The weaponisation of antisemitism: The Jewish Chronicle and the production of a moral panic
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Abstract
This article maps the word antisemitism on the pages of The Jewish Chronicle (TJC), the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper, examining first the frequency of the term over a period of 100 years before zooming in to interrogate the ways in which ‘antisemitism’ was invoked during the 9 months before and 9 months after October 7, 2023. The data reveals that TJC has been exaggerating and instrumentalising a Zionist notion of antisemitism to foment moral panic, mobilising the language of trauma and injury to continuously reassert a notion of Jewish victimhood. Building on the work of media scholars who investigate victimhood, I argue that the newspaper puts into motions a justificatory framework that operates by claiming injury and then using the alleged injury to set in motion a series of oppressive actions against individuals, groups and institutions. By way of conclusion, I show how TJC has been using ‘antisemitism’ as a ‘consoling idea’ to consolidate and sustain Jewish group identity while simultaneously invoking the term to shield and legitimise violent forms of racial governance and as a weapon against Palestinian and pro-Palestinian activists.
Topics
Jewish Perceptions of Antisemitism Jewish Media Main Topic: Antisemitism Newspapers, Magazines and Periodicals Trauma Jewish Identity
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Geographic Coverage
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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Original Language
Volume/Issue
48(2)
Page Number / Article Number
211-228
DOI
Bibliographic Information
The weaponisation of antisemitism: The Jewish Chronicle and the production of a moral panic. 2026: 211-228. https://archive.jpr.org.uk/10.1177/01634437251375360
