The New Antisemitism

HOW AN ANCIENT HATRED HAS REINVENTED ITSELF IN THE MODERN WORLD

- NOAH FELDMAN

Why won't antisemitism die, or at least die down?

In the months following Hamas' attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, antisemitic incidents increased substantially. The Anti-Defamation League, which keeps track, says they tripled in the U.S. over the previous year, although its criteria also changed to include anti-Zionism. But from 2019 to 2022, the amount of people with highly antisemitic attitudes in the U.S. had nearly doubled, the ADL found. In Europe, Human Rights Watch warned in 2019 of an "alarming" rise in antisemitism, prompting the European Union to adopt a strategic plan for fighting it two years later.

No one can say definitively why the pre-Gaza War surge happened when it did. The salience of groups like the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 probably played a role, as did the influence of figures like the troubled rapper turned-designer Kanye West. Historically, antisemitism has been a side effect of populism, which traffics in us-vs. - them stereotypes. Social media allows antisemitic influencers to recruit and communicate directly to followers, getting around the filtering bottleneck of the legacy media. The murder of 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, by a shooter enraged at Jewish groups providing aid to immigrants, was the painful lowlight of this era.