THE PERFECT PREJUDICE

ANTISEMITISM MAY BE IMPOSSIBLE TO DEFEAT BECAUSE IT REINFORCES ITSELF BY ITS VERY NATURE. HERE ARE FIVE EXAMPLES.

Nothing to see here. Just Australian syngogue aflame.

The embers of the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne are still glowing, but most of the world, it is probably safe to say, has scrolled on.

The attack on the synagogue is just the latest in a worldwide pandemic of antisemitism. But the vast majority of non-Jews just go about our day.

Perhaps the main way people lull ourselves into complacency is by asserting that this isn’t actually antisemitism but merely a (disordered) reaction to overseas events. When the war in Gaza ends, we tell ourselves, so will the antisemitism in Australia, Canada and everywhere else.

This is direct inversion. The antisemitism worldwide is not caused by overseas events. Overseas events are an excuse that allow voice to domestic antisemitism. If antisemitism didn’t exist in the West, events in the Middle East wouldn’t coincide with attacks on Jewish people and institutions.

There is a bigger issue, though. A few people — political leaders like those in Australia — recognize and condemn the massive spike in Jew-hatred that has happened since October 7, 2023.

Here is what’s scary though: This didn’t begin on October 7.

This has been going on for more than 24 years — at a minimum. And while few people seem appropriately alarmed by what has happened in the past year, far fewer are even conscious that this has been going on for a quarter-century.

The current era in global antisemitism began on September 28, 2000, with the beginning of the Second Intifada. That was the moment when people worldwide saw the Palestinian leadership and much of the Palestinian people reject peace, coexistence and the ideal of a two-state solution and begin blowing up Israeli civilians on buses and in discos. And the world sided not with the victims but with the perpetrators.

That victim-blaming antisemitism was embodied, codified, scaled and packaged for export at the Durban Conference, in 2001. Ostensibly a United Nations event to combat racism, the Durban Conference morphed into the modern world’s most deplorable trade show for antisemitic ideas and strategies.

Antisemitism in Western Europe, the Americas and elsewhere in “the West” began spiraling upward throughout this century. Anyone who was paying attention over the past 24 years should have known this. I worked at Hillel, the Jewish campus organization, and watched this at a slow boil for two decades, erupting at moments of Mideast conflict into a cauldron of antisemitic chaos on North American campuses. (And, no, throwing boulders through Jewish campus windows is not “anti-Zionism.” Terrorizing Jewish kids because they believe in their people’s right to national self-determination is not “political expression.”)

Those of us who were immersed in this stuff thought that we were just not communicating effectively. If people knew, surely they would care, we assured ourselves.

It wasn’t that.

They know. A lot of people have known for years. But since October 7, no one with any consciousness can deny that antisemitism is as much a part of our civilization as economic inequality and climate change. But I suppose we manage to ignore those crises and get on with our lives too.

Even so, a good number of ordinary people who stand up against racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and other social ills are silent on antisemitism. (In fact, in plenty of cases, it is these very people who are perpetrating the worst of the antisemitism, but that is a topic for a different post.)

What’s that about? Why don’t they care?

I have a couple of theories.

My ur-theory of antisemitism (I’ve thought and written about this a lot) is that it is the perfect prejudice. Antisemitism is impervious to challenge and defeat because its very characteristics reinforce it. It is self-perpetuating. It is a feedback loop.

Here are some examples of what I mean …

Antisemitism assumes Jews are powerful. And you can’t be powerful and oppressed. Among the foremost tropes of antisemitism is the idea that Jews are powerful. This is an enduring stereotype even in societies where Jews have been the most powerless. The Nazis imputed to Jews vast powers, even though Jews made up about 1% of the population (about the same as Jewish population in Canada today). The Nazis convinced plenty of Germans that Jews, despite their small numbers, controlled the German and global economies, were corrupting German culture and “racial purity,” were subverting morality, that they had singlehandedly caused German defeat in the First World War, and lots more. In societies where Jews have been an even tinier, even more powerless minority — times and places where no reasonable person could believe Jews had power in any tangible, rational or real sense — Jews have been accused of supernatural powers. Spooky woo-woo ideas of Jews as agents of dark powers have been around for centuries and these ideas are not as dead as you might think. One need look no further than the US Congress for believers in “Jewish space lasers” or what passes for mainstream thought in much of the Middle East for apparently credulous reporting of “Zionist attack sharks” and a whole lot more kooky nonsense.

The larger point is that “Jewish power” has been a prevailing racist trope for centuries, from the attribution of every unfortunate event to Jewish evil-doing to the contemporary idea of Jews/Zionists pulling the strings of US foreign policy.

In short, antisemitism defeats efforts to defeat it by its very nature. We convince ourselves that antisemitism cannot exist because we live in an antisemitism culture where Jews are perceived as powerful and therefore immune from discrimination.

Antisemitism says Jews are rich and privileged. Hand-in-hand with the “Jewish power” motif is the idea that Jews are rich and privileged. In our current culture, we lump these characteristics together with “power,” but this has not always been the case. In places and times where Jews have been emphatically not “rich” or “powerful,” the concept of Jews as the “chosen people” has driven non-Jews wacky. Today, wealth and perceived privilege are the prime standard by which we differentiate oppressor/oppressed. And since we live in an antisemitism culture that says Jews are “rich” and “privileged,” we automatically assign Jews the role of “oppressor.” Antisemitism is reinforced by antisemitism.

Antisemitism asserts that Jews bring it on themselves. Perhaps all forms of racism are premised on the idea that the victims bring it on themselves. But this is an absolute core pillar of antisemitism: that there is something inherent to Jews that brings out the worst in non-Jews and that if Jews would just stop doing what irks non-Jews, non-Jews wouldn’t have to hate and genocide them. Today’s example of this approach is obvious. If the Jewish state would just stop defending itself from Hamas, we wouldn’t have to burn down synagogues in Melbourne. Antisemitism, therefore, is not something we need to worry about, because it is not our problem, it’s theirs. If Jews would stop doing xyz, antisemites wouldn’t be forced to abc them.

Antisemitism asserts that Jews are hyper-sensitive and carry a “persecution complex.” This is foundational to antisemitism — and non-Jews’ ability to ignore it. The more that Jews say they are experiencing antisemitism, the more it reinforces the antisemitic idea that Jews see antisemitism everywhere and the more we can ignore their increasingly desperate pleas for tolerance — because they always say that. Antisemitic ideas of a Jewish “persecution complex” allow even antiracist people to ignore anti-Jewish racism.

The very term “antisemitism” allows bigots to absolve themselves. The prefix “anti” implies conscious, active hostility. And since much of today’s antisemitism manifests not as burning synagogues but as innate bias in the discourse, even those perpetuating atnisemitism can deny it. I’m not against Jews, ergo I’m not antisemitic. But that is not the main way antisemitism is manifesting right now. It’s true that antisemitism on the left is probably more rampant than antisemitism on the right — but people can’t see it because it doesn’t look the same. Antisemitism on the right tends to be tiki torch carrying kooks, overt hatred and conspiracy theories. Antisemitism on the left is overwhelmingly more subtle. It is unconscious attitudes or stereotypes, preconceived notions that lead to confirmation bias.

The most infuriating part of this is that all of these terms are the language of the left. This is the lingua franca of antiracism, the terminology of critical race theory. And yet it is precisely these people — progressives, antiracists, those who are proudly woke — who steadfastly reject the very idea that inherent biases about Jews are interfering with their worldview. As in so many cases in which a problem is overtaking a person’s life, it is blatantly obvious to everyone else in their life except the individual and their enablers.

We don’t recognize antisemitism because we don’t know what a Jew is. I recently wrote about the fact that, despite being a non-Jew who for decades has been immersed in Jewish life, I had to ask rabbis and professors in order to construct a succinct definition of Jewish identity for a project earlier this year. If I couldn’t come up with that definition off the top of my head, people who haven’t spent the last 30 years writing for Jewish newspapers and working for Jewish agencies probably don’t stand a chance in hell of understanding the complexity of Jewish identity. As a result, far too many people (this is part of my ur-theory) satisfy themselves that, however you might define Jews, they are not a “race” and, as a result, I can say what I want about them and that’s not “racism.”

*

Antisemitism has components that are massively psychologically effed up. For example, most forms of racism reassure the perpetrator that they are better than the victim. That makes the perp feel better about themselves, which is kind of the whole point. A core characteristic of antisemitism is that the perpetrators think Jews think they (the Jews) are better than the perpetrator. Among the problems this evokes is that this doesn’t make the perp feel better about themselves, like many other forms of racism, misogyny, homophobia and other biases do. It makes them feel worse, which makes them want to lash out more. So it is sort of like drinking seawater. The more antisemitic you are, the more you are sure the Jews are lording their superiority over you, the more you hate them the more antisemitc you become.

For antisemites (and those with the biases I’m talking about), Jews are an out group whose enemies think they are an in group who the enemy wants to make an out group.

But for people predisposed to biases toward Jews, the very nature of antisemitism justifies antisemitism.

Antisemitism is the perfect prejudice because antisemitic ideas “corroborate” antisemitism. My prejudices about Jews are correct because my prejudices about Jews say they are correct.

Are you following?

If not, good. Because antisemitism is a symptom of disordered thinking, so consider yourself mentally healthy if it doesn’t make sense.

For people with antisemitic biases — and as I will write in a future post, almost everyone in Western civilization carries antisemitic biases — these ideas make perfect sense.

That’s why so few people seem to care that synagogues are burning.

A personal note …

I started this Substack because I thought my perspective as a progressive, gay, non-Jewish, Zionist Canadian offered something different to the dialogue about antisemitism, anti-Zionism, Palestinians and peace. It actually never crossed my mind that people might give me money for it. When people started generously subscribing and donating, I threw myself into this project more, partly because I am a writer by trade and I am still building my RSPs for some distant retirement. Based on online advice (!) I started making my Saturday posts for “Paid Subscribers Only.” But, I modestly acknowledge, each one is too delicious to paywall. So I am going to assume that, if you like my stuff and want more of it, you’ll give if you can. If not, please share. (Please share regardless!) No more paywalls. But there may be other incentives I could offer. Not sure what. Got any ideas? Do folks want to get together for online discussions or see me compile some of these posts as a book? Let me know. Meanwhile, enjoy! (If that is the right word for these sometimes dark musings.)