25 ANTISEMITISMS YOU SHOULD KNOW

It’s not all about “I hate Jews.” In fact, it’s rarely that overt.

Am I antisemitic? Naaaah.

The thing that sets me off most about the ridiculous mantra “Antizionism is not antisemitism” is that it demonstrated the speaker has devoted not a second to considering the problem. They are responding with a kindergarten retort.

“Am not!”

It is particularly infuriating because it comes, almost inevitably, from people who tell everyone else, on every other topic, that bias and discrimination are complex, often inherent phenomena that demand intensive interrogation.

Discrimination against Jews, though? No need to investigate. Deny, deny, deny.

Another problem is one that is getting its overdue day in the sun. The mantra “Antizionism is not antisemitism” implies that one is unacceptable and then other is just fine.

That’s a false dichotomy. Antisemitism, all good people agree, is evil.

Antisemitism, we need to similarly agree, is a dangerous, violent hate ideology that needs to be confronted and snuffed out.

Case in point: All the graffiti, vandalism and violence against Jews and Jewish institutions in North America and Europe recently, which most activists claim is a result of Israeli “sins,” are still graffiti, vandalism and violence against Jews and Jewish institutions. So WTF difference does it make what category we file these atrocities under? But anyways.

The people who deny the pandemic of antisemitism in our society understand antisemitism only in its loudest forms: swastikas, tiki torches, explicit hatred of Jews.

But much of the prejudice Jews encounter today operates far more quietly. It shows up in assumptions, cultural reflexes, and subtle double standards that people often don’t even realize they carry.

Don’t misunderstand: The other kind is more likely to turn violent at any moment. But, as a factor in everyday life and as a catalyst for deeply negative, lasting social change for the worse, these other forms are often invisible but equally dangerous for the long-term health of our social cohesion, multicultural health, and security of Jewish people.

These attitudes rarely sound like open hostility. In fact, they often present themselves as neutral, intellectual, or even sympathetic.

But together they form the cultural atmosphere in which antisemitism thrives and expands without challenge.

Here are some of the ways it appears.

1. Implicit antisemitism

This is #1 for a reason. People think that, if they don’t hate Jews, they can’t be antisemitic. It doesn’t work that way. Unexamined assumptions about Jews absorbed through culture, education, or family narratives. I argue that every person who is a product of Western civilization (I’ll leave aside Islamic civilization, which requires another encyclopedia) carries unexamined ideas of Jewish power, wealth, greed and other seriously effed up things we take entirely for granted. People may sincerely reject antisemitism while still carrying inherited stereotypes about Jewish influence, loyalty, or behavior.

2. Unconscious bias toward Jews

This is deeply related to #1. It takes the form of subtle discomfort, suspicion, assumptions or stereotypes that people do not consciously recognize in themselves of others. Like other forms of unconscious bias, it often appears in snap judgments about Jewish names, institutions, or political motivations. It’s why dog whistles from extremist politicians work so well. When Manitoba’s premier recently accused “the Epstein class” of fomenting war in the Middle East, a lot of people didn’t need to compute what he meant. He was reiterating a centuries-old canard that Jews are responsible for all wars.

3. Cultural antisemitism

Across Western culture — from Shakespeare to today’s standup comedy — narratives have been embedded in literature, religion, or political culture that frame Jews as outsiders, manipulators, or moral symbols rather than actual people.

4. Social discomfort with Jewish identity

Antisemitism can manifest as unease among others when Jews openly express Jewish identity, religion, or communal concerns — particularly when that expression conflicts with prevailing political narratives. This has extended in recent years to people claiming to be “triggered” by the sight of a Star of David.

5. Jewish exceptionalism bias

This belief that Jews are uniquely powerful, wealthy, or influential often disguises itself as admiration, but historically it has been one of the most persistent foundations of antisemitic thinking.

6. Soft antisemitism

This form of prejudice is framed as neutral commentary, political critique, or concern. The hostility is subtle enough that it can be denied when challenged. We hear it all the time, ranging from “What? I don’t have an antisemitic bone in my body. You’re hyper-sensitive” to “I didn’t mean it that way!”

7. Structural antisemitism

There have always been institutional norms and social systems that marginalize Jews even without explicit antisemitic intent. Today, incredibly, it is found in the antiracism movement and DEI, structures that are explicitly aimed at eliminating the very sorts of racism-by-exclusion they perpetrate on Jews.

8. Aesthetic unease with Jewishness

Discomfort with visible Jewish identity markers such as names, symbols, language, or religious practice, often perceived as “foreign” or culturally disruptive.

9. Double standards for Jews or Israel

Judaism gave the world the very concept of “ethical monotheism.” Every time a Jew (or the Jewish state) fails to exhibit moral perfection, they may be held up as proof of universal Jewish iniquity. Holding Jews — or the Jewish state — to moral, political, or ethical standards not applied to any other group or country is a form of racism.

10. Residual Christian supersessionism

The lingering theological idea that Judaism is outdated or incomplete because Christianity “replaced” it. Even in secular societies, this mindset still shapes cultural attitudes toward Jewish identity. I see it even among antiracist atheists whose implicit assumption seems to be: “Why won’t those people just give up the little differences that make the world hate them and finally be just like us?”

11. Invisibilization of Jewish trauma

There has always been a downplaying or ignoring of Jewish experiences of discrimination and violence, particularly when they do not fit dominant political narratives about power and oppression. Since October 7, 2023, there is something more overt. Not only do people discount Jewish suffering, they seem to claim that it is erased by Palestinian. Suffering. Far worse, and completely indefensible because it almost exclusively comes from “antiracism,” “humanitarian” “peace activists,” there has been open celebration of the rape, torture, beheadings, infanticides, immolations, kidnapping, and mass murders of Jews as entirely justifiable “resistance” worthy of rejoicing.

12. Erasure of Jewish diversity

The assumption that Jews are uniformly white, wealthy, or politically monolithic erases the enormous ethnic, cultural, and political diversity within Jewish communities. Haters accuse Israel, a majority non-white country, of “apartheid” and white “settler-colonialism.”

13. Benevolent antisemitism

“Positive” stereotypes about Jews — such as being good with money or unusually intelligent — that still reduce individuals to caricatures. They can also instantly invert into negative stereotypes. “Intelligent” can morph quickly into “crafty” and “can’t compete with those people.”

14. Exclusionary philo-semitism

Putting Jews on a pedestal can dehumanize them as much as putting them down, expressing admiration for Jews in theory while excluding them from real political or social belonging. A friend of mine who is Jewish and worked in an evangelical Christian milieu said he often felt like a museum exhibit among people who clearly meant only the best.

15. Tokenism in Jewish representation

Including one Jewish voice in a discussion as though that individual represents all Jews, or elevating fringe Jewish voices as proof that antisemitism cannot exist. In Canada, we are seeing this now, with the new leader of the country’s left-wing party, a Jew whose hate-Israel ideology is held by, at best, 5% of Jewish Canadians, is suddenly a fig leaf for anyone who want to hate Israel without accusations of antisemitism. But this approach can be far more benign. I was surprised when a nephew came home from elementary school knowing the lyrics to “Dreidel, dreidel.” It seemed like a lovely bit of Canadian multiculturalism. When I thought about it more, it struck me as maybe an inoculation that allowed the school to inject 10 Christmas carols for every Jewish or other cultural ditty.

16. Conditional acceptance of Jews

This is the phenomenon of accepting Jews socially or politically only if they suppress certain aspects of Jewish identity or conform to dominant cultural expectations. Like demanding Jews explicitly and publicly betray their people’s right to self-determination in order to be accepted into feminist, queer or other “progressive” (bahahaha) spaces.

17. Over-identification with Jewish suffering

There is a centering non-Jewish emotional responses to the Holocaust while sidelining the lived experiences and perspectives of Jews themselves. Living Jews may be isolated and terrorized by the very activists and politicians who solemnly post reflections on social media for Holocaust Remembrance Day. As Dara Horn said, People love dead Jews.

18. Instrumentalization of Jewish identity

This is a biggie. Using Jewish history, suffering, or identity as a rhetorical tool to support unrelated — or more often, diametrically opposed — political arguments. Like the despicable accusation that Jews, who actually understand the term genocide, are perpetrating it on Palesitnians.

19. Selective solidarity with Jews

Then there is the phenom of supporting Jewish safety or rights only when doing so aligns with one’s broader political ideology. We see this all the time in politicans who stand in solidarity after a synagogue has been vandalized, ignoring the fact that their own rhetoric contributed to an environment in which synagogues are vandalized and Jews are murdered.

20. Performative allyship toward Jews

Public displays of support for Jews that are symbolic but not accompanied by genuine engagement with Jewish concerns or experiences. We see this all the time on Jewish holidays, for example, when elected officials try to whitewash their Jew-bashing all the rest of the year with a hearty “Shana Tovah!” on Rosh Hashanah.

Bonus: A few more patterns worth recognizing

21. The “good Jew / bad Jew” test

Accepting Jews who affirm certain political positions while treating others as illegitimate or morally suspect. It is not the place of non-members of a group to determine the acceptability of members. Remember when Joe Biden told an African-American audience: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black”? Not OK. But at least he was basing his inappropriate comments on a demographic trend. The vast majority of Blacks were for Biden. In activist circles today, “good Jews” are those who betray their people’s right to statehood — an infinitesimally small, single-digit proportion of Jews. The near-unanimous majority who are Zionists are discarded by antizionist “progressives” as “bad Jews.”

22. The antisemitism deflection reflex

Responding to Jewish concerns about antisemitism by immediately changing the subject to Israel, power, or Jewish privilege. It’s a self-enforcing racism. The very assertion “I’m not racist because Jews actually are powerful, privileged and pulling the strings on global foreign policy” is, obviously, classic antisemitism. Check mate.

23. Moral exceptionalism applied to Jews

Treating Jewish self-defense, communal solidarity, or political advocacy as uniquely suspicious compared with similar behavior by other groups. Solidarity among any and every group ius understood. Of course most gay people support marriage equality. Of course most women support reproductive choice. But when Jews support their own, it is a tribal conspiracy and evidence of “thinking with their blood,” as one former friend of mine put it.

24. Antisemitism denialism

The reflexive belief that antisemitism cannot exist within one’s own political movement, leading to immediate dismissal of Jewish concerns. I literally had a guy I know, a foremost leftist activist, look at me in bewilderment when I talked about leftwing antisemitism and say: “But antisemitism is right-wing.” Translation: Because Hitler was antisemitic, and I hate Hitler, I can’t possibly be antisemitic.

25. Historical amnesia about antisemitism

Above all, treating antisemitism as a relic of the past rather than a living prejudice that continues to evolve in new forms is to ignore the problem entirely.

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Recognizing these patterns is not about accusing people of hatred.

In many cases, the individuals involved would be genuinely horrified to think of themselves as antisemitic.

But prejudice does not manifest only through hatred. I would argue, in fact, that while that is the most immediately dangerous form, in the long-term, inate biases and the sorts of examples I’ve given here are more. Likely to infect the body politic and have lasting, systemic impacts.

The first step in confronting any bias — including antisemitism — is learning how to see it.

The mantra “Antizionism is not antisemitism” ensures that learning will never happen.

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