Abstract: Little is known about the gendered dimension of anti-Semitism. Emerging from a literature review on social identity theory, anti-Semitism, sexism, and Jewish feminism, I demonstrate the urgency of examining the link between gender and experiences of anti-Semitism, using the FRA’s 2018 dataset “Experiences and Perceptions of Antisemitism: Second Survey on Discrimination and Hate Crime against Jews in the EU,” a large-scale survey of Jews in thirteen countries across Europe. The independent variable is gender identity. Five dependent variables relate to experiences of sex/gender discrimination, physical attacks, offensive/threatening comments, offensive gestures/staring, and online harassment. Using five control variables—being identifiable as a Jew in public, country, Jewish identity, education level, and Jewish population in one’s neighborhood—I engage with descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression analysis to analyze my variables. The findings show that while women are more likely to experience gender discrimination, men are significantly more likely to experience anti-Semitism.
Topics: Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Left-Wing, Internet, Israel Criticism, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Social Media, Language, Linguistics, Newspapers, Magazines and Periodicals
Abstract: This mapping report examines the Visegrad Group countries’ policies relating to remembrance and education about the Holocaust and antisemitism (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia). The report draws on the studies on antisemitism published in the region and the interviews conducted with experts, researchers, pioneers, teachers, and Jewish community members.
The study consists of five sections. Section 1 provides background information and introduces the reader to relevant policies and penal measures. Section 2 examines Holocaust commemoration activities, and Section 3 looks at relevant government policies, including textbooks, curricula, and teacher training. Finally, Section 4 introduces civil society good practices, and Section 5 shares recommendations for authorities and civil society.
Abstract: Як видно із зібраного впродовж майже 20 років фактичного матеріалу, пік пов’язаних з насильством злочинів на ґрунті антисемітизму припадає на 2005 р. Починаючи із 2006 р. спостерігається помітний спад, а після 2009 р. кількість подібних інцидентів залишається на стабільно низькому рівні. Крім кількісних характеристик, варто зазначити, що саме на 2005–2007 рр. припадає хвиля найжорстокіших вуличних нападів, які реально загрожували життю постраждалих. Настільки серйозних випадків не фіксується вже давно.
Якщо ж взяти статистику за останні роки, то можна зазначити, що після певного зростання кількості нападів в 2012–2014 рр., в 2015–2016 рр. показники знову знизилися до мінімальних, в 2017–2019 рр. антисемітського
насильства в Україні не було зафіксовано в принципі. В цьому контексті чотири випадки в 2020 р. привертають на себе увагу. Чим можна пояснити таке порівняно помітне зростання, навіть якщо воно в абсолютних числах воно незначне?
Abstract: With the breakdown of the Soviet Union, and with Mikhail Gorbachev’s politics of glasnost and perestroika, suppressed religious and national movements emerged as visible elements of political conflict in what once constituted the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). While in the former USSR this concerned the huge former “Turkestan” region with its religious roots in Islam, and the Orthodox denominations of Russia and the Ukraine, the post-USSR Eastern European satellite states saw an eruption of both nationalism and/or suppressed Catholicism. Mark Juergensmeyer (2008: 152) describes how in Russia, the Ukraine, and Poland “religion became the expression of a nationalist rejection of the secular socialist ideology.” Partly, the free expression of religion was a component of what could be termed a democratic “eruption,” and at the same time it created strong links to “nationalist and transnationalist identities of a bygone era” (Juergensmeyer 2008: 156). The role of right-wing extremism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism ought to be assessed in the context of the transformation of the post-Stalinist political cultures of Eastern Europe and Russia. As much as religion and its institutions were indispensable for the opposition to the Stalinist state, they helped to recreate the old nationalisms of the 19th century (and earlier) of which anti-Semitism was often an integral component. Religious zeal combined with nationalistic patriotism contains ideologies of purity for which “others,” be they ethnic minorities or Jews, were the paramount danger and source of a feared “racial pollution” (cf. Douglas 1966/2007). In the early 1990s, after German re-unification, similar developments could be observed in parts of the former German Democratic Republic. Minkenberg (2002) sees the rehabilitation of the nation state (National-staat) in Eastern Europe in line with the spread of nationalistic rhetoric and the concept of a national ethnic identity. In the context of economic, and partly also cultural crisis, minorities are used as a scapegoat for the problems at hand. Combined with a rejection of internationalism, diversity, and European Union (EU) integration, such resentments seem like “natural” consequences of newly formed national identities (Thieme 2007a, 2007b). In the findings of the European Social Survey (2006), Polish, Hungarian, and Ukrainian populations frequently show more sympathy for conservative (right-wing) politics, gender inequality, and homophobia than Western European societies.
Abstract: Depuis les étoiles jaunes portées par des manifestants opposés au passe sanitaire jusqu’à l’usage par
certains du pronom « qui » utilisé pour dénoncer la supposée mainmise des Juifs sur les principaux médias,
sans oublier la notion de complot juif remis au goût du jour pour expliquer la pandémie du coronavirus,
l’année 2021 a été marquée par la multiplication d’incidents antisémites. Si de tels faits sont venus
rappeler la persistance des préjugés sur les Juifs au sein de la société française, l’histoire enseigne
que l’antisémitisme prospère dans les périodes de crise. Ainsi, près de deux ans après le début de la
crise sanitaire, il nous a semblé essentiel de réaliser une vaste étude pour dresser un diagnostic fin et
dépassionné de ce phénomène.
Quel est le poids des préjugés à l’égard des Juifs dans la société française en 2021 ? La crise sanitaire
s’accompagne-t-elle d’une poussée de l’antisémitisme dans l’opinion publique? Quel regard portent les
Français sur ce phénomène? Dans quelle mesure les Français juifs s’inquiètent-ils des violences les visant ?
Comment ces violences se déroulent-elles ? Pour tenter de répondre à ces interrogations, nous avons
construit un dispositif d’enquête exceptionnel. Exceptionnel par sa taille : nous avons conduit l’enquête
parallèlement auprès de deux échantillons spécifiques – personnes de confession juive, personnes de
confession musulmane – et auprès d’un échantillon global, représentatif de la population française
dans son ensemble, ce dernier permettant de se pencher également sur d’autres sous-catégories de
la population : les Français catholiques, les jeunes, des groupes de Français classés en fonction de leur
zone géographique, de critères socio-économiques, d’affinités politiques ou encore en fonction de leurs
sources privilégiées d’information. Exceptionnel également par la diversité des thématiques abordées :
exposition et observations d’actes violents, opinions à l’égard d’Israël, de la Shoah, préjugés à l’égard des
Juifs… autant de sujets clés à examiner pour tenter d’apporter de nouveaux éclairages sur l’antisémitisme1
.
Abstract: CST’s Antisemitic Incidents Report 2021 shows 2,255 anti-Jewish hate incidents reported nationwide in 2021. This is the highest annual total that CST has ever recorded and is a 34% increase from the 1,684 antisemitic incidents reported in 2020. This is the first time CST has ever recorded over 2,000 incidents in a single year and is 24% higher than the previous record annual total of 1,813 incidents in 2019. The UK has seen record annual totals for antisemitic incidents in five of the past six years. CST has recorded antisemitic incidents since 1984.
The record figure of 2,255 antisemitic incidents in 2021 is driven by the significant spike in anti-Jewish hate reported during and following the escalation in violence in Israel and Gaza last year. In May 2021, the month when the conflict in the region intensified, CST recorded a record 661 antisemitic incidents, and in June CST recorded the fifth-highest ever monthly total of 210 incidents. Together, May and June’s totals account for 39% of the annual total. When there is a trigger event, it consistently affects the levels of anti-Jewish hate directed at the diaspora Jewish community in the UK
Abstract: In May 2021 Jewish Voice for Labour (“JVL”) published a combative document entitled How the EHRC Got It So Wrong-Antisemitism and the Labour Party. The document criticises the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s October 2020 Report of its investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party. The Commission found the Labour Party responsible for antisemitic conduct giving rise to several unlawful acts in breach of the Equality Act 2010. In addition to its legal findings, it also made critical factual findings, identifying a culture of acceptance of antisemitism in the Labour Party, which suffered from serious failings in leadership, where the failure to tackle antisemitism more effectively was probably a matter of choice. The essence of JVL’s attack on the Commission’s Report is as follows. First, it is said that the Commission did not and could not lawfully investigate antisemitism as such; to the extent that it purported to do so, its findings of unlawfulness are purportedly meaningless. Secondly, JVL claims that the Commission made no finding of institutional antisemitism. Thirdly, by failing to require production of evidence referred to in a certain leaked report, probably prepared by Labour Party officials loyal to Jeremy Corbyn, the Commission is accused of nullifying at a stroke the value of its own Report as a factual account. Fourthly, JVL claims the Commission’s Report is not just legally untenable, but purportedly a threat to democracy. Finally, JVL claims the Commission’s analysis was not just wrong, but that it exercised its statutory powers in bad faith. This article offers a response to each of the five pillars of JVL’s attack, all of which collapse under scrutiny. As to the first pillar, the article identifies the disappearing of antisemitism as the linchpin of JVL’s argument and shows how JVL’s criticism is underpinned by a political epistemology of antisemitism denialism. As to the second pillar, it shows that the absence of the term “institutional antisemitism” in the Commission’s Report is a semantic quibble. In substance, the Commission found that the conduct under investigation amounted to institutional antisemitism. As to the third, the article demonstrates that JVL’s complaint about the Commission’s failure to call for production of the leaked report is perverse because that report constitutes an admission of the correctness of the complaints put before it. Moreover, the Corbyn-led Labour Party itself decided that it did not want the Commission to consider that material. As to the fourth pillar, the article shows that far from being a threat to democracy, the Commission’s Report grasps the nettle of antisemitism denial. It concludes that continuing to assume and assert that Jews raising concerns about antisemitism are lying for nefarious ends may itself be, and in at least two cases was, a form of unlawful anti-Jewish harassment. As to the fifth, the article rebuts the extraordinary charge that the Commission exercised its powers in bad faith. Rather strikingly, neither JVL nor Jeremy Corbyn was willing to take the Commission on judicial review. The article concludes by considering how the poverty of JVL’s reasoning, coupled with the extravagance of its accusations, invites a symptomatic reading of Antisemitism and the Labour Party as a disappointing illustration of left-wing melancholia.
Abstract: In the wake of the Orange Revolution, Ukraine has witnessed a substantial growth in organized anti-Semitism. Central to this development is an organization, known as the Interregional Academy of Human Resources, better known by its Ukrainian acronym MAUP. It operates a well-connected political network that reaches the very top of the Ukrainian society. MAUP is the largest private university in Ukraine, with 57,000 students at 24 regional campuses. MAUP is connected to the KKK; David Duke is teaching courses in history and international relations at the university. Funded by Saudi Arabia, Libya and Iran, MAUP’s printing house publishes about 85% of the anti-Semitic literature in Ukraine. Until very recently, Ukrainian President Yushchenko and Foreign Minister Tarasiuk served on its board; former President Kravchuk still does. This paper is a study of anti-Semitism in Ukraine, of its intellectual roots, influence and strength. It traces the Soviet, Christian, German and racist political traditions and outlines the political ambitions of organized anti-Semitism in post-Orange Revolution Ukraine.
Abstract: The 3-year pilot project presented here aims at analyzing antisemitic hate speech and imagery on mainstream news websites and social media platforms in different European contexts. Current forms of antisemitism will be examined in various ways by three international research teams from Germany, France, and the UK.
First, the datasets will be studied in detail (qualitative analysis based on pragmalinguistic, image analytical and historical approaches), taking into account explicit as well as implicit forms of communication (TU Berlin).
The resulting annotated datasets will provide training, validation, and test data for supervised machine learning techniques (King’s College London).
Eventually, all studied phenomena will be measured over time through statistical/quantitative analysis (TU Berlin and King’s College London).
The project stands in contrast to previous quantitative research on antisemitism online due to a) its awareness of verbal and visual complexity in the respective cultural and situational contexts, and b) its detailed, multimodal approach. Thus, it will provide the most accurate picture yet of the full extent of Jew-hatred on the interactive web.
The focus of the pilot project will be on German, English and French websites and their respective social media platforms. After the initial three year period, the focus will broaden out to investigate other European language communities.
The project will make a major contribution to the study of viral hate in different cultural contexts. Moreover, the researchers will engage in an ongoing dialogue not only with academia, but also with political, media and pedagogical institutions. An additional output will be an open source tool that will help to identify the full extent of antisemitism in various web milieus.
The half-yearly discourse reports share central insights of the ongoing research outcomes of the project "Decoding Antisemitism" and review unfolding trends.
The second discourse report presents the definitional basis of our analyses and for the first time provides comprehensive insights into our corpus analyses relating to Great Britain, France and Germany.
Abstract: The 3-year pilot project presented here aims at analyzing antisemitic hate speech and imagery on mainstream news websites and social media platforms in different European contexts. Current forms of antisemitism will be examined in various ways by three international research teams from Germany, France, and the UK.
First, the datasets will be studied in detail (qualitative analysis based on pragmalinguistic, image analytical and historical approaches), taking into account explicit as well as implicit forms of communication (TU Berlin).
The resulting annotated datasets will provide training, validation, and test data for supervised machine learning techniques (King’s College London).
Eventually, all studied phenomena will be measured over time through statistical/quantitative analysis (TU Berlin and King’s College London).
The project stands in contrast to previous quantitative research on antisemitism online due to a) its awareness of verbal and visual complexity in the respective cultural and situational contexts, and b) its detailed, multimodal approach. Thus, it will provide the most accurate picture yet of the full extent of Jew-hatred on the interactive web.
The focus of the pilot project will be on German, English and French websites and their respective social media platforms. After the initial three year period, the focus will broaden out to investigate other European language communities.
The project will make a major contribution to the study of viral hate in different cultural contexts. Moreover, the researchers will engage in an ongoing dialogue not only with academia, but also with political, media and pedagogical institutions. An additional output will be an open source tool that will help to identify the full extent of antisemitism in various web milieus.
The half-yearly discourse reports share central insights of the ongoing research outcomes of the project "Decoding Antisemitism" and review unfolding trends.
The first discourse report provides insight into the methodological approaches and the nature of antisemitic hate speech in selected discourse spaces.
Abstract: In current political developments in Europe and the USA, it is striking that a strengthening of nationalism goes hand in hand with certain gender stereotypes, and often this discourse is also linked to moments of antisemitism. Using the example of the Austrian Freedom Party, this chapter analyses this mutual interplay of ideologies and elaborates in particular on the question of how and to what extent an antisemitism that is not expressed openly, can latently be effective in nationalism and antifeminism. Especially against the background of the taboo of manifest and racist antisemitism in the Western, post-national-socialist political public sphere in Germany and Austria, an analysis of this phenomenon is highly relevant. I call this phenomenon the intersectionality of ideologies. It can provide insight into whether antisemitism, as sometimes pretended, has actually been overcome, or whether it is not in fact effective within other ideologies, such as nationalism or antifeminism. The chapter will therefore focus on an analysis of the similarities of antisemitic and antifeminist discourses in the Austrian Freedom Party and their contribution to the strengthening of a nationalist collective.
Abstract: This study explores how an extreme far-right alternative media site uses content from professional media to convey uncivil news with an antisemitic message. Analytically, it rests on a critical discourse analysis of 231 news items, originating from established national and international news sources, published on Frihetskamp from 2011–2018. In the study, we explore how news items are recontextualised to portray both overt and covert antisemitic discourses, and we identify four antisemitic representations that are reinforced through the selection and adjustment of news: Jews as powerful, as intolerant and anti-liberal, as exploiters of victimhood, and as inferior. These conspiratorial and exclusionary ideas, also known from historical Nazi propaganda, are thus reproduced by linking them to con-temporary societal and political contexts and the current news agenda. We argue that this kind of recontextualised, uncivil news can be difficult to detect in a digital public sphere.
Abstract: This paper proposes that understanding the causes of anti-Semitic hate crime requires the
recognition of the cultural specificity of anti-Semitism, reflected in its unique mythical and
conspiratorial nature. By neglecting to consider the idiosyncrasies of anti-Semitic rhetoric,
general theories of hate crime often fail to provide an adequate explanation for the
persistence of anti-Jewish violence, especially in cultures where Jews do not constitute a
conspicuous minority, or where there is no noticeable tradition of anti-Jewish sentiment.
This point is illustrated using as an example the emergence of anti-Semitic hate crime in
Serbia in the aftermath of political changes in October 2000. The paper explores this
development in the context of Serbia’s recent past, arguing that the onset of violent
incidents towards Jews entailed two distinct but related stages, both of which are linked to
the conspiratorial nature of anti-Semitic ideology. The first phase – which culminated at
the time of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia – involved the proliferation of the belief in
Jewish conspiracy. At this stage, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, which were to be found
even in the mainstream media, retained an ‘abstract’ quality and their proliferation did
not, in itself, lead to anti-Jewish hate crime. The onset of anti-Semitic violence is
associated with the second phase, which followed Milošević’s downfall, when, with the
marginalisation of conspiratorial culture, the belief in Jewish conspiracy, as an abstract
ideological position, became reified and transformed into concrete instances of violence
against the local Jewish population. In exploring this two-stage process, the paper
highlights the way in which a closer examination of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and
other anti-Semitic texts can help shed some light on the dynamic underpinning the
persistence of anti-Jewish hate crime in modern society.
Abstract: Many in Europe today are concerned about the rise in violence against Jews, which clearly raises fears in Jewish communities on the Continent. Neither Jewish communities nor individual Jews can be protected unless there is data on antisemitic incidents and scientifically thorough situation analysis. We need to know and analyze the current social attitudes related to antisemitism, to the coexistence with Jews, mutually held prejudices, related taboos in a representative sample of the European countries’ population.
This is the reason why we have launched the largest European antisemitism survey. The research, initiated by the Action and Protection League and carried out by the polling companies Ipsos and Inspira, aims to provide a comprehensive picture of antisemitic prejudice in 16 countries in the European Union.
Data were collected between December 2019 and January 2020 in 16 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom. 1000 people were surveyed in each country.
We used a total of 24 questions to measure antisemitism. We measured the cognitive and conative dimensions of prejudice with 10 questions, and three additional questions for the affective dimension of antisemitism, that is, to measure the emotional charge of antisemitic prejudice. We mapped secondary antisemitism relativizing the Holocaust with seven questions and antisemitic hostility against Israel with four questions. We used two and three questions, respectively, to measure sympathy for Jews and for Israel.
With the exception of questions about affective antisemitism, all questions were asked in the same form: Respondents were asked to indicate on a five-point scale how much they agreed with the statements in the question (strongly agree; tend to agree; neither agree nor disagree; tend to disagree; strongly disagree).
Abstract: Many in Europe today are concerned about the rise in violence against Jews, which clearly raises fears in Jewish communities on the Continent. Neither Jewish communities nor individual Jews can be protected unless there is data on antisemitic incidents and scientifically thorough situation analysis. We need to know and analyze the current social attitudes related to antisemitism, to the coexistence with Jews, mutually held prejudices, related taboos in a representative sample of the European countries’ population.
This is the reason why we have launched the largest European antisemitism survey. The research, initiated by the Action and Protection League and carried out by the polling companies Ipsos and Inspira, aims to provide a comprehensive picture of antisemitic prejudice in 16 countries in the European Union.
Data were collected between December 2019 and January 2020 in 16 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom. 1000 people were surveyed in each country.
We used a total of 24 questions to measure antisemitism. We measured the cognitive and conative dimensions of prejudice with 10 questions, and three additional questions for the affective dimension of antisemitism, that is, to measure the emotional charge of antisemitic prejudice. We mapped secondary antisemitism relativizing the Holocaust with seven questions and antisemitic hostility against Israel with four questions. We used two and three questions, respectively, to measure sympathy for Jews and for Israel.
With the exception of questions about affective antisemitism, all questions were asked in the same form: Respondents were asked to indicate on a five-point scale how much they agreed with the statements in the question (strongly agree; tend to agree; neither agree nor disagree; tend to disagree; strongly disagree).
