ANTISEMITISM IS NOT OUR BIGGEST PROBLEM

FAR MORE THAN OVERT “JEW-HATRED,” UNCONSCIOUS BIASES HAVE THE POWER TO INFECT SOCIETY. AND WE DON’T EVEN HAVE A TERM FOR THE PHENOMENON. THAT’S A PROBLEM.

What’s going on in that pretty little head of yours?

Many of my friends have told me they no longer use the term “antisemitism.” They prefer the term “Jew hatred.”

They think they are clarifying the language. I think this is a symptom of a larger problem with our terminology.

I think neither term is accurate — and both are. Both of them exist, no doubt about it. But neither of them captures the breadth of the problem we face.

“Jew hatred” is pretty self-explanatory. It is clearly applicable to those who undeniably hate Jews. Fair enough.

“Antisemitism” is related, but a bit different. The term was created as a term of self-identification by a proud antisemite, Wilhelm Marr, in Germany, in 1879. He helped redefine antisemitism from a religion-based bigotry into one that sees Jews as a race and a culture. While this was a shift not due solely to Marr, it was crucial in the history of anti-Jewish agitation. It meant that converting to another religion could no longer save the Jew from hatred and prejudice. Jewishness went from being a changeable characteristic to an inherent trait, in the eyes of the enemy.

Marr was emphatic that he hated Jews. “Jew-hatred” and “antisemitism,” in his case, were probably interchangeable. Likewise with a bunch of people today who so obviously hate Jews, such as the theocratic rulers of Iran and the creeps on your social feeds who pop up with “Free Palestine” every time you post something about Passover or your nephew’s bar mitzvah.

The thing is, haters are easy to identify and respond to. All decent people recognize and oppose the KKK.

Where it becomes dicier is when Aunt Bertie starts her tipsy rant at Thanksgiving dinner about crime rates, immigration and affirmative action and you’re pretty sure her entire argument is based on skin color but she never quite says the quiet part out loud.

Both “antisemitism” and “Jew-hatred” imply conscious, active engagement. This overt discrimination exists, obviously, and it is very serious. Open, explicit antisemitism is the type of bigotry that is most likely to turn violent.

While we must urgently address these forms of discrimination, something far more subtle may be, ultimately, a more serious problem.

I’m not sure it would ever be possible to measure the proportion of a society’s population that is overtly hostile to Jews. The Anti-Defamation League gauges levels of antisemitic sentiments through an index comprised of 11 questions that measure acceptance of various negative Jewish stereotypes. The results are awful. They conclude that 46% of the world’s population holds antisemitic ideas — ranging from 17% of people in Western Europe to 76% of people in the Middle East and North Africa. (Scan the data yourself.)

These are attempts to quantify bias, which are different things from hatred.

And that is key. You can have bias without hatred. For just one example, you could be biased positively toward a group. Maybe you think gay people are awesome. Certainly the most misogynistic men will assure you they looove women.

Attitudes toward Jews are often more complicated than attitudes toward other groups — and what seem like positive prejudices (“Jews are smart” “Jews are good at business”) can quickly flip into negative ideas (“Those people will talk rings around you” “There’s no way to beat those people in a negotiation”).

Although some people have taken me to task for this in the past, I still maintain, generally speaking, that subtle prejudices about Jews are so deeply embedded in our civilizational DNA that probably everyone raised in Western Christian-based cultures carry a range of these ideas.

That doesn’t mean most of us are walking around ready to don swastikas and light tiki torches. No, it is actually scarier than that.

Swastikas and tiki torches are obvious outward signifiers of racism. Invisible bigotries are much harder to identify and contest — even in ourselves.

People who hate Jews know they hate Jews. Those around them know they hate Jews.

People who carry unconscious biases, by definition, do not know they carry them.

And yet, someone who carries barely conscious ideas like “Jews are powerful” or “Jews control the economy” may be no less influenced by them than those who overtly and actively hate Jews.

Even while denying (even to themselves) that they carry these ideas, they may know enough not to articulate them. So their seemingly rational conclusions (“George Soros has too much influence” “Global elites have too much power over the economy”) sound reasonable, but are antisemitic at their core — without ever explicitly mentioning Jews.

This allows these ideas to spread unchecked. Once a mass of people accepts that a small global elite has too much control, at some point someone rightly asks, “Who are these people anyway?” and the answer, as often as not …

Well, you don’t even have to say it. That’s the beauty. That’s why I call antisemitism the “perfect prejudice.” You can spread it without even knowing you are spreading it. You can accept it without even knowing you accept it. (This being Pride Month, I am making some parallels between homophobia and antisemitism. In the 1970s, and ’80s, as I wrote recently, politicians talked about “family values.” They didn’t need to mention who was threatening family values. You just knew.)

I still maintain that overt Jew-haters and antisemites are the ones most likely to beat up a Jew on the street or firebomb a synagogue. But, again, all decent people condemn that kind of thing.

Conversely, the subtle, often unconscious biases about Jews that almost all of us carry are hard to contest or defeat — because they are like nailing Jell-o to the wall. When someone obviously carries prejudicial ideas but never actually comes out explicitly and says them, you can’t call them out. So, when Aunt Bertie slurs her political theories at Thanksgiving and none of the other adults challenge her on the underlying premises, the kids at the table absorb the ideas and the subtle bias is passed down.

Overt racists and antisemites are a lot more comfortable coming out of the closet in North America and Europe now than they were a few years back (see far-right parties in Hungary, the Netherlands, Germany, etc.). But while their ideas might still evoke revulsion from many decent people, when expressed more politely, variations on the theme are adopted by “mainstream” politicians who recognize a trend when they see one.

The relatively subtle, often unconscious biases people carry about Jews do not reflect “Jew-hatred.” To hate Jews is to take conscious action, to actively dislike. That is a problem. But it’s probably not our biggest problem in the long run.

The worrisome thing is that, for every tikidaddy chanting “Jews will not replace us” there may be 10 polite, respectable people walking around with ideas they don’t even know they hold about Jewish power and deviousness, and a susceptibility to all kinds of suggestions that they would dismiss as ridiculous if they weren’t hardwired to believe the wackiest things about Jews.

This is not “Jew-hatred.” It’s something much subtler. It may not even be “antisemitism,” because even the prefix “anti-“ implies a conscious awareness. It is something more along the lines of “unconscious biases about Jews.”

And this illuminates one of the big hurdles we face. It’s easy to call someone a “Jew-hater” or an “antisemite” — and we should call them out when they show themselves. But it is a lot harder to convince someone they carry ideas that are so ingrained they are no more conscious of them than their preference for vanilla over chocolate.

That’s not something that is simply explained. It requires a nuanced discussion and an openness to teach and learn.

To accuse someone of “Jew-hatred” or antisemitism is easy. It is also easy for the person who, in the heart, knows they don’t hate Jews to dismiss the accusation and move on with their lives.

It is a much higher hill to climb to convince people they have deep-seated, unconscious biases they are not even aware of. I mean, who needs to delve into that psyche stuff on a Saturday morning?

But if I am correct and almost everyone who is a product of Western civilization carries these ideas, that’s a hill we can’t afford not to scale.

Antisemitism is not our biggest problem. Jew-hatred, in the long run, is not going to infect our entire society.

Here are the more serious long-term problems:

Unconscious biases about Jews.

Implicit assumptions.

Stereotypes people do not even know they carry.

Something much more subtle and insidious than explicit hatred is, in the long run, likely to have greater long-term impacts on our society. It is much harder to recognize and call out. It can influence public policy in the way that screaming hate slogans never will. And it is a serious symptom of the problem that we don’t even have an agreed-upon term for the phenomenon.

Words matter. Articulating a problem is almost always a prerequisite to addressing it. Our larger problem with nomenclature is a topic I will address soon …