The conflationary dangers of "the new antisemitism"

Bassem Youssef, the comedian, told Krishnan Guru-Murthy of Channel 4 News in Britain that the epithet ‘anti-semite’ has lost its sting. “It’s an empty accusation. It doesn’t mean anything now.” He dismissed the term in its entirety.

That echoes a warning I raised to an online acquaintance as I recounted a passage I’d seen in a New York Times column’s comment section. The commenter said that he takes accusations of antisemitism less seriously these days.

I noted that this was precisely the problem with the term becoming diluted by being mixed with criticism of the state of Israel. Engaging in the latter did not make or reveal one to be antisemitic — at least, not without extra, clarifying context. That scrutiny of a sovereign state is these days equated with antisemitism is dangerous, I said, because that evokes exactly that commenter’s response, where he thinks twice before accepting such a claim.

But there are many people, Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League and [other] Zionists besides, who do equate those two things. They consider antagonistic comments about Israel to be “the new antisemitism,” on the dubious concept of Israel being “a Jew among the nations” — that is, a nation-state personified as being an individual with a Jewish background. The unspoken line advanced here is that if someone makes a disparaging remark about Israel, then that person should be seen as doing the same to a Jewish person — and leveling that criticism solely on the basis of the individual’s Jewishness. It is by this legerdemain that all criticism of Israel becomes an ethnic attack.

Yet that construction loses sight of antisemitism as a social barometer is meant to signify, at least sociologically speaking. We track it for a reason.

Theodor Adorno (of the influential Frankfurt School) and three of his colleagues, directly after the close of World War II, did their best to figure out what the hell had just gone wrong, what the world had just lived through. The four engaged in trenchant research so as to discern the root aspects of the personality type most likely to become enthralled by messages emanating from a Hitler. They called this the authoritarian personality (originally dubbed the fascist personality). Antisemitism was one of the leading, clearest facets of this particular archetype.

In terms of ideology, the anti-Semite’s conflict is between the current, culturally ‘approved’ stereotypes of prejudice and the officially prevailing standards of democracy and human equality. [...]

[A]s soon as prejudice in any amount is allowed to enter a person’s manifest ways of thinking, the scales weigh heavily in favor of an ever-increasing expansion of his prejudice. We are furthermore entitled to expect this result of the conflict in all cases where the potentially fascist personality syndrome is established. [...]

We might call the urges expressing themselves in anti-Semitism the prosecutor, and conscience the judge, within the personality, and say that the two are fused.¹

The prevalence of antisemitism, Adorno et al. believed, indicated the propensity of a society to succumb to fascism, and the world had just seen what the excesses of that political vision could wreak. Millions upon millions of people could be slaughtered in the pursuit of a flawed utopia.

However, when conflated with the criticism of a nation-state’s policies and actions, antisemitism loses its ability to be that bellwether. Instead, it simply becomes a tool of silencing and suppression. Just as Guru-Murthy stated (and it’s true): being called antisemitic is one of the worst things that a person can socially suffer. It is a cue to those who hear the label being applied to shun the one so labeled. It is a call to excommunicate.

But what strength does the label even have — what can it indicate — when Israel itself is the authoritarian power in question?

The label doesn’t communicate anything anymore, at least not barometrically. The nation-state that purports to be a harbor for those of Jewish heritage has itself adopted the exact political viewpoint that imperiled them in the first place. What is the point of fighting antisemitism — “classic” antisemitism, that is, that based on personal hostility and animus — if the worldview we mean to circumvent has been embraced and absorbed by the very people we in the West have endeavored to save?

It’s true. The term literally loses meaning.

Now, there’s still a place for condemning “classic” antisemitism, as personally held animus still leads to hate crimes, which not only tear at the fabric of society but all too often leads to death. But it does us no good when the ADL, for example, classifies pro-Palestinian slogans and demonstrations as antisemitic incidents.

In a statement to the Forward, the ADL acknowledged that its report includes pro-Palestine protests at which "anti-Zionist chants and slogans" were observed. Rosenfeld said that these events appeared to account for 1,317—or over 40%—of the total incidents in the report.²

Statistically, we lose the ability to track this important harbinger of social disunion. This is what happens when you mess with the data.

So now we’re out to sea. We don’t have a clear idea of how much an increase in actual antisemitism there has been over the last six months since Israel launched its offensive into Gaza, because Greenblatt and the folks at the ADL have inflated the numbers by conflating this crucial definition. 

More importantly, this verbal vituperation creates a forcefield, a shield that prevents people from seeing that it is Israel itself that has become the authoritarian danger. Indeed, we don’t have a word to alert us to that fact.

1. Adorno, Theodor, Else Frankel-Brunswik, R. Nevitt Sanford and Daniel Levinson. The Authoritarian Personality (1950 / 2019), pp. 629-630. Verso: London.

2. Wilkins, Brett. “ADL Report Decried for Equating Anti-Zionism with Antisemitism.” Common Dreams, January 10, 2024.