What is antisemitism?

Once and for all, for real this time.

What is antisemitism? It’s a tough question; let’s ask R. Jonathan Sacks. 

Historically, antisemitism has been hard to define, because it expresses itself in such contradictory ways.

Uh–oh. 

Before the Holocaust, Jews were hated because they were poor and because they were rich; because they were communists and because they were capitalists; because they kept to themselves and because they infiltrated everywhere; because they clung to ancient religious beliefs and because they were rootless cosmopolitans who believed nothing.

But why were Jews hated? What actually is antisemitism? 

It’s a prejudice that like a virus, has survived over time by mutating.

So, antisemitism has no core features, it mutates, it evolves. Don’t even try to define it, because ‘antisemitism at every level is a contradiction in terms.’

R. Sacks is always popular, and had a way with words, but the essential undefinability of antisemitism was not original to him. If you shop around, you’ll see the virus metaphor everywhere. If aggressive neoconservatism is your thing, Douglas Murray has the goods. If you prefer centrist liberalism, then Tony Blair and Bill Clinton will give it to you that way too. You can read it in the Guardian, in the JPost, the Telegraph, wherever you want, whenever you want.

I have an alternative theory though. Antisemitism is a 19th century Right-Wing ideology, which posited that a significant number of the problems with European or Western society were caused by Jews and could be solved by combatting Jews. Like most 19th century Right-Wing brainwaves, it was a bit wacky, but it had an advantage over the others in that it could draw on large reserves of antipathy towards Jews among the still mostly Christian, or, at the very least, Christianity-influenced, population, as well as the natural antipathy of people towards those who look and act differently to them, especially when they are disproportionately well-off and powerful. In addition, antisemitism was a self-reinforcing ideology. The more heavily the Right leaned on antisemitism as an ideological tool to mobilise mass support, the more Jews took the side of the Left, and became publicly identifiable representatives of all the objectionable things the Left were doing. Eventually, this ratcheted up so much that two out of three of the leaders of the short-lived Munich republic who, according to their own statements, were deliberately trying to starve the children of the bourgeoisie to death, were Jewish, and this made a certain lance corporal and frustrated artist called Adolph י’’ש very, very mad indeed. In the post-war era, antisemitism became a low-status, fringe ideology in civilized countries, its enduring unpopularity amply testified to by the fact that, in stark contrast to the pre-war era, it is a label almost exclusively used as an accusation. The average intelligence and quality of its proponents slopes ever downwards, its most famous advocate now a babbling Bantu bimbo and her semi-retarded minstrel friend (thanks, Ben Shapiro!).

Now, this alternative, non-virus-based definition of antisemitism strikes you as obviously absurd. What was animating those medieval Germans corralling Jews into their houses and setting them on fire if not antisemitism? Why did Mohammed just wipe out a Jewish tribe if he wasn’t antisemitic? When John Chrysostom wrote Adversus Judaeos all the way back in 387 CE, presumably it was because he didn’t like Jews all that much, and what is not liking Jews if not antisemitism?

My suggestion, however, does have one thing going for it. The word antisemitism was first used in 1879 by twice-divorced failed businessman Wilhem Marr. It is true that some things exist long before there is a word for them, like gravity, the planet Mars, or stalactites. Other things, however, come into existence at the same time as the label, or relatively shortly beforehand, like Monster Munch, monophytism, or socialism. Of course, one can talk about Francis Assisi, John Lilburne or Jesus of Nazareth as being socialists long before Pierre Leroux coined the term in 1832, but we all understand that the person doing that is engaging in metaphor, making a tendentious point or, most likely, simply being a historically illiterate dipstick with no clue what he is talking about. The question, then, can be rephrased as whether antisemitism is more like gravity or socialism. To begin answering that, let’s meet Brad.

Poor fellow

Brad is a guy with a lot of problems. He doesn’t get on with his dad and he doesn’t get on so great with his mum either. He hasn’t talked to his sister in five years, and he only periodically sees his brother, each occasion ending with grim inevitability in shrieking arguments. His wife left him over a decade ago and, though he negotiated visitation rights, his relationship with his children is increasingly strained, bordering dangerously on acrimonious. His boss thinks he’s a waste of space and is building up a file to fire him. His neighbour is suing him over a dispute that ended badly, and the local housing association barred him as result of the fallout.

When looking at Brad’s predicament, the thesis that most readily presents itself is that Brad is a jerk. The only common denominator in all his dysfunctional relationships is himself, so he is the problem. He should see a therapist, work on himself and see if a new attitude and approach to life serves him better than whatever he has been trying up till now.

A second thesis is that Brad is unlucky. There are seven billion people in, this, our vale of tears, and someone has to be on the unfortunate side of the bell curve. If we were but to look in more detail at Brad’s unfortunate life story, then we can doubtless find an explanation in each case. Perhaps his father has a drinking problem and created a tense family environment growing up; his boss is under pressure because the firm is on the brink of bankruptcy; his neighbour is a schizo, his ex-wife bipolar. All these things happen, sometimes at once. He just drew the short straw in life. Indeed, if we take such an approach, we will almost certainly find that things are not bleak as they first appear. Brad’s marriage fell apart, but he has a girlfriend and they have been together happily now for two years, wedding bells distantly ringing in the background. He has dear friends that have stuck with him through thick and thin, colleagues who have his back. It’s easy to tell a tale of unremitting woe if you leave out everything else.

The most unlikely explanation, though, of Brad’s predicament is that all of those who have crossed him over the years are seized by an affliction of anti-Bradism whose specific character and qualities change from person to person, but nevertheless maintains its admittedly undefinable essence. It’s impossible, in fact, to imagine what anti-Bradism even means, exactly, since its function as an explanation is nothing other than to find a common factor in Brad’s bad relationships that is not Brad himself. If Brad was to alight on anti-Bradism as a way of giving meaning to his varied woes, this would, in itself, indicate that the truth was far closer to the first explanation than the second. Let’s now apply this thought experiment to the case of the Jews.

Unique circumstances lead to unique outcomes

It is said that the Jews have been expelled from 109 countries. This is an essentially fictional number, but let us imagine it was true. No other people has been expelled from 109 countries because no other people has been in 109 countries. No other people has endured two thousand years of persecution because no other people weak enough to be so persecuted has persevered for 2,000 years. The Yazidis, I think any reasonable man would agree, have been through a lot of misery, but they haven’t been through a dizzying diversity of misery because they have been around for 800 years in more or less one place. We no longer talk about why people hate Albigensians because the Albigensians are all dead. This point has been made in his inimitable way by our very own oracle of providence, King Bibi:

History is full of people getting wrecked. Sometimes they did something to deserve it, sometimes they were just in the way, but the rule is that, if they got wrecked hard enough, for long enough, they ceased to exist. Where King Bibi is wrong, though, is about the Jews because, though slaughtered, we did not, for good or ill, crumble, but survived. No single incidence of anti-Jewish persecution is unique, few are even unusual. Their cumulative quantity is unusual, perhaps unique, but this is a straightforward function of being unusually persistent. The hypothesis of an antisemitism that transcends and unites these various events is an extra layer of (as we have seen, extreme) complexity that simply adds nothing, explains nothing, means nothing.

To illustrate, let us look at one example, apparently the best one, of antisemitism avant la lettre, namely the situation of the Jews in medieval Europe. Looked at historically (and what other way, exactly, is one supposed to look at it?) this can be explained as a combination of the following factors:

1. Medieval Europe was a Christian monopoly in which all non-Christian groups, and also dubiously Christian groups, were hounded to extinction by one means or another. The Jews were the only non-Christian group that persisted throughout the period, and thus the unique focus of attention as a religious minority.

2. Judaism and Christianity were mutually antagonistic religions, and had been so since their first emergence from the wreckage of second-temple Judea. Early Christian patristic texts contain large quantities of overtly anti-Jewish material and Jewish texts, while generally more inwardly focussed, are unequivocally negative when they refer to Christianity, often in a way that a Christian can only regard as blasphemous.

3. Jews were concentrated in certain professions that, always and everywhere, cause numerous conflicts of interest with other parts of the population. This is so even when such duties are exercised with the highest degree of scrupulousness and compassion, but there is no reason to think that this was the case here.

4. At any given time, there were a large number of powerful people who could award themselves a debt holiday by promoting the expulsion or murder of the people who had lent them money.

5. Jews spoke a different language, dressed differently, had a different ritual life, and, in northern Europe, looked different to the surrounding population, and for basic evopsych reasons this led to mutual hostility. 

6. Jews were used as agents of centralisation by monarchs, bypassing feudal channels of economic power that retarded their attempts to raise revenue for the purpose of inter-state competition. Thus, opponents of this centralization could retard it by attacking Jews. 

7. Jews may have behaved badly in various different ways, which is always unwise when you are the minority.

8. Some Jungian or Generative Anthropology something about ‘the other’ and scapegoating or whatever.

9. Medieval Europe was really violent and had a lot of problems with basic state functioning, hence massacres, mob violence etc.

The ranking above has no meaning beyond what came out when I typed. Reasonable people will disagree reasonably about the balance of causes as they played out in different part of medieval Europe, but what is clear is that these causes are totally sufficient, in combination, to explain all the historical data of Jewish persecution in that period. Adding the concept of antisemitism to this mix doesn’t illuminate anything. It is purely an impediment to achieving clarity and understanding, an obstacle to clear thought.

What exists has attributes

I may perhaps here be misunderstood as arguing that antisemitism does not exist. No! My argument is precisely that antisemitism does exist, and that, like all things that exist, it has extension, it has qualities, it exists here and not there, it is not infinitely mysterious, not infinitely plastic, it is not infinitely anything. Like most ideologies, indeed more than most ideologies, it contains contradictions, but it is not a ‘contradiction in terms’. It is real: it changes, grows, spreads, shrinks, develops, but not without limit, not metaphysically.

In order to understand the history of the Jews over the past two centuries, in any part, you must know about antisemitism. The more you know, the more you will understand. Did you know that a recurring feature of the legislative programme of the different antisemitic parties that sprung up and fizzled out over 50 years following the unification of Germany was the prohibition of department stores? Jews promoting degeneracy and vice, OK, you knew about that part, but Debenhams? Go and learn; the past is a different, deeply weird, country. Antisemitism is not the only thing you know about to understand modern Jewish history because ideology is never the only thing you need to know about, but it’s definitely important, explanatory, illuminating. It’s real. Stick with what’s real.

There is only one way of saving the idea of antisemitism as a trans-historical concept, that is by making it a purely aggregative one. Lots of people, undeniably, have hated the Jews over the past two thousand years, for different reasons, in different ways, expressed in different words and different actions. If you choose, you can put the label of antisemitism on those different hatreds.

Think, though, about what that means. Joan of Arc, Louis XIV, Vinayak Savarker, Leopoldo Galtieri, Braveheart. Those are but a few names of people who, in the course of history, have hated the English. You can put them together in a category of ‘Anti-Englishists’. If you search hard enough, you might find aspects of commonality (disgust, perhaps, for mushy peas), but you must know that to search for a coherent and definable concept would be wholly fruitless. If you pigheadedly insist on looking for one regardless, of course, you will find it to be infinitely protean, beyond incomprehension, defying all sense because it literally doesn’t exist.

Dual loyalty would be an improvement

But why do I care so much? In principle, it would be possible to distinguish between antisemitism the modern historical belief system, and antisemitism the broad, essentially contentless umbrella category, perhaps by employing capital letters (though on which one?). One - I think sufficient - reason is that the term antisemitism in its meaningless sense is omnipresent in Jewish discourse and always a tool not to think, not to analyse, not to make sense of reality so as to manipulate it with prudence. If you can’t stop talking none-sense for yourself, then maybe do it for me.

That isn’t even my main gripe, though, because, before the metaphysical concept of antisemitism became endemic in Jewry, there was another concept that fulfilled an analogous function. There is one doctrine taught more frequently, and at greater length, throughout the scriptures than all the rest put together, namely that when Israel, collectively, sins, Israel collectively, is punished by famine, drought, earthquakes and all the rest, but, above all, the sword. This is a belief, not an evident fact. It does not emerge simply from a dispassionate view of the evidence; it has to be imposed on the evidence. If you don’t believe me, check out Jeremiah 44. You can always, if so minded, find a reason not to believe it, but to believe it, fundamentally, is to believe in Judaism. To not is to not. 

In other words, a Jew is supposed to believe that the transhistorical concept that transcends time and place to unify and give meaning to all the sufferings we have suffered is not something called antisemitism, it is a jealous G-d who warned us in advance. I’m not going to argue for this belief; I imagine that to the outsider it appears rather melancholic. I just observe that it does not seem that you can believe in this and believe in timeless ‘antisemitism’ at the same time. Indeed, one might say that the concept of antisemitism appears specifically designed to replace the Jewish doctrine of providence. Does that mean that the Jewish writers and thinkers who wax lyrical at enormous length on the subject of antisemitism, probing its ineffable and endless mysteries, are falsifying Judaism at a level more fundamental than any biblical critic or archaeologist could hope to do? Well, I couldn’t possibly comment.