What Antisemitism Is and Why It Matters
What Is Antisemitism?
The Ancient Roots of Anti-Judaism | Facing History | 2016 Video with transcript
Scholars trace anti-Jewish myths, hatred, and violence back to the time of the Roman Empire in this historical overview of anti-Judaism’s roots.
Antisemitism on the rise: A research roundup | by Jordan Fenster for The Journalist's Resource, a project of Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center | 2022 Text. Explains the differences between racial, religious, social, economic, political and positive antisemitism.
For Nazis, the goal of racial antisemitism was the extermination of the Jews as a people. “If it’s religious antisemitism, then your goal is conversion,” he said. “If it’s political antisemitism, your goal can be the diminishment of Jewish political power, or the expulsion of Jews from the political entity.” The goal of economic antisemitism is to limit Jewish economic participation, which Berenbaum says used to be demonstrated by edicts forcing Jews to work in specific industries, or by glass pay ceilings. More recently, it’s “the association of Jews with money.”
Exploring hate: How antisemitism fuels white nationalism | PBS News Weekend | 2021 Video with transcript Excerpt (6 min) Full video (1 hr 21 min)
[Eric Ward:] The first thing we have to understand is white nationalist or other politically violent movements are racially biased movements. They don't bring anti-Semitism or other forms of bigotry to our community. They merely organize the bigotry that already exists. Anti-Semitism exists in American society. White nationalists are tapping into it in order to build political power. It means we have to understand anti-Semitism, and one of the things we should understand about anti-Semitism is it doesn't just impact Jews. Non-Jews are just as vulnerable to the violence of anti-Semitism as the Jewish community.
What is Antisemitism? | United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Text with video
Antisemitism is the prejudice against or hatred of Jewish people. It is a form of bigotry and racism. For centuries, antisemites have demonized and dehumanized Jews by spreading antisemitic tropes, stereotypes, and conspiracy theories.
Articles
In this time of inflamed passions, it’s crucial both to ensure that criticism of Israel does not cross the line into antisemitism, and to protect the free speech of those protesting Israel’s actions.
Modern antisemitism is informed by concepts articulated more than 1,600 years ago by John Chrysostom, an early father of the Christian Church. While a direct causal lineage is hard to establish, Chrysostom’s influence on historical and modern antisemitism is well-documented. Chrysostom articulated several key tropes of antisemitic ideology, including the belief that Jewish people are “schemers” and that they engage in human sacrifice. He also introduced dehumanizing language that foreshadowed the genocidal rhetoric of the Nazis, who cited Chrysostom as a historical source legitimizing their bigotry.
Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism | by Eric K. Ward | 2017
as much as I draw inspiration from the Jewish community, and as much as I adore my Jewish partner and friends, it was my organizing against antisemitism as a Black antiracist that first pulled me to the Jewish community, not the other way around.
There is racism and antisemitism baked into so much of society that it appears even in the space where people are doing a liberatory protest. That is a perfect fertile ground; that’s exactly what white nationalists look for. And this is something that they’re really reveling in, the idea that criticism of Israel is so pervasive that they can take that and turn it into broader antisemitism.
Derek Black is the son of prominent white nationalist Don Black, creator of the neo-Nazi Stormfront web forum. His godfather is former KKK grand wizard David Duke. As a child, Derek maintained Stormfront's White Pride for Kids page. He understands what motivates white nationalists in the US. However, statements Black makes in this article reveal his ignorance of the traditional Christian roots of antisemitism.Putin Is Worried, So He Turned to Anti-Semitism | by Leon Aron in The Atlantic | 2023
Political anti-Semitism—that is, the kind promulgated and encouraged by the authorities—is never just about Jews. It portends rot and insecurity at the top of a government, signifying the need to distract, obfuscate, shift the blame.
Soon after his indictment by the Manhattan District Attorney was announced, Donald Trump issued a statement in which he proclaimed the following: “Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who was handpicked and funded by George Soros, is a disgrace.”[1] The next day, protesters gathered in front of the DA’s office, one holding a sign: “Google It! George Soros Funds D.A. Alvin Bragg.”[2] With these attacks, Trump and his supporters, including Trump-supporting media outlets, tapped into deep-rooted antisemitic and racist ideas of Jewish power and Black gullibility, thus connecting antisemitism and racism. But this is not an accidental link. These two tropes, which had developed separately, have been used together for over a century both in the United States and in Europe.
Books
I'm only listing books I've read and would recommend. This list will expand.
Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism | by Magda Teter | 2023 Teter's book provides a deeply researched explication of the common Christian roots of antisemitism and anti-Blackness.
Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History | by Steven J. Zipperstein | 2018 Pogrom is a historical account of the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 and discusses the origins of the infamous, fabricated publication The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which gained popularity on the coattails of Kishinev.
The Damascus Affair: 'Ritual Murder', Politics, and the Jews in 1840 | by Jonathan Frankel | 1997 A historical account of the murders of a Capuchin (Catholic) monk and his assistant in Damascus, Syria, in 1840.
Journals
- The Making of Antisemitism as a Political Movement. Political History as Cultural History (1879-1914) | edited by Werner Bergman and Ulrich Wyrwa |Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History | Issue 3 | July 2012
From the introduction:
Just how European was political antisemitism? The essays collected here are to serve as building blocks for an answer to the question whether we need to speak of a European antisemitism or of different paths of antisemitism in Europe. Are we dealing with several national and regional antisemitic movements, or may we speak of an antisemitic movement in Europe? Is the phenomenon of this new hostility towards Jews in fact a sum of several national antisemitisms, where emphasis must be placed on the differences and the similarities assigned less importance, or is it a genuinely European antisemitism?