Antisemitism 101

Let’s start with concepts, definitions and semantics:

Anti-Semitism is also called Judeophobia, where a phobia is an exaggerated and absurd fear. I may be afraid of being bitten by a spider, but the person with arachnophobia will jump up on the table and scream uncontrollably if they see a small spider walking in their kitchen.

Prejudice is the judgment we make before knowing or experiencing the situation. Very common in young children “I don’t like that food!” when they have never tried it before.

Jean-Paul Sartre tells the story of a person who is robbed by a Jewish furrier and justifies his hatred of Jews after this experience. Sartre explains to us how the choice is made prior to the experience as he decided to hate the Jews and not the furriers.

A stereotype is an idea or belief of what something or someone is like. It is usually a generalization to a particular group. Not all stereotypes are negative, for example the stereotype that all Asians are good at math, people who wear glasses are more intelligent, African-Americans are good at basketball, Italians are good lovers. All humans tend to stereotype, we see a person and whether we like it or not, we unconsciously create stereotypes based on their age, the way they dress, their facial expression, their way of walking, their skin color, how they style their hair, etc.

Scapegoat – We use scapegoats to blame our actions on a person or group who is usually a minority or weaker than us. The simplest example is the older brother who blames his toddler brother or his dog when his mother asks who spilled the glass of milk or who ate the cookies. The director of a company may blame a subordinate for his mistakes or a president may blame the former president when he doesn´t achieve his goals.

Judeophobic prejudices are a set of conspiracy theories that, as Bari Waiss explains in her book “How to fight antisemitism”, morph to take the form of the worst human manifestations of each moment, “antisemitism successfully turns Jews into the symbol of whatever a given civilization defines as its most sinister and threatening qualities… whatever role “the jews” are needed for, well, that is the part they are forced to play” (I explain later). As in the case of Sartre’s furrier, we seek to find a single case – whether real or fictional – to justify anti-Semitic prejudice, not all furriers are thieves, but under this experience, all Jews are. Maybe that furrier had red hair, why don’t you hate everyone who has red hair? If he was German, why not all Germans are hated? or if he wore a tie, why not all people that wear ties are hated? This person had the prejudice of Jewish thieves and this case helps him prove and justify it.

Judeophobia is also a phobia that goes beyond the physical field and reaches the metaphysical. A racist person who hates black people is not at home fearing black people, he feels fear of them when in a city alley at night he encountering two black people. The one who hates the Jew is not afraid of meeting two Orthodox Jews in an alley; on the contrary, he may take advantage of the situation to bully them; His fear of the Jews is constant, while he watches TV or is sending an email in his office, he fears that the Jews are conspiring to dominate the world, its finances and its media.

Finally, hatred of Jews is one of the few hatreds that not only sees those who it discriminates as inferior but also as superior. If you hate Mexican migrants, you see them as good for nothing, stupid, lazy people. If you hate the Jews you fear their power and their audacity, as we heard in Charlottesville, “Jews will not replace us.”

But how did all this come about?

Some of the first anti-Semitic signs can be found in the writings of Greek and Roman philosophers. In an era where nationalist ideologies were not yet predominant and even non-existent around the world, for the majority of people it was indifferent who governed them; They even embraced the Hellenization of their culture that accompanied the conquest of Athens. Religiously the change was not major either, their polytheistic temples could change the name or figure of their gods but the god of agriculture remained the god of agriculture and was respected and served in the same way. One of the few peoples who did not accept these changes with open arms were the Hebrews and the Greek writers wondered why, calling the Jews strange, different and suspicious.

The first Christians, who were strongly persecuted by the Romans, did not see themselves as a new religion and didn´t understand why the rest of the Jews wouldn´t accept Jesus. They realized the only way for their beliefs to survive was to grow in numbers and so, began to proselytize outside of Judaism. To make entry into the new Catholicism easier and more attractive for their pagan neighbors, the early Christians withdrew some of the less convincing Jewish laws such as Kashrut laws, like not eating pork as well as the circumcision.

The real persecution of Jews for the simple fact of being Jews begins in Europe in the early Middle Ages. It is important to understand that at that time, European society was an extremely homogenous society with practically a single minority among them; the Jews. In a world where a person’s primary identity is with their religion, anyone who has a different religion becomes a suspicious outsider. Worse still, the Jews killed Christ. How can the Jews, who lived hand in hand with Christ, deny him? It was clearly evident that Christ was the son of God, only the devil’s allies would deny him and kill him. This is how in a time where the worst symbol one can carry was the devil and denying God, the Jews become deicides and satanists.

“Those who have once been God’s chosen people, had now become the sons of Satan” St. Augustine

A minority that also worships the devil and denies Christ is easy to blame for any misfortune. For example, since the Jews washed their hands before eating, they bathed once a week on Shabbat and they lived on the outskirts of the cities (they were not allowed to live in the center), where there was more space and rivers of clean water flow, the Jews became less sick and had fewer outbreaks of plagues. This caused suspicion among non-Jews and they blamed the Jews for poisoning the water wells and practicing witchcraft. When in a church the hosts acquired a reddish fungus that resembled blood, it was because the Jews tortured the hosts until they bled. If a Christian child disappeared or was found dead, it was the Jews who ritually killed him to extract his blood and thus prepare the matza, thus beginning the blood libels. All this seems ridiculous and even somewhat comical, if it weren´t for the fact that these conspiracies ended in massacres and murders of entire Jewish communities.

In 1215, Pope Innocent III ordered the Jews to dress with particular signs to be identified, different countries began to mark their Jews to distinguish them, either with a yellow badge or with specific tunics and hats, the latter starting the rumor that Jews have tails and horns hidden under their clothes.

Not only was the Jewish person persecuted in the Middle Ages, but also their customs and religion. For example, Christians cannot go after the Jewish Bible, as its directly linked with the Christian bible, but they can persecute the Talmud, creating a ban on its publication and massively burning the confiscated books.

Economically, Jews are prohibited from participating in different guilds and professions exclusive to Christians. Christians are prohibited by the church from lending money with interest, so monarchs and clerics use Jews as their intermediaries, collecting debts and loans with interest; This is how the stereotype of the usurer, miser and money-obsessed Jew was born.

In 1448 Gutenberg invented the printing press, revolutionizing the access to ideas and texts. Curiously, after the Bible, one of the main uses of the new printing press is to massively propagate anti-Semitic pamphlets and writings. Similar to the use of social media by modern anti-Semites.

As a revolutionary movement, the Renaissance came to Europe, where religion as the central axis of European culture gives way to the ideas of humanists. Jews began to receive more freedoms and were allowed to participate more actively in society. Contradictorily, those Jews who took up the invitation and began to emancipate themselves, were viewed with suspicion, while those who kept their Jewish customs and rituals intact, were viewed with contempt. The Jew either does not want to assimilate, or on the contrary, assimilates too much, creating both extremes of anti-Semitism.

The new humanist sees the Church as the enemy of progress. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to openly criticize the New Testament and the Catholic Church, yet you can criticize the Old Testament and the Jews. In a couple of centuries, we went from accusing the Jew for not recognizing Christ, to now accusing him for creating him.

Throughout history, Jews have been discriminated against for everything we can think of, except possibly being dumb or stupid. The Jewish religion is focused on study, analysis and questioning. When some universities begin to allow Jews´ entry with entrance quotas, the Jews who are accepted into the universities quickly begin to succeed and take successful positions in fields such as science and law. This again creates suspicion and conspiracy’s, the success of the Jews is not natural, they must be getting their power from some secret place. Once again, the eyes go to the Talmud, and antisemitic writers, either out of belief, or just looking for fame and money, start publishing books translating the Talmud with some textual parts, but above all, inventing anti-Semitic stories.

I mention the Talmud for the second time in the text, because curiously, in recent months, trends have emerged in TikTok and X of people saying “I read the Talmud and it says that Jews can rape non-Jewish women, that Jews can cheat or steal non-Jews” and any other anti-Semitic idiocy.

With the rise of nationalism, where a person’s main loyalty and identity is no longer with their religion or their King, but with their nation, the French identify with the French, the Germans with the Germans and the Russians with the Russians. What about the Jews? They naturally become the scapegoat, the most emblematic individual case being the trials of Alfred Dreyfuss, and the general case in post-WWI Germany blaming the Jews for stabbing the German nation in the back. In an era where the worst thing one could be is to be a traitor to one’s country, the Jews fill that role.

The new “power” that the Jews took after their emancipation in modern society, led to the publication in the 19th and 20th centuries of different books that talk about the international Jewish community conspiring to take over the world, the most successful, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, first published in Russia in 1903, gained popularity and interest throughout Europe, a required reading in Nazi Germany. A book that is still available today in bookstores around Arab countries in the Middle East. Without a doubt the most successful anti-Semitic book in history, above Main Kampf and according to some sources, the most printed book in history after the Bible, The Koran and Mao’s Red Book.

Under the new conspiracy of the international Jew with intentions of conquering the world, through their dominance of finances and the media, they buy politicians and use them as puppets for their own interests.

These new anti-Semitic conspiracies do not stay in Europe, they reach the entire world, including the USA where some very important figures such as Henry Ford, responsible for the publication “The International Jew: The world’s problem”, and other editorials where he blames the Jews for serious things like starting the Great War, as well as idiotic things like inventing Jazz music and the miniskirt. Ford’s good friend Charles Lindbergh, possibly the most popular personality of the time, was openly pro-Nazi Germany and anti-Jewish, blaming them for plotting to force the US into the war.

Within the same contradictory anti-Semitic logic, with the emergence of economic ideologies like capitalism and communism, the Jew is blamed for being a promoter of the opposite. What greater exponent of Capitalism than the Rothschild Jew, or of communism than the Jews Marx and Trotsky.

In countries in western Europe or the USA where Jews had a general economic success, the Jews are attacked for being rich and too powerful, in countries like Poland and Russia where Jews are mainly poor, they are seeing as a lazy, dirty social-parasite.

The modern era also brought advances in science and the creation of different theories, including Darwin’s “On the Origin of species”, covering the evolution and the struggle between species for survival and resources, this leads to the creation of social Darwinism, Anthropology and racial theories.

Nazism´s highest flag was the purity of the Aryan race and its right as a superior race to dominate others. Thus, in a society where the most basic quality about a human beings is their race, the Jew becomes an inferior race.

Nazi’s anti-Semitism actually takes different elements from the anti-Semitic conspiracies created over time, its basis is racial where the Jew is sub-human, but also with elements of nationalist anti-Semitism and the Jew with intentions of dominating and subjugating the world.

The Holocaust was not the first, nor unfortunately the last, massacre of Jews. Some of the largest and most distinctive through history being those of the Crusaders, the Inquisition, the Khmelnytsky rebellion in Ukraine, the Farhud in Baghdad, the Syrian massacre, the Progroms in Tsarist Russia, and more…

The history of anti-Semitism in Muslim countries, until before the creation of the Jewish state in Israel, has a primarily religious basis; Jews are on the one hand protected but at the same time treated as second-class citizens, a tolerated second-class minority; paying special taxes, being prohibited from testifying in court against a Muslim, not being able to carry out specific professions, prohibited from purchasing property and being, naturally, the scategoat of society. In some Arab countries it was legal to spit on and even hit Jews for simply getting in your way walking down the street. The Jews arrived in several Arab countries a millennium before the birth of Islam like in Iraq (Babylon) and Iran (Persia). In the latter, Jews were prohibited from going out on rainy days so that their skin would not contaminate the water that could later be drank by a Muslim.

When nationalism ideas came to the Levant, as in Europe, the Jews are now not only discriminated for religious reasons, but now also became the minority that might conspire against the nation.  After Israel is founded and surprisingly beats 6 Arab countries in the War of Independence, the shock penetrates the core belief that the Jews where naturally weak, cowards and second-class, there must be something strange happening, some supranatural reason … the Muslim world easily adopt the century-old conspiracy that the Jews (and the new State of Israel) have a pact with the devil and take their power from it.

I read of the best phrases about Jews in the Muslim world from Bernard Lewis “under Islam, the Jewish experience was never as bad as in Christendom at its worst, nor ever as good as in Christendom at its best.”

Returning to Europe and the West, once the horrors of the Holocaust come to light, the world takes pitty on the Jews, openly attacking the Jew is no longer welcomed. Anti-Semitism was more underground and contained, Jewish conspiracies were talked about at family dinners or private meetings. It just wasn’t fashionable. The Jews of the diaspora find in the second half of the XX century in the USA a new golden age, perhaps the greatest in their history.

But like other viruses, antisemitism knows how to mutate and like herpes can dormant before breaking out again, yet it never disappears. Studies of anti-Semitism find a correlation between the health of a society and the level of anti-Semitism experienced in it, this makes anti-Semitism a symptom of the health of a society. In the virus analogy, every human body has different viruses in it, those that lower their immune system get sick.

The KKK, who continued to express itself openly in the 50s and 60s, blames the Jews not only for supporting, but managing the Civil Rights Movement.

One of the main outbreaks are the neo-Nazis in Europe and the USA, as well as the Holocaust deniers. Over the years they have gone from minimizing the holocaust (yes it happened, but there were not so many), to denying it (it didn’t exist) to justifying it (They deserved it, Hitler was right) to finally celebrating it (that’s a good thing that happened, “the only mistake of Hitler was not to kill them all”).

For the right-far antisemitic, the Jews are the master manipulators of other minorities and therefore the biggest enemy of a white-supremacist.

During the second half of the 20th century, anti-Zionists were found in the Arab world and the USSR. In the USSR a Soviet citizen could not be persecuted for his religion, nationality or race, but could be for his loyalty to a foreign entity. The Jew becomes one of the main scapegoats of the Communist party.

Anti-Zionism in the USSR was more of a component with political use. It is in the West, in the last years of the 20th century, where it really became a new anti-Semitic ideology. This is where I have to stop using terms in the past and start using them in the present. As I mentioned, it is not acceptable to go out on the street and say “I am anti-Semitic and I hate Jews”, but it is permissible to make a small change to “I am anti-Zionist and I hate Israel”. Israel made it easy for the anti-Semites, you can no longer blame a person – the Jewish furrier who robbed you – or a community – the Jews who murdered a Catholic child to use his blood.  Now there is a State, a Jewish State that brings together all the historical evils of the Jews; a diabolical, murderous, subhuman, oppressive State. It is no longer the Jews who conspire to dominate the world, now it is the Zionists. It is no longer the Jews who are the Capitalists who play with the finances of the world, now it is the Zionists. It is no longer the Jews who own the media and Hollywood, now it is the Zionists. It is no longer the Jews who are the enemies of humanity, now it is the Zionists.

The positive perception of Israel changes suddenly in the United States with each generation, dropping from more than 90% in the baby boomers to around 50% in the Zetas. Listening to Thomas Fridman in an interview he explains: The boomers saw Israel born and the deserts flourish, they witnessed the miracle of the War of Independence and of the 6 days, they experienced Munich and Entebbe, peace with Egypt; Israel as the modern story of David versus Goliath. The following generations lived in an Israel that was still vulnerable but already strong. They saw the birth of the Startup nation, peace with Jordan, the Oslo Accords. The new generation only knows a strong Israel that occupies Palestine, a right-wing Israel where they only know Netanyahu as its leader; for them, the tables turned and Israel became the Goliath.

For the new generation, educated with ideas such as Identity politics, critical race theory and intersectionality, it is understandable and natural to see Israel as a powerful, oppressive, racist and colonialist entity. Once again, in this new era where the worst thing one can be racist and oppressor, the maximum expression of racism and oppression in the world is the Jew (sorry, the Zionist).

The conspiracy of the internationalist Jew who buys and manages the media and politicians is still totally alive to this day, every time a personality makes a pro-Israel statement, no matter how obvious it may be, such as “Rape is not resistance”, he or she is attacked as a sellout to the Jews (sorry, to the Zionists).

Just as in Nazi Germany the participation of Jews was prohibited, progressive groups and clubs in the USA prohibit the participation of Jews (sorry, Zionists). Several university clubs make their members sign letters saying they are anti-racist, anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist. “Whereas Jews once had to convert to Christianity, now they have to convert to anti-Zionism ” – Bari Weiss.

Another one of the great contradictions, the woke movement, which calls itself the progressive, anti-racist and pro-inclusion movement, leaves the Jewish minority outside its lines. In 2022, 158 anti-Islamic hate crimes (1.1% of the population) were committed in the USA, 338 anti-transgender (0.6% of the population), 738 anti-Hispanic (19.1% of the population), 1,124 against Jews (2.4% of the population) anti-black 3,424 (13.6% of population). Considering after November 2023 anti-Semitic acts skyrocket between 150% and 500% depending on the report and the region, Jews are going to “challenge” the first place on the infamous list of victims of Hate crime in the USA

If 20 years ago we had asked where the greatest and vilest anti-Semitism would be experienced outside the Muslim world, the Campuses of progressive US Universities would not have been on the list of options.

The Trump administration legitimized far-right anti-Semitism, the new war in Gaza legitimizes the left-wing anti-Semitism. Again another contradiction: The anti-Semite on the right hates the Jew because he is not white, the one on the left hates the Jew (sorry to the Zionist) for being too white.

Just as with the Holocaust, I see a similar position regarding the massacre of October 7, there are those who minimize it, there are those who deny it, there are those who justify it and those who celebrate it.

I personally thought anti-Semitism as a major and existential problem had ended with the Holocaust.  I had experienced situations of anti-Semitism since I was a child, stones where throwed at our Succah while we were inside having dinner, at a summer camp two children told me they did not want to be my friends when I told them I was Jewish, at a wedding in my 20s the priest of the church in his sermon said the Jews murdered Christ and we Jews today continue to carry the burden, etc.  But they were all isolated and minor events. Little did I know I was living in a time bubble, in a brief period of exception. How far will this new wave of anti-Semitism go? It depends on us and our correct use of the greatest weapon in combat against it: Education. An anti-Semite can hardly be educated, it is impossible to change the mind of someone who is not willing to do so; Education should be aimed at the majority of people who are not yet sick but their immune system is being attacked by this dangerous virus.