Antisemitism is fun. This essay explains why and proposes a new approach to combating it.

_Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Interreligious Hermeneutics: Ways of Seeing the Religious Other_ examines the hermeneutics of interreligious encounter, investigating the implicit judgments of Judaism and Islam that often arise in contexts of conflict.

I apply the apparatus of my book Definition (2021) to the task of defining antisemitism. An initial stipulation introduced the word ‘Semitismus’ into the German language as a synonym for ‘Judenthum’ (‘Jewishness’). I raise two objections to this stipulation. First, the choice of term risked what Ennis calls ‘impact equivocation’, since it could easily be misunderstood as referring to characteristics common to all speakers of Semitic languages, including Arabic as well as Hebrew. Second, the stipulator’s use of either name (...) assumed falsely that all Jews share the described characteristics. I use a sample of 10 sentences to evaluate 11 proposed reportive (i.e., descriptive, or lexicographical) definitions of the term ‘antisemitism’. I rephrase the resulting tentative definition in the Natural Semantic Language developed by Goddard and Wierzbicka. I then consider two documents that advocate a meaning for ‘antisemitism’, in the sense that they take a position on what kinds of speech or action count as antisemitic. The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, issued by a group of researchers in 2021, is superior in many respects to the resolution on antisemitism adopted in May 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Hence individuals and organizations concerned with monitoring antisemitism should use the Jerusalem Declaration as a guide rather than the IHRA resolution. Consideration of the declaration leads to a revised reportive definition: Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility, or violence that targets people or institutions regarded as ethnically Jewish, just because they are Jewish. (shrink)

Spanish fascists held power for a lengthy period, yet their antisemitism remains underresearched. This article, drawing on periodicals and archival documentation, specifically examines the early years of the Falange until 1945. The period was characterised by a significant surge in antisemitic sentiment in Spain, accompanied by a growing presence of the alleged ‘Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy’. Representing the first in-depth approach in English, the text is divided into four parts. The first serves as an introduction to the outbreak of antisemitism (...) and conspiracy theories within the political cultures of the Spanish illiberal right following the advent of democracy in 1931. The second focuses on fascism and its four most prominent figures up to 1936. The third analyses the Falange’s pronounced antisemitism during the Spanish Civil War, exploring both its internal and external influences. The fourth and final part addresses the fervently antisemitic stance of the Falange during the decisive years of the Second World War, navigating the tensions between Nazi antisemitic racism and Catholic anti-racist antisemitism. (shrink)

Despite Spinoza’s prominence in Joyce’s Ulysses, almost nothing in the Joyce Industry’s hundred years has been written about him. My first section reviews three exceptions to this trend, which view the character Leopold Bloom as modeled on Spinoza’s (1) life, (2) redefinition of prophecy, and (3) the “attribute” of thought thinking thought. My second section follows a fourth Joycean to the Marxist Antonio Negri’s essay on Spinozist freedom and Joyce, from which I derive a fourth figure of Bloom as (4) (...) a liberating prosthesis for infinite democracy. And my final section applies my previous interpretation of Spinoza’s “intuition” as poetry to Ulysses, interpreted as an epic prose poem where Joyce as a Spinozist God poly-conjugationally persecutes a poly-subjugated Bloom, including with pervasive antisemitism, thus making Ulysses more satirical Inferno than happy Divine Comedy. However, strategically channeling Spinoza and his philosophy more powerfully into Bloom renders him an ethically-politically Stoic hero, defiantly prophesizing a democratization of Joycean conjugation, from persecuting poly-subjugated Others to joyful self-conjugating in search of radical democracy and just peace. (shrink)

This article is a critical genealogy of Tay, an artificial-intelligence chatbot that Microsoft released on Twitter in 2016, which was quickly hijacked by internet trolls to reproduce racist, misogynist, and antisemitic language. Tay’s repetition and production of hate speech calls for an approach that draws on both media and cultural theory—the Frankfurt School’s dialectical analyses of language and ideology, in particular. Revisiting the Frankfurt School in the age of algorithmic reason shows that, contrary to views foundational to computing, a neural-network (...) chatbot like Tay does not sidestep meaning but rather carries and alters it, with unforeseen social and political consequences. A return to the work of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno thus locates ideology in the digital world at the nexus of language’s ability to mean, language and meaning’s susceptibility to computation, and the design of a machine to compute both. Coming to critical terms with the antisemitism produced in Tay’s human-computer synthesis requires, as this article contends, addressing the uncanny embodiment and reflection of thought that is digital computation. (shrink)

In this text I examine the online presence of antisemitism and the ways it is spreading on a global level. I focus on different forms of antisemitism, distributed through numerous social network platforms. I also dwell on the possible causes of this phenomenon, with all its consequences. Antisemitism has always been present in public discourse, and thus its presence in online space is not new or unusual, but what surprises is certainly a significant failure of responsible institutions (...) to prevent this phenomenon and punish perpetrators. In the last ten years, the level of online antisemitism has significantly risen. Covert and overt types of antisemitism on social networks represent a serious social problem, and a threat directed not only towards the Jewish community, but also towards every society that fosters the values of human rights, equality, peaceful communication and non-violence in all its forms. (shrink)

This essay has two parts, each that was published earlier in different forms. The first, titled “How Critical Race Theory Can Be Antisemitic,” discusses how the current UUA’s dogmatic application of critical race theory as the only lens to view society is antisemitic. The second, titled “How Intolerance, Censorship, and Dogmatism Make Unitarian Universalism Increasingly Unwelcoming to Jews,” explains how Judaism and Jewish culture are about questioning, diversity of views, dissent, and debate—all things traditionally associated with UU—and how any space (...) that is dogmatic and illiberal will be unwelcoming to most Jews. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the resurgence of antisemitism. It argues that Hannah Arendt is a great prop and stay and comfort in dark times like these, because she was always very acute on the morbidly stupid element of totalitarianism. The absurdity of totalitarian thinking is related to its attack on the life of the mind, and Arendt was quite right to insist on confronting this anti-intellectual element of totalitarianism and the racist element in it.

Cet article examine le(s) lien(s) entre le racisme antinoir et l’antisémitisme en se référant à quatre traditions distinctes : les psychanalyses de Fanon et de Freud, l’École de Francfort, les travaux de Cedric Robinson et la tradition du contrat social dans la philosophie politique des débuts de l’époque moderne. Sa thèse principale est que le racisme antinoir et l’antisémitisme sont intimement liés par la logique et le fonctionnement – la phénoménologie – de l’État dans la tradition occidentale du contrat social. (...) En montrant comment cela se fait, nous pouvons répondre à des questions qui, sinon, restent en suspens dans les autres traditions mentionnées ci-dessus. En résumé, cet article montre comment le racisme antinoir émerge avec force de la logique de l’État dans la tradition du contrat social, tandis que l’antisémitisme se développe comme une négation déformée de cette logique. (shrink)

This special issue examines conspiracist antisemitic print culture in the Nordic countries from the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. To contrast the universal patterns and particularities of the cases of Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, the issue includes two contributions analysing Spain and Britain. Together, the articles provide empirical in-depth knowledge of the character and dissemination of conspiracist antisemitism in a particular time and within a particular region. Our aim is to expand (...) the general knowledge of conspiracism as a _historical_ phenomenon through the prism of antisemitism. In the introduction, we present the conditions of historical antisemitism in each case study as well as the conceptual framework of this issue, focusing on terms such as _conspiracism_, _conspiracy_ and _conspiracy theories_. We argue that antisemitism can be interpreted as a _longue-durée_ conspiracist tradition, marked by a dialectic interaction between continuity and dynamic changes. (shrink)

Bruno Bauer (1809–1882) is neither a well known nor an easily accessible author.1 Despite playing a significant role in both the evolution of Hegelianism and in nineteenth century controversies abo...

The history of the Frankfurt School cannot be fully told without examining the relationships of Critical Theorists to their Jewish family backgrounds. Jewish matters had significant effects on key figures in the Frankfurt School, including Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, Leo Lowenthal and Herbert Marcuse. At some points, their Jewish family backgrounds clarify their life paths; at others, these backgrounds help to explain why the leaders of the School stressed the significance of antisemitism. In the post-Second World (...) War era, the differing relationships of Critical Theorists to their Jewish origins illuminate their distinctive stances toward Israel. This book investigates how the Jewish backgrounds of major Critical Theorists, and the ways in which they related to their origins, impacted upon their work, the history of the Frankfurt School, and differences that emerged among them over time. (shrink)

In this compelling narrative of antisemitism in German thought, Paul Rose proposes a fresh view of the topic. Beginning with an examination of the attitudes of Martin Luther, he challenges distinctions between theologically derived (medieval) and secular, "racial" (modern) antisemitism, arguing that there is an unbroken chain of antisemitic feeling between the two periods. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of (...) Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

The Swedish Jewish historian Hugo Valentin (1888–1963) founded the field of Swedish Jewish history in the 1920s. Valentin was also a prominent and public figure in Swedish Jewish affairs, as a writer, Zionist and refugee activist. This article focuses on Valentin’s analysis of antisemitism, from the 1920s to the early 1950s. It pays equal attention to the continuity and change of his writings on the topic, analysed in relation to such political contexts as the ‘Jewish question’, Zionism and anti-Nazi (...) responses, and advances within scholarly research on antisemitism. It shows that Valen­tin staked out a new approach to the topic of antisemitism, in which Jewish characteristics and the so-called Jewish question, while not completely absent, were placed within parentheses. Instead, he presented antisemitism and individual antisemites as problems in their own right, which, given Nazi German expansionism and the outbreak of the Second World War, seemed to be a greater and more urgent issue than whatever questions might have pertained to Jews and their place in modern society. (shrink)

Stravinsky considered himself a maker, a Homo faber, an artisan of the past. He confessed that he liked to compose music more than music itself, and argued that expression was not an immanent character of music. With this paper, I intend to discuss Stravinsky’s musical aesthetics (the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures given right after the outbreak of WWII –Poétique musicale), depicting and criticising his notion of expression and his view of the musician as mere “executant”. I will also point out (...) some biographical details (the controversial premiere of Le Sacre du printemps and Stravinsky’s antisemitism) while criticising Adorno’s harsh critique of Stravinsky’s music. -/- . (shrink)

Freud's collection of antiquities - his "old and dirty gods"- stood as silent witnesses to the early analysts' paradoxical fascination and hostility toward religion. Pamela Cooper-White argues that antisemitism, reaching back centuries before the Holocaust, and the acute perspective from the margins that it engendered among the first analysts, stands at the very origins of psychoanalytic theory and practice. The core insight of psychoanalytic thought - that there is always more beneath the surface appearances of reality, and that this (...) "more" is among other things affective, memory-laden and psychological- cannot fail to have had something to do with the experiences of the first Jewish analysts in their position of marginality and oppression in Habsburg-Catholic Vienna of the 20th century. The book concludes with some parallels between the decades leading to the Holocaust and the current political situation in the U.S. and Europe, and their implications for psychoanalytic practice today. (shrink)

With the publication of Martin Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, it has become impossible to avoid Heidegger’s anti-Semitism. There has been the expected controversy with Heideggerians on the defensive and the philosopher’s detractors condemning his work outright. But there has been little serious exploration of the matter aside from several recent works. This article builds on this literature on Heidegger’s anti-Semitism and concludes that an anti-Semitic narrative lies at the heart of Heidegger’s history of the oblivion of Being as nihilism. Moreover, Heidegger (...) adopts the narrative framework set up by Friedrich Nietzsche in On the Genealogy of Morality. In the end, we assert that Heidegger advocates a kind of war against Judaism that seeks to eradicate the Jewish influence in the western tradition. Heidegger’s ‘metaphysical’ anti-Semitism aims to overcome the nihilism of the ‘Jewish Christian’ revenge [Rache] against death, a nihilism that has evolved into the technological effort to make everything secure. (shrink)

During World War II, the Institute for Social Research conducted an innovative study of American working-class antisemitism. This article goes beyond existing literature by reconstructing the project’s evolving understanding of labor antisemitism—from ideology to psychopathology. This change, it argues, arose from the project’s methods, findings, and analytical concepts—especially the long-overlooked concept of the stereotype. The article documents this concept’s role in two better-known Institute works from the period: Dialectic of Enlightenment and Authoritarian Personality. Throughout, it traces continuities in (...) the Institute’s research program and reconsiders the balance between its empirical studies and its critical theory in the 1940s. (shrink)

The first systematic analysis of the Frankfurt School’s research and theorizing on modern antisemitism. Although the Frankfurt School represents one of the most influential intellectual traditions of the twentieth century, its multifaceted work on modern antisemitism has so far largely been neglected. The Politics of Unreason fills this gap, providing the first systematic study of the Frankfurt School’s philosophical, psychological, political, and social research and theorizing on the problem of antisemitism. Examining the full range of these critical (...) theorists’ contributions, from major studies and prominent essays to seemingly marginal pieces and aphorisms, Lars Rensmann reconstructs how the Frankfurt School, faced with the catastrophe of the genocide against the European Jews, explains forms and causes of anti-Jewish politics of hate. The book also pays special attention to research on coded and “secondary” antisemitism after the Holocaust, and how resentments are politically mobilized under conditions of democracy. By revisiting and rereading the Frankfurt School’s original work, this book challenges several misperceptions about critical theory’s research, making the case that it provides an important source to better understand the social origins and politics of antisemitism, racism, and hate speech in the modern world. Lars Rensmann is Professor of European Politics and Society at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. His books include Arendt and Adorno: Political and Philosophical Investigations (coedited with Samir Gandesha). (shrink)

The lack of a local Jewish community did not prevent medieval Swedish clerics and lay people from being interested in Jews and Jewish questions. They bought, translated, read and preached from most of the available textual sources and thus spread the widely available views of the hermeneutical Jew: a cruel, stubborn and ugly person and at the same time a cipher for the entire Jewish people both in biblical times and today. This article gives an overview of the Latin and (...) vernacular manuscripts with anti-Jewish motifs and texts and shows that the main and most common textual models and motifs were available in Swedish libraries and collections, from legends via apocryphal texts to fake disputations – adding up to a relatively complete ‘hermeneutical Jew’. A focus was, as in the rest of Europe, on Passion-related piety, which was the most common form of piety in the late Middle Ages – and usually connected with distinct anti-Jewish features. The fact that we can establish direct and indirect textual and narrative lines of tradition between the medieval codices and modern printed booklets of the nineteenth century proves the long-lasting intelligibility of anti-Jewish stereotypes in Sweden – developed and spread completely independently from the Jewish minority. The medieval perspective thus adds a much-needed nuance to the debate about antisemitism in the North: it did not need any actual Jews; it simply made up its own, based on the general Christian tradition. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Recent surges in antivaccine activism and other antiscience trends now converge with rising antisemitism. During the COVID-19 pandemic, authoritarian elements from the far right in North America and Europe often invoked Nazi imagery to describe vaccinations or at times even blame the Jewish people for COVID-19 origins and vaccine profiteering. Such tropes represent throwbacks to the 14th century, when European Jews were persecuted during the time of the bubonic plague. This article provides both historical and recent perspectives on the (...) links between antiscience and antisemitism, together with the author’s personal experience as a Jewish vaccine scientist targeted by both dark forces. New approaches to uncoupling antisemitism from antiscience, while combating both, are essential for saving lives and preserving democratic values. (shrink)

This paper seeks to explore whether and how the Greek left-wing criticism against Israeli politics challenges the state of Israel’s right to exist and spreads antisemitic mythopoesis by utilising ‘soft hate speech’. In particular, my aim is to shed light on an ideological paradox – the utilisation of discriminatory discourse by the Greek left – a multidimensional political power consisted of a wide range of ideologies that all defend human rights and are characterised by progressive perspectives; a point that reveals (...) that antisemitism is well rooted in the Greek society, revives in times of crisis and penetrates the whole political spectrum. By applying the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) to Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) and its argumentation strategies as an appropriate theory and methodology to analyse in detail such utterances, my attempt is to show how antisemitism has been constituted as a common sense beyond the limits of the far-right populist discourses. (shrink)

This article deals with the construction and performance of antisemitism in Nazi children’s books. It provides an explorative discourse analysis of _Trust No Fox_ as reported (Bauer, Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud bei seinem Eid! Ein Bilderbuch für Gross und Klein, Stürmer-Verlag, Nuremberg, 1936) and _The Poisonous Mushroom_ as reported (Hiemer, Der Giftpilz—ein Stürmerbuch für Jung u. Alt, Stürmer-Verlag, Nuremberg, 1938) through the lens of Critical applied legal linguistics (CrALL). It seeks to elucidate how ‘Jewishness’ (...) is constructed in the two books, with a view to enhancing our understanding of the intertextual and interdiscursive embeddedness of anti-Semitic rhetoric generally and nomination and predication strategies specifically. To this end, a specialised corpus of 10,002 tokens, 2,345 types and 43 illustrations was compiled. Subsequently XML annotation was applied with the data being parsed into headings, sentences and/or lines. It was found that the books follow a Jewish/non-Jewish dichotomy, consistently referring to breaches of custom, morality, religion and law. Both works purport to provide descriptive accounts of ‘Jews as they are,’ when, in fact, they generate the normative illusion of ‘Jews as they ought to be’ according to Nazi ideology. It is suggested to use the insights gained into the anti-Semitic rhetoric of children’s books to detect, describe and critique patterns of anti-Semitic rhetoric today. (shrink)

This paper argues for a ‘contextualist’ approach to teaching antisemitism in philosophy class. The traditional ‘systematic’ approach emphasizes recognizing and dismantling antisemitic aspects in canonical philosophical texts. The introduced contextualist approach broadens the perspective, treating philosophy as a continuous debate embedded in cultural realities. It focuses on historical controversies rather than isolated arguments, includes the voice and the perspectives of the oppressed, and so has the potential to broaden traditional philosophical canons. In the second half of the paper, we (...) provide a case study of the contextualist approach, applying it to the ‘Berlin antisemitism controversy’ of 1879/80. We argue that the contextualist approach is particularly valuable when dealing with antisemitism as it teaches students to analyze arguments within the socio-political landscape and to identify antisemitic elements. The students thereby acquire the skills to discern antisemitic argumentation in other contexts as well. We suggest that this approach could be used to teach other debates in the history of philosophy, especially those tackling race, sex, and gender issues. (shrink)

This article adopts a historical perspective to explore Jewish women’s experiences of anti­ semitism in Sweden. The empirical foundation of the study comprises interviews with approximately thirty women born in the 1950s, 1970s or 1990s, all of whom self­identify as Jewish. Employing a dialogical epistemology rooted in intersectionality and shared authority, the study emphasises both the content of the women’s life­stories and the ways they interpret and articulate their experiences. A key finding of this study is that the fear of (...) antisemitism is a persistent presence in the lives of most participants. A notable continuity over time is the school, which emerges as a recurring site where Jewish women have experienced a sense of being different. However, there is a generational shift in how these experiences are interpreted. Women born in the 1990s are more likely to identify such experiences explicitly as antisemitism, compared to those born in the 1950s or 1970s. Another significant conclusion is that understanding Jewish women’s stories about antisemitism requires these accounts to be situated within broader relational contexts, encompassing both their own and others’ experiences as well as both contemporary and historical processes. Past experiences are often reactivated by current events, such as the attack of 7 October 2023. There is also a before and after 7 October. After 7 October, the fear of antisemitism increased, and some women describe the fear as constant or existential. A general conclusion in the article is that the fear of antisemitism is present in most of the women's lives. A continuity over time is that the school is a place where Jewish women have experienced that they are different. Women born in the 1990s interpret these experiences to a greater extent, than the women born in the 1950’s and the 19970’s, as an experience of antisemitism. In this respect, our results differ from previous international research showing that older people in particular experience and regard society as antisemitic, while younger people do not do so to the same extent. A further conclusion is that to understand women's narratives about experiences of antisemitism, these should also be understood in relation to the experiences of others both in the present and in the past, since these form layer upon layer of experiences that are actualized by current events such as October 7. There is also a before and after October 7. After 7 October, the feeling of insecurity has increased, and some women describe the fear as constant or existential. (shrink)

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 4, Page 552-553, July 2012.

This review article gives an overview of the two most influential definitions of antisemit­ism in Europe: the non-legally binding working definition by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and the so-called Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. Furthermore, the article explains where the definitions come from and summarises the current debates and discourses on how to define antisemitism in view of the history and politics of Europe. It also gives brief attention to the Nexus Document as a third influential definition, (...) which plays a more important role in the United States. The article ends with a reflection on the definition offered by the historian Helen Fein, which is more action-based, and Amos Morris-Reich’s statement of the importance of reflecting on the role of language and the ability of language to create hate and to hurt. (shrink)

Antisemitism is an increasingly prevalent aspect of public life in the West, both as a consequence of the growth of the far right across the board and through its mobilisation against Palestinian liberation and Palestine solidarity activism. While synagogues are targeted and far-right politicians revive ideas of Jewish global power, it is the left, Muslims, and Palestinians that are continuously constructed as the source of the current rise in hatred and violence against Jews. If historically the Marxist tradition engaged (...) actively with the so-called Jewish question, in recent decades the subject has receded from focus. This shift took place as other forms of racism – directed at Muslims, Black populations, or migrants – became the basis for reactionary politics in the West. This article argues that while some of the assumptions that underwrote classical Marxist texts on the issue have been found wanting – perhaps most notably the inevitable (or desirable) character of the trend towards assimilation – they remain important starting points for making sense of our present, both by their method and their political commitment to liberation. (shrink)

Summary Despite his repudiation of antisemitism, Renan influenced the development of antisemitic ideologies in both France and Germany. His typology of ?Semite? and ?Aryan? was adopted especially in Germany and and combined with biological concepts of race to become the foundation of the concepts of ?Semitism? and ?Antisemitism?. Renan, however, always insisted on a linguistic/cultural definition of race and regarded the biological conception, while it might have had some primitive reality, as outmoded and immoral in European civilization. After (...) 1870 the growth of German racial antisemitism led Renan to elaborate repeatedly on race as a civilisational phenomenon that in modern Europe should have lost its biological origins. His argument that modern Jews were integral members of the French ?nation? and ?civilization? was profoundly influential on the emergence of the theory of the modern ?nation? as the liberal state. Gobineau's theory of race also lent itself to exploitation by racial antisemites, though it was not overtly antisemitic. Unlike Renan, however, Gobineau in his later years inclined to a vague personal antisemitism. The main difference was one of temperament as well as devotion on Renan's part to a liberal idea of the nation, as opposed to Gobineau's aversion to liberalism and modern civilization. (shrink)

ExcerptThe French political theorist George Sorel repeatedly prophesied that Europe would provide the future soil of armed cataclysms.1 Furthermore, he claimed that the catalyzing factors for the conflicts of political power that lay behind such eruptions of violence and anarchy were myths, conceived not in the anthropological sense but as a series of images formed into a dramatic narrative capable of mobilizing social movements and inspiring violence to change the status quo. Thomas Mann lent weight to such an analysis when (...) he predicted that “in the era of the masses, parliamentary discussion would necessarily prove utterly inadequate as a means of shaping political will.” Thus, “in the future what was needed in its place were mythic fictions, which would be fed to the masses as the primitive battle cries necessary for unleashing and activating political energies.” Henceforth “popular myths, or better, myths trimmed for the masses, would be the vehicle of political action—fables, chimeras, phantasms that needed to have nothing whatever to do with truth, reason, or science in order to be productive nonetheless.”. (shrink)

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) developed a ‘Working Definition of Antisemitism’ in 2016. Whilst the definition has received a significant amount of media attention, we are not aware of any comprehensive philosophical analysis. This article analyses this definition. We conclude that the definition and its list of examples ought to be rejected. The urgency to do so stems from the fact that pro-Israel activists can and have mobilised the IHRA document for political goals unrelated to tackling antisemitism, (...) notably to stigmatise and silence critics of the Israeli government. This causes widespread self-censorship, has an adverse impact on freedom of speech, and impedes action against the unjust treatment of Palestinians. We also identify intrinsic problems in the way the definition refers to criticism of Israel similar ‘to that leveled against any other country’, ambiguous wording about ‘the power of Jews as a collective’, lack of clarity as to the Jewish people’s ‘right to self-determination’, and its denial of obvious racism. We consider alternative definitions and prefer one like the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) definition, ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews’, with the addition of the words ‘as Jews’. We recognise that the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) can play a useful purpose in illustrating the shortcomings of the IHRA definition. However, we do not advocate promoting it as the prime international definition. Indeed, we question the efficacy of using complex new definitions to combat racism against Jews or other groups, and instead advocate combatting it through collective action across societies. (shrink)

This paper investigates Shannon Sullivan’s concept of white privilege through the lens of James Gray’s 2022 film, Armageddon Time. Sullivan investigates the concept of white racial privilege and the problem with middle-class, white anti-racism. In Armageddon Time, the Graff family, “good white people”, progressives with anti-racist intentions, actually strive to achieve the white privilege Sullivan analyzes. The dynamics of white privilege in the film are more complex because the family is Jewish. I argue that antisemitism provides a problem for (...) Sullivan’s analytical matrix regarding white privilege, provide an alternative strategy for dealing with ethnic and religious nuances within the category of whiteness and offer a conjecture as to why Sullivan relies on a mostly binary white and non-white analysis. (shrink)

Unlike “Imperialism” and “Totalitarianism,” the last two chapters in Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, written in the United States in the 1940s, the completion of the first chapter, “Antisemitism”, was preceded by more than two decades of writing in Europe and in the United States, during which Arendt found it increasingly necessary to address issues related to the Jews’ political and social situation. The chapter may be only one part of the book, but it is in fact the (...) “origin of The Origins” and its cornerstone. In order to trace several themes of this seminal chapter, we must analyze the contribution of the French Jewish thinker, Bernard Lazare, to Arendt’s thinking. Without him, “Antisemitism” would never have coalesced and seen the light of day as a political analysis of the phenomenon. Without the “Antisemitism” chapter, The Origins of Totalitarianism would not have become a canonical work of twentieth-century political thought. (shrink)

IntroductionEvery day, it seems, we advance into darkness we have not known before. It is not a journey we have sought out or chosen for ourselves. We are swept along by a current of malice that can only be avoided if we hide from the news. The spectacle of a mass anti-Zionist and antisemitic “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on Columbia University’s central quad and elsewhere has structural predecessors, to be sure, like the Occupy Wall Street movement, but parallels with mass (...) class='Hi'>antisemitism require comparison with earlier historical moments. As the University of Chicago’s president, Paul Alivisatos, wrote straightforwardly in a public letter, “the impact of an encampment depends on the degree to which it disrupts study, scholarship, and free movement around campus.”1 The Occupy Wall Street movement was notably accompanied by a substantial body of theoretical work, whereas the Columbia occupation is supported by little more than a Manichaean view of a world divided between oppressor and oppressed peoples. The chants are sounded without any plausible theory of how they could actually lead to the dissolution of the Jewish state. The students breaking windows and occupying a building at Columbia were certainly employing theory of a sort when they asserted that the university had a moral responsibility to deliver meals to them, but observers found the theory difficult to endorse. The students promise to remain until Columbia meets their divestment demands—which presumably means they will be in their tents for a very long time indeed, since for governing boards to cede their investment authority to mob action means giving up their other responsibilities as well. But Brown University’s governing corporation has agreed to meet with student representatives and hold a vote on divestment in the fall.2 I expect the results of the vote will disappoint the protestors. (shrink)

This chapter examines: (1) the Black Notebooks in the context of Heidegger's political engagement on behalf of the National Socialist regime and his ambivalence toward some but not all of its political beliefs and tactics; (2) his limited "critique" of vulgar National Socialism and its biologically based racism for the sake of his own ethnocentric vision of the historical uniqueness of the German people and Germany's central role in Europe as a contested site situated between West and East, technological modernity (...) and the Asiatic. Heidegger did not break with radical right-wing Germanist thought, as some scholars have argued. He at most placed National Socialism within his narrative of the history of being, metaphysics, and technology, and thereby relativized it without addressing either its uniqueness or its totalitarian structures and practices. Heidegger formulated his own metaphysical and ontological version of Antisemitism during the National Socialist period. This vision was deeply connected with his understanding of the "history of being" and was intensified during and immediately after the Second World War. Heidegger could perceive no difference between the Shoah and the Allied bombing, defeat, and occupation of Germany. Heidegger's post-war philosophy (of home, history and technology) is deeply shaped by, and remained complicit with, his thinking during this period. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An I for an I: Projection, Subjection, and Christian Antisemitism in The Service for RepresentingAdam1 Richard J. Prystowsky Irvine Valley College You know well enough how to look in a mirror: Now look at this hand for me, and tell If my heart is sick or healthy. The Servicefor Representing Adam Far from experience producing his idea of the Jew, it was the latter which explained his experience. (...) If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him. Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew These wretched Jews, my own kindred, /... have more to be unhappy about than other peoples. The Holy Resurrection No modern theorist has done more to help us understand the nature of inter- and intra-personal and communal violence than has René Girard. Perhaps his most important insight into the workings of such violence, an insight grounding his other provocative discoveries concerning human conflict, is that the antagonistic participants in acts ofinter- and intra-personal and communal violence are "doubles" of each other. By demonstrating that 1 In their hyphenated forms, the terms "anti-Semite," "anti-Semitism," and "anti-Semitic" have sometimes proved more problematic than helpful. In order to avoid "fosterfing] the false impression that there is a wider ethnic entity against which 'anti-Semitism' is leveled" (Telushkin 467), and in light of the importance of the concept of antisemitism to the history of Jewhating, throughout this essay I follow the lead of those scholars who do not hyphenate the words "antisemite," "antisemitism," or "antisemitic." For more information concerning this issue, see Telushkin. 140Richard J. Prystowsky people fight not because they are different, but because they are the same, Girard has shown us how "violence is a great leveler of men" and has helped us to understand the serious consequences that either follow or can follow from mimetic rivalry (Violence 79). For example, he has helped us see how the internal violence occurring in a community in which differentiation has broken down finds its outlet in scapegoating, that mechanism by means of which a community in conflict with itself attempts to save itselfby sacrificing an expendable, arbitrary victim (who lacks a champion but whose real guilt or innocence is irrelevant) onto whom the collective victimizers have projected their own guilt, their own mimetically-oriented self-hatred—their own "sins," we might say. Among other things, Girard's critique of the mimetic rivalry characteristic of what we might call "the conflicted communal Self" also sheds light on the nature of the violence and victimization that we find in the history of Christian persecution of Jews. Without referring to Girard's ideas, the eminent historian Léon Poliakov nevertheless captures a Girardian view of this tragic history when he writes that "to massacre first, and then, from fear of revenge, to accuse afterward; to attribute to the victims one's own aggressive intentions; to impute to them one's own cruelty: from country to country and from century to century, under various disguises, this is the device we find" (106-7). In the present essay, I will attempt to show that such vengeance-laden acts of Christian persecution of Jews, of the Jew-as-Other, derive from antisemitic Christians' mimetic rivalry with Jews—an "I" for an "I," as this essay's title would suggest—and that underlying this rivalry is the introjection ofreal or imagined Jewish self-hatred.2 1 hope to demonstrate that this projected intra-victimization is marked, in part, by Christians' mimetic appropriations of fantasized or real acts of Jewish self-incrimination, punishment, or more generalized suffering. Ultimately, I will try to provide support for the idea that, despite its obvious promise and appeal of love, peace, and brotherhood, Christianity cannot wrest itself entirely from its moorings in real or fantasized Jewish self-hatred, that is, in an appropriation of enacted or imagined Judaism against itself. If my contentions prove even partially legitimate, then an overwhelming question for good-faith Christians is whether or not the peculiar brand of antisemitism discussed above is endemic to Christianity and, if it is, whether 2Sander L. Oilman's Jewish Self-Hatredremains the preeminent work on the relationship between Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism. Among... (shrink)