Introduction to Modern Antisemitism

In October of 2018, a white supremacist entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and shouted “All Jews Must Die” before opening fire with an assault rifle. Eleven Jewish congregants were murdered and six wounded. It was the deadliest attack against Jews in U.S. history. In the investigation that followed the massacre, analysts found a slew of antisemitic posts on the shooter’s social media accounts.

Similar hate-fueled attacks continued in 2019. On the last day of Passover, a white supremacist posted an antisemitic manifesto online before killing a congregant at Chabad Congregation in Poway, California. On Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, a gunman who could not enter a locked synagogue in Halle, Germany killed two people on the street instead. In December, two gunmen killed four people at a Kosher supermarket in Jersey City, New Jersey; and during Chanukah, a lone assailant stabbed five celebrants at a Rabbi’s New York home, killing one. These attackers all shared antisemitic sentiments in their journals, speech, and online activity.

Antisemitism, or the prejudice or discrimination against Jewish people, has been around for over 3,000 years. But in the past five years, there has been a major spike in antisemitism in the U.S. and around the world.

Despite forming only 2% of the U.S. population, Jews experience the majority of religious-based hate crimes — 60.2% according to the FBI in 2019. And that 2% of the population experienced a staggering 15% of all hate crimes, religiously motivated or not. These hate crimes often involve antisemitic symbols and rhetoric, from Nazi graffiti on Jewish businesses and places of worship to violent conspiracy theorists attacking Jews indiscriminately. These hate crimes are often driven by antisemitic myths or canards. Since 2019, the coronavirus pandemic has fueled antisemitic rhetoric online. The Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Global 100 Survey estimates that 26% of the world’s adult population believes antisemitic myths. Jews make up only 0.2% of the global population.

The majority of Jews today are ethnic Jews. While many ethnic Jews still practice Judaism as a religion, a significant number consider themselves secular, or nonreligious. Jews are not a race, but an ethnoreligious group with common ancestry; however, they have often been racialized in history.

Because Jewish identity can be hard to define, antisemitism can appear in different ways. The ADL explains: “Hostility toward Jews dates to ancient times, perhaps to the beginning of Jewish history. From the days of the Bible until the Roman Empire, Jews were criticized and sometimes punished for their efforts to remain a separate social and religious group — one that refused to adopt the values and the way of life of the non-Jewish societies in which it lived.” This has made it easy for majority cultures to “other” Jews or treat them differently.

Antisemitic myths claim that Jews are more privileged, powerful, wealthy, or influential than other groups, and therefore Jews cannot be oppressed. This misconception allows antisemitism to persist in centuries-old cycles. Antisemitism wanes during times of peace and prosperity and rises during times of social change and economic instability.

The Darkest Times: 19th-Century Antisemitism

Patterns in today’s antisemitism are repeated from centuries of antisemitic violence, displacement, and oppression wherever Jews lived, including West Asia, North Africa, and Europe. While patterns repeat, antisemitism also constantly shifts form, mutating to persist in new eras.

Today’s 21st-century antisemitism can be traced back to two texts written in the 20th century. The first was The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a conspiracy hoax that was published in Russia, in 1903, which claimed a hidden Jewish cabal of “Zionists” sought to control the global economy and media from the shadows. Protocols led to massive anti-Jewish pogroms in Russian-held territory, causing an exodus of Eastern European Jewry. Protocol’s conspiracies targeting Jews are still widely cited and distributed today.

The second text was Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s propagandist literature, Mein Kampf, which blamed the Jewish “race” — which he deemed inferior — for society’s woes. Hitler’s antisemitism led, eventually, to the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews and 1-1.5 million Roma were murdered in a genocide. There are still fewer Jews alive today than before the Holocaust.

Antisemitism Today

The past decade has seen increased instability caused by two global recessions and a pandemic, climate change, a refugee migrant crisis, polarizing social media, and growing political division. Unfortunately and predictably, with this change and uncertainty comes rising antisemitism. This antisemitism occurs across political divides, leaving Jews feeling increasingly isolated.

The list of antisemitic hate crimes that have occurred in the three plus years since the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting are harrowing. Times of Israel reported an Israeli student in Paris was beaten unconscious on the subway for speaking Hebrew on his phone; according to Newsweek, a man in an elderly care facility in Canada had a swastika drawn on his head; New York Post reported that a New York Jewish school’s website was hacked to display Nazi imagery; and the Washington Post reported that the gunman who held a synagogue in Texas hostage believed Jews had the power to free an American prisoner. These are just a small number of the countless hate crimes against Jewish people that continue to take place across the globe.

Education plays a key role in combatting antisemitism and speaking out against it. The more people learn about Jewish history and customs, the more aware they’ll become of antisemitic myths. Here are some of the myths at the root of most antisemitism today:

1. Power: One common myth popularized by Protocols of the Elders of Zion is that Jews have disproportionate power in government and banking, seeking to control the world through these institutions.

2. Influence: Another myth we see today is that Jews control Hollywood and the media. In reality, most Jewish artists were barred from other industries when immigrating to America.

3. Disloyalty: Jews have nearly always lived among other nations as a minority. Their status as “other” led to ideas they were not loyal to their host nation, but only to other Jews.

4. Holocaust denial: The history of the Holocaust, an oppressive act of genocide, threatens the myth that Jews are all-powerful and cannot be oppressed. Some people deny that the Holocaust happened or distort its facts. This historical revision is harmful. Holocaust jokes are harmful too, as they dehumanize Jews while trivializing their genocide.

5. Blood libel: Blood libel was a common medieval conspiracy that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood in Jewish rituals. Blood libel originated with the accusation that Jews murdered Jesus, known as deicide, and continues today with conspiracies about the powerful harming innocent children.

Antisemitic individuals often also hold hate for other marginalized and minority groups. We can look to the words of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel for inspiration in combating hate when we see it: “Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must—at that moment—become the center of the universe.”