X user @RichardStrocher posted on his account in the wake of the Chabad Synagogue Tunnels news story and the many memes referencing it that spread online. His post was framed as comments on screenshots of past tweets from the fall and winter of 2023 claiming that he heard "Jews living under my apartment," suggesting a narrative in which people had called him "crazy" and "antisemitic" for this but the revelation of the tunnels proved him correct. The post received over 51,000 likes and 10,000 quote tweets or reposts in the course of three days (seen below).^[1]

The tweets in the screenshots don't appear on Strocher's X profile as of January 12th, 2024, and the inclusion of the "Follow" button on the top right is evidence that they appeared to be modified images because the user interface of X does not show users a button to "follow" when they are looking at one of their own posts.

Spread

On TikTok and other social media platforms, many posted about the incident, apparently believing it was a real-life story. For example, TikToker @k.mikles posted an account of the story on January 11th, 2024, receiving over 658,000 likes and 3.6 million views in a day (seen below, left).^[2]

That same day, TikToker @catdad42069xxx posted about the thrill of "vindication" Strocher must have felt in regards to being correct in his earlier posts (seen below, right), receiving over 113,000 likes and 847,000 views in a day.^[3]

On X, posters shared similar feelings about the story, with user @raccoonstansv2 posting about the "vindication" felt by Strocher on January 10th, 2024, receiving over 200,000 likes in the course of two days.^[4]

Debunking

On January 12th, 2024, journalist Taylor Lorenz posted a TikTok (seen below) calling into question the legitimacy of Strocher's post as it was widely spread on the internet, notably saying he was "completely full of shit."^[5]

In her video, she described an investigative reporting process that found he allegedly lied in his bio about being employed by Fox News, was a noted Groyper account, did not live in Crown Heights in New York City and that the screenshots showed "signs of manipulation." Lorenz also pointed out that the account's screen name is "Richard Strocher," likely a joke because it might be read as "Dick Stroker."

Lorenz's TikTok video proceeded to garner over 20,000 views, 2,900 likes and 80 comments in roughly 24 hours.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References