"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
While the exact reason for Ben's name first entering the online discourse remains unconfirmed, the Cohen's believe the name being Jewish was no accident.
For 14 hours over the weekend, Sydney university student Ben Cohen was one of the most reviled men on the internet after he was falsely accused of being the knifeman who went on a stabbing rampage in a Sydney shopping centre, killing six people.
The ABC has pieced together how anti-semitic and pro-Kremlin accounts turned Mr Cohen into an internet villain.
The trail was uncovered using social media analysis, datasets provided by disinformation experts, archives provided by anti-fascist research group the White Rose Society, as well as interviews with Mr Cohen, his family and the accounts spreading false claims about him. [...]
