Antisemitism

About 

Antisemitism remains a pervasive challenge throughout the West, influencing a variety of violent and non-violent extremists across the political spectrum. In the United States, Jews are the targets of the majority of hate crimes committed against any religious group. While the extremists behind many of these attacks come from many movements, they are all united by a common antisemitic worldview. From Islamists to neo-Nazis and white supremacists, from black supremacists to far-left extremists, each has incorporated antisemitism and antisemitic tropes as key components of their ideologies, and as a means of mobilizing followers to perpetrate acts of violence. 

Report: Antisemitism in the Aftermath of October 7: How did we get here?

Dr. Maizels in her report explores the following:

• Following the October 7 Hamas attack, some parts of the left not only blamed Israel for the aggression, but also expressed hostility toward Jewish supporters of Israel because of their assumed privilege.
• This type of animosity is not new. It began during the 1960s and 70s, especially after the Jewish State’s victories over a coalition of Arab nations in the 1967 War, and it can be linked to the ideology of some parts of the New Left, which included recurring attempts to link Israel with European colonialism and Jews with whiteness and privilege.
• Analysts of the period responded to these tactics by describing a “new antisemitism” that illustrated the parallels between hostility towards Israel’s legitimacy as a state and hostility toward the authenticity of the American Jewish community as a minority ethnic group.
• In the 1980s and 1990s, the focus of the political left trended toward promoting multiculturalism and diversity. This tolerance was not all-inclusive, however, and the animosity toward Israel demonstrated by some factions within the left was coupled with hostility toward Jews, who were seen not only as white and privileged, but also as a particularly malicious example of some of the worst elements of whiteness.
• Against the backdrop of the second intifada and the rise in violence that characterized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the opening years of the 21st century, vocal factions of the left on American college and university campuses labeled Israel a racist and illegitimate state founded through settler colonialism and fueled by apartheid.
• At the same time, Jews were denigrated both for supporting Israel and for their supposed white privilege.
• Critics claimed that these attacks on Israel, Zionism, and Jews often crossed the line into antisemitism. They also pointed out a seeming double standard in which hostile rhetoric toward Jews – whether it was connected to Israel or to whiteness – was framed as protected political speech, while hateful language towards other minority identity groups was more likely to be condemned and silenced.
• The conclusion of this analysis is that some elements of the left have deep, serious, and systemic issues, not only with Israel but also with Jews.

Article: Intersectional Antisemitism in America

In this article for Tablet, Program Director Lorenzo Vidino explores the belief that Jews are unique agents of evil, secretly manipulating world events is the common denominator in virtually all forms of extremism present in America today. It is not entirely a new phenomenon, as cross-ideological pollination of antisemitism is a centuries-old cancer. But because of the web, we have fully entered the era of intersectional antisemitism.

In this climate, it is not surprising that, in 2019, 60% of all religiously motivated hate crimes were against Jews. The federal government, law enforcement agencies, and Jewish communities throughout the country understand the problem, and know that there is no easy fix. A good place to start would be with large-scale educational efforts: A 2020 national survey of millennials and Generation Z showed that 63% did not know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. We also need to see enhanced security protecting Jewish targets, and increased focus on the antisemitic content that is tolerated by social media platforms. These endeavors are necessary to begin to stem the tide of the growing American problem of intersectional antisemitism.

Report: Antisemitism as an Underlying Precursor to Violent Extremism in American Far-Right and Islamist Contexts

Antisemitism is pervasive throughout several categories of American extremist movements, both violent and non-violent. American extremists incorporate antisemitic tropes and narratives in every level of their worldviews, using them to help construct “us/them” dichotomies and wide-sweeping conspiracies that are essential to their movements. During the past several decades, the American extremist movements that have been among the most violent—specifically, far-right and jihadist groups—have used antisemitism to target Jewish people, Jewish houses of worship, Jewish community institutions, and Americans supporting the Jewish state of Israel.  Antisemitism, as a belief and world-structuring theory, can at times serve as a gateway issue for individuals into further radicalization to violent extremism. Nonviolent and violent iterations of the same extremist milieus often share antisemitic views as central elements of their belief system, and thus antisemitism constitutes a linkage between activist and violent extremist segments of the same movement. Several case studies of violent American extremists, representing far-right and jihadist movements respectively, demonstrate that antisemitism can be an integral part of American extremists’ progression through the radicalization process and in justifying terrorist attacks. Based on this report’s finding that antisemitism is foundational to multiple violent extremist movements in the United States, counter-extremism practitioners and scholars may consider incorporating antisemitism as a diagnostic factor for extremist radicalization.

During the summer of 2020, Program Director Lorenzo Vidino worked with the London Times on an investigation of the global charitable organization Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), uncovering years of antisemitic and pro-Hamas social media postings by various IRW board members and top leaders. In an interview with The Times, Director Vidino highlighted how comments made by multiple leaders showed, "a problem at the highest levels of IRW that is not confined to one rogue individual... Such conduct should raise red flags for every national government and civil society organisation that partners with and funds Islamic Relief..."The joint investigation culminated in the entire board of IRW resigning, and led the U.S. Department of State and the governments of Germany and the Netherlands to stop or pause and review funding the organization.

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Events

 

 

The Surge of Antisemitism in Europe and the United States

November 2023

• Ludovic Hood, Senior Advisor for the Office of the U.S. Special Envoy To Monitor and Combat Antisemitism
• Mitchell Silber, Executive Director of the Community Security Initiative
• Oriana Marie Krueger, Director of European Affairs at Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM)
• Omar Mohammed, Senior Research Fellow at the Program on Extremism

 

Antisemitism in Western Extremist Movements: Responding to the Threat

November 2023

• Evin Ismail, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the Swedish Defence University
• Matthias Küntzel, Political Scientist and Historian
• Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, Founder & CEO of CyberWell
• Vered Andre'ev, Head of Research at CyberWell
• Omar Mohammed, Senior Research Fellow at the Program on Extremism

The Revival of Jewish Cultural Heritage and Combating Antisemitism and Terrorism in the Middle East

March 2022

• Katharina von Schnurbein, the European Commission's Coordinator on combating Antisemitism and fostering Jewish life
• Edwin Shuker, Vice President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews
• Omar Mohammed, Research Fellow at the Program on Extremism

 

Antisemitism in Western Extremist Movements: Responding to the Threat

November 2022

• Samantha Vinograd, Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security

• Dave Rich, Director of Policy for the Community Security Trust, Britain’s largest non-governmental entity protecting British Jews from antisemitism and related threats

• Mitch Silber, Executive Director for the Community Security Initiative, which works on enhancing the physical security of the approximately 2,000 Jewish institutions in the New York area

• Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, Research Director at the Program on Extremism