These are the notes for my speech at the Leeds Salon yesterday on the subject of “Is anti-Semitism the canary in the coal mine?” (I don’t read speeches out verbatim). It also represents my latest attempt to try to outline the essence of anti-Semitism. Any comments are welcome.

Is anti-Semitism the canary in the coal mine? Is it an indicator that something is more broadly is going wrong in society? I think the short answer is yes but that of course leaves open the question of why.

It seems to me a really difficult question to answer convincingly. And I’ve been thinking about it for several years. But I’ll try my best here.

The first thing to recognise is that the traditional answers don’t work. If you just assume that anti-Semitism is a form of hate then, in my view, you can’t properly answer the question. To give you a quick preview I’ll argue that to answer it properly you have to understand that anti-Semitism is a perception of Jews collectively that sees them as embodying the evils of the modern world. It’s about much more than just Jews. That’s true of traditional anti-Semitism and of contemporary anti-Zionism (with Israel playing the role of collective Jew). I’ll explain what I mean by that in this talk.

Don’t get me wrong. Anti-Semitism does involve the hatred of Jews. To deny that would be crazy. But it’s much more than that. That can be seen as an element of anti-Semitism but it’s far from the whole story.

The “hatred” characterisation suggests anti-Semitism is just one “flavour” of bigotry. Along with anti-black racism, anti-gay bigotry, misogyny. Those are all forms of animosity that do exist. 

But that begs the question of why anti-Semitism in particular should be the “canary in the coal mine”? Why not, for example, anti-black racism? Of course anti-black racism is horrendous, and should be staunchly opposed. But it does not seem to have the same “canary” quality of signalling a broader social crisis.

In my view a lot of other characterisations of anti-Semitism are also inadequate:

  • It is a prejudice. This is similar to “hate” or “bigotry” it does not really explain anything. It is certainly more than hostility to individual Jews.
  •  It is a form of discrimination. It can certainly involve discrimination but again that is far from. For example, the Nazis started discriminating against Jews – embodied in the Nuremberg race laws of 1935  - before embarking on a programme of mass slaughter. For example, Jews had no political rights – Jews could not be citizens because they were not of “German blood”. “Racial mixing” was forbidden. And more discriminatory laws followed,
  • It is a conspiracy theory. The idea that the Jews are a shadowy force somehow manipulating the world from behind the scenes. Again this is true, and it is a central element of anti-Semitism, but it is far from the full story (See the recent article by Stefanie Borkum on the Protocols).

OK. So if it’s not all those things – or at least can’t be reduced to them – then what is it?

As I said before I think it is a perception that Jews embody the evils of the modern world. 

Let me spend the rest of my time spelling this out:

So Jews are seen as the embodiment, the personification, of the evils of the modern world but the particular features can change over time.

For example, in nineteenth century Europe, when anti-Semitism emerged as a racial ideology, Jews were associated by anti-Semites with modernity and speculative capitalism.

  • Speculative capitalism – Because Jews often played a kind of financial middleman role. For a long time Christians were barred from usury so Jews tended to concentrate in that area. Some Jews (called Hofjuden or court Jews) also played a special role in helping to raise funds for the royal courts
  • Modernity – From the French Revolution (1789) onwards the Jews were also in the process of emancipation. They were moving from generally living in communities relatively isolated from mainstream societies to a much more integrated relationship with the rest of society. They were also increasingly granted rights (so they could become citizens with whatever rights that entailed). This was in turn part of a broader process of modernisation going on in French society. And it is notable that those who were against modernisation tended also to be the anti-Semites.  (see Maurice Samuels book on Dreyfus).
  • Then in the early C20th century, in the aftermath of the Russian revolution, Jews were often associated with Judeo-Bolshevism (as well as speculative capitalism).  The fact that some Jews played a prominent part in communist parties gave credence to this view. This in fact was the form of anti-Semitism that Adolf Hitler believed in.

More recently in relation to Israel the Jewish state is seen as the embodiment of the evils of western civilisation. These include racism, settler colonialism etc.

And to conclude, this shows why traditional anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism have so much in common. 

  • Traditional anti-Semitism is the perception of Jews collectively embodying the evils of capitalism and modernity. Sometimes communism too.
  • Contemporary anti-Zionism is the perception of Israel as the collective Jew representing the supposed evils of western civilisation. Including racism and settler colonialism. So this is not about criticism of Israel but about denouncing it as evil. The flip side of that of course is that such anti-Zionists see themselves as good by definition precisely because they are opposing evil. That is why Palestine is sometimes called the omincause. That is if you support the Palestinians you are deemed to be a good person because you are supposedly opposing evil.

The forms of modernity traditional anti-Semitism and contemporary anti-Semitism focus on are different. However, what they have in common is that Jews collectively are seen embodying the evils of the modern world. 

This is what tends to come to the fore at times of extreme polarisation and crisis. In particular when there is a severe social reaction against modernity.