IS ANTISEMITISM UNBEATABLE?

ANTISEMITISM IS THE “PERFECT PREJUDICE” BECAUSE ITS CORE CHARACTERISTICS REINFORCE AND SUSTAIN IT.

WTF

SATURDAY PAID SUBSCRIBER-ONLY POST.

As a gay man who has lived long enough to see unimagined progress on gay rights in Canada and most of the Western world, I look at this progress with cheerful disbelief.

And as someone who has, over the course of most of that time, also been a non-Jew hanging around in Vancouver’s Jewish community, I have struggled to understand how discrimination against my own community could dissipate so dramatically and comparatively quickly, while discrimination against another group, whose experiences I have watched from a front-row seat, could have grown so alarmingly and precipitously.

What lessons there may be from progress on gay rights that can be applied in the fight against antisemitism is something I will continue to ponder and write about. (Got any input? Message me.)

I have developed some theories about why antisemitism has been such a tough thing to defeat over millennia — and why it is growing dramatically in a time when we are making progress on so many parallel fronts.

First, we need to accept that antisemitism is different from other forms of racism, discrimination and bias. This is problematic in itself for bigots, who will take this as an opportunity to accuse Jews of demanding special treatment even when they are being discriminated against. (My first example of how antisemitism works so brilliantly!)

There are characteristics inherent in antisemitism that make it especially invulnerable to challenge. Antisemitism is a feedback loop in which, by its very nature, the problem reinforces itself. The characteristics of antisemitism create, encourage and sustain the bigotry. I’ll explain.

First, though: This is not to say that antisemitism does not share a great many characteristics with other forms of racism. It does, of course.

Like many or most forms of racism, antisemitism involves “othering,” various forms of targeting, and probably, in most cases, a degree of victim-blaming. The victim is almost always accused of “bringing it on themselves.” If abc group weren’t so xyz, we wouldn’t be forced to hate them.

And then there are other sort of tactical approaches, like dog-whistles, which serve the purposes of the perpetrator and permit a sort of hidden language among those susceptible to the bias.

Then there are things that antisemitism shares with other forms of racism but which are enormously magnified when applied to Jews.

For example …

Inverting victim and perpetrator — In almost every instance of racism, the perpetrator paints themselves as the real or potential victim of the “other.” In the most extreme example, the Nazis convinced substantial numbers of Germans that Jews were an existential threat to their existence, an exact inversion of reality. This inversion, though, is also seen in other racisms.

Projection — Projection takes many forms, but some of the ways it operates involve taking the sin or guilt of the perpetrator and projecting it on to the victim, or to accuse the victim of embodying the (possibly sublimated) dark desires of the perpetrator. This is exemplified in the stereotypical idea that many or most homophobes are driven by their own latent homosexuality. Where this projection is perhaps most currently evident in the issues we are addressing is in the allegation that Israelis are perpetrating a “genocide,” which they are not, but to which their enemies are explicitly committed. This is one of the most blatant examples imaginable of projection. But this, too, is not exclusive to antisemitism.

Conspiracy theories — Many forms of racism rest on bizarre ideas of machinations involving the target group. I think it’s safe to say that in no other category of racism do conspiracy theories play so central a role as they do in antisemitism. In fact, antisemitism itself could be said to be a conspiracy theory at its root. Conversely, the opposite is also true. Given time enough, almost every conspiracy will become antisemitic. Again, though, conspiracy theories play a role in other bigotries.

Morphing — Racism fills a “need” for the perpetrator. Therefore, as the need changes, so do the traits of the racism. Again, probably, this is nowhere more true than with antisemitism. Not only because it is often called “the oldest hatred” and therefore has had to adapt to survive over millennia, but because of aspects specific to antisemitism, it is extraordinarily malleable. This goes back to projection, in that whatever is irking the perp is projected onto Jews. Any societal problem — and every society has different problems — is retrofitted to antisemitic forms. Morphing, changing rapidly to suit the needs of the perpetrator, is absolutely inherent to antisemitism. But this, too, is seen in other types of discrimination.

Envy — This primal human characteristic exists in numerous forms of racism. In anti-Black racism, for one challenging example, there has always existed and remains a strain of white male sexual inadequacy, with stereotypes of hyper-sexualized others (accompanied by presumed physical superiority). Parallel examples exist in many forms of racism, as well as in homophobia and misogyny. But envy is one of the absolute core characteristics of antisemitism, for reasons of presumed Jewish superiority (either the presumption that Jews think they are superior or that the perpetrator thinks Jews are superior; either of which is a deep socio-psychological problem). This is especially prevalent around the issues of wealth, privilege and power, discussed below.

All of these are characteristics that can be found in almost every form of racism and discrimination. But then there are an additional number of characteristics that are almost unique to antisemitism and that make antisemitism almost unassailable.

These include …