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]

Richard Strocher X @RichardStrocher some of you owe me an apology Richard Strocher X @Richard Strocher I swear I keep hearing yiddish under the floor in my NY apartment. (I live at ground level and we have no basement) 5:32 PM Dec 11, 2023 1,303 Views 3 Reposts 34 Likes 12:49 AM Jan 9, 2024 2.5M Views 460 10K 51K Follow 4K ←]

Richard Strocher X @RichardStrocher · Jan 9 I AM NOT CRAZY Richard Strocher X @RichardStrocher There are Jews living under my apartment. I hear them its like they are digging or something. For the record: I live at ground level and we do NOT have a basement!!! 5:35 PM Nov 7, 2023 2,390 Views 7 Reposts 3 Quotes 172 90 Likes 1 Bookmark 3.5K 24K Follow ₁1.7M 口企

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]

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7322659654620679466

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7322540572609170730

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]

Rach @raccoonstansv2 My heads gone at that guy tweeting for months that he could hear Yiddish under his floor boards so twitter called him schizophrenic and made him a character and months later underground tunnels homing Hasidic Jews was found where he lives. I've never seen vindication like this. 170 8:45 AM Jan 10, 20249M Views ● 14K 200K 10K : ↑

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.