Antisemitism
By: Leah Brown-Schneck
Antisemitism generally, is hatred and discrimination against Jewish people; but over the last 2,000 years, it has grown to be something much more complex and sinister. Antisemitism has lead to the direct targeting of Jewish communities over centuries through instances such as slavery, ghettoization across Europe, pogroms, the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust during WWII. Antisemitism as an ideology has morphed into treating Jews as a type of bogeyman for neo-Nazi and other White Supremacist movements. One hard truth is that in the United States, antisemitism is a part of some ideologies we might not expect. In addition to Alt-Right groups (especially since 2016), some leaders of the Nation of Islam also traffick in antisemitism.
There are several stereotypes of Jewish people that center around control of capital and disgust, which are used to build up hatred and create panic. Antisemitic tropes paint Jews as global elites who control the media and monetary systems, and dirty murderers and peasants. This division of having power and not having power creates a confusing narrative that can make it easier to induce panic and hatred - often grounded in the “unknown” or “other”.
Jewishness is an ethnicity in addition to being a religion - and many non-religious Jews still consider themselves of Jewish origin or heritage when it comes to ethnicity. While Jews in the U.S. have generally “become white” since the mid-twentieth century, there are still many instances of basic cultural exclusion faced by Jews; from public school calendars that ignore High Holidays to workplaces that hold events on Friday night or Saturday during the sabbath, to forms that do not list Jewish as an ethnicity.
In conjunction with the rise of the Alt-right, antisemitic activity has increased since Donald Trump launched his 2016 presidential campaign. From the “Jews will not replace us” chants at the 2017 Alt-right rally in Charlottesville to countless bomb threats and acts of vandalism at synagogues throughout the country to the Holocaust deniers who participated in the riot on January 6th, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol.
Recap:
- Antisemitism is hatred and discrimination against Jewish people and has a 2000+ year history
- We are living through a new wave of antisemitism as a central tenet of various white supremacist ideologies
CITATIONS
“Antisemitism.” Southern Poverty Law Center, 2021, www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/antisemitism.
Brodkin, Karen. How Jews Became White Folks: and What That Says about Race in America, Rutgers University Press, 2010, pp. 1–7.
