AN UNHEALTHY OBSESSION?

IS MY FIXATION ON ANTISEMITISM A SIGN OF A PROBLEM?

Let me think about that …

An obsession with Jews is rarely a healthy phenomenon.

Whether it is the antisemite, who sees in Jews the personification of evil, or the philosemite, who sees in Jews the righteousness of human perfection, both are projections that are not really about Jews at all but about the pathologies of the beholder.

Then there’s me.

Jews are just about all I write about lately. (Well, antisemitism and Israel are among my main topics, too, which are along the same lines.)

A lot of people wonder why I seem so preoccupied with Jews and antisemitism. Isn’t that itself a symptom of an unhealthy obsession?

Maybe.

But there is a third alternative. Being “obsessed” with antisemitism doesn’t need to be either typically antisemitic or philosemitic. It could reflect an approach that has nothing to do with Jews at all.

Follow me down this rabbit hole.

I have written before about how I fell in with the Jewish community in Vancouver. There is no doubt that being an outsider on the inside has given me particular insights into antisemitism and the Jewish responses to it, especially in the past 25 years and never more in our lifetimes than in the past two years.

I have hesitated to articulate my activism and writing this way, because I recoil at the dejudaization of antisemitism. I detest the universalizing of anti-Jewish prejudice. When Jews are attacked and a politician says, “This is an attack on all of us,” I am enraged. That response deflects the problem and ignores the cause.

In their book Why the Jews?, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin and Dennis Prager argue that there are very particular Jewish explanations for antisemitism.

I accept their premise.

I also accept the completely contrary supposition: That antisemitism is a projection of the perpetrator and has nothing to do with Jews, their identities or characteristics.

This contradiction is entirely irrational. And that’s the point.

Antisemitism is irrational. Attempting to explain it rationally is to fall into a trap the antisemite has set for us.

Great minds have studied antisemitism. Libraries are filled with tomes on the subject. But rational thinking will not get us out of a problem that irrational ideas got us into. It is perfectly understandable to not understand antisemitism.

If it makes sense to you, you should worry.

However, while I have said I resent the idea of taking the Jewish particularism out of antisemitism, let’s do just that to make a point.

Antisemitism targets Jews. But why?

Ultimately, in most forms of antisemitism, Jews are a scapegoat. They represent something that has nothing to do with them. In a way, then, it is correct to take the Jewishness out of antisemitism in order to explore the “purpose” that it serves in the larger objectives of the perpetrator in confronting their fears, anxieties, hatreds and associated issues.

Antisemitism is — or, rather “Jews” are (in the imagination of the perpetrators) — the excuse, the explanation, the justification for every unexplainable thing in society.

Scientifically confounding phenomena like pandemics and natural disasters, economic misfortunes, anything that is complex or inexplicable, that feels scary and uncontrollable, can be “explained” by ideas of hidden Jewish control.

Difficult questions with impossible answers become manageable and comprehensible through a fantasia of a hidden hand directing the seeming chaos.

Why Jews, though?

Why not Jews?

As I said, don’t try to find rational explanations for irrational behaviors.

In short: nothing succeeds like success. Jews are the perfect scapegoat because Jews have always been the perfect scapegoat.

Conspiracies offer a fake feeling of control. The loss of a family fortune, the death of a child, a war that causes irreparable loss and heartbreak. None of these tragedies can be satisfactorily explained. How comforting, in a way, if they could be.

Someone did this on purpose, and we know who.

Conspiracism is a core characteristic of antisemitism. And conspiracies are, by definition, self-sustaining. Condemnation or negation of the conspiracy is proof of the conspiracy itself. The media and the authorities deny it because they’re all in on it.

It’s a self-sealing belief: evidence against it becomes evidence for it.

Antisemitism scales up from prejudice to an entire perverted worldview, morphing from an idea that targets one group into a totalizing conspiracy that accounts for every inexplicable phenomenon.

We should oppose racism because it is bad. But antisemitism needs special attention because it has the power to destroy everything.

As we have seen in history — not just in the 20th century, but if you know Jewish history, for centuries before that — antisemitism has taken root and strangled healthy societies. A civilization that accepts outlandish ideas about Jews will almost inevitably accept destructive ideas about anything. The more fixated a civilization becomes on blaming Jews, the further down the road to hell that society progresses.

Antisemitism harms Jews. We should confront it because it is bad, like all forms of bigotry are bad.

But it is different from other prejudices. It has a contagion at its heart that threatens to infect and destroy everything it touches.

In my next post, I will explore the most glaring contemporary example of how this works.

Caring about antisemitism — being obsessed with it even, like I probably am — might not be a sign of any particular attitude toward Jews, pro or con. It might not really be about Jews at all.

The nature of antisemitism is such that everyone should be obsessively confronting it, if for no better reason than self-interest.

As I will explain in future posts, even if you don’t give a damn about Jews, I promise you this: antisemitism is going to bite you and everything you care about in the ass.

If you’re not obsessed with that possibility, you should be.

It’s the rational thing to do.

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Merry Christmas to all who celebrate. May 2026 bring peace and all good things.

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