Search results
Your search found 1 item
Home  / Search Results
Defining antisemitism in the new millennium: an ongoing debate with European origins
Author(s): Wiedemann, Emilie
Date: 2025
Topics: Antisemitism: Definitions, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Anti-Antisemitism, European Union
Abstract: This essay is a discussion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) 2016 working definition of antisemitism as a historical source on the politics of defining antisemitism in Europe in the new millennium. It discusses the millennial origins of the document in a European agency and its embattled transition to the IHRA. The essay emphasises the importance of understanding the context in which the definition was thought to be necessary and the problem it was designed to solve. The essay then examines the reception and contemporary controversy surrounding the text. It argues that the working definition is one intervention in an ongoing debate about the relationships between antisemitism, anti-Zionism and racism, a debate which is far from settled. Overall, it accounts for the text as a historical source on what is at stake in defining antisemitism and why doing so remains fraught today.