Every time I make any sort of post insisting that itâs antisemites, not (real or perceived) Jewish behavior, that causes antisemitism, I receive comments from a couple of people insisting that Israelâs (real or perceived) behavior is to blame for the state of antisemitism in the world today.
It is because Israel calls itself the Jewish state and claims to operate on behalf of world Jewry (side note: it doesnât. Israel claims to operate on behalf of its citizens, like any other state) that peopleâs anger naturally manifests as violence or discrimination against Jews, even those who are uninvolved.
This logic, of course, wouldnât fly in progressive or left-wing spaces if projected onto any other group. Are the 56,000+ jihadist attacks over the past decade responsible for anti-Muslim discrimination or violence?Â
But beyond exposing double standards, Iâve been interested in exploring something else: how, exactly, does one become an antisemite? And does it have anything to do with Jewish behavior?
To figure this out, I think itâs helpful to follow the trajectory of the deadliest antisemite in Jewish history: Adolf Hitler.
Hitler meets possibly his first Jew, Dr. Eduard Bloch, who cares for his mother during her terminal illness. Hitler speaks kindly of Bloch for the rest of his life.
Hitler moves to Vienna, where he lives alongside Jews, sells paintings to Jewish buyers, and enjoys the work of Jewish musicians.
takeaway #1: antisemites donât necessarily dislike Jews as individuals!
Until his death in 1910, Hitler is increasingly influenced by the populist antisemitic rhetoric coming from Karl Lueger, then Viennaâs mayor.
takeaway #2: populist politics rely on dividing a society between âthe peopleâ and an evil âelite,â which is why populism and antisemitism historically overlap.
After Germanyâs defeat in World War I, Hitler fully embraces the âstab-in-the-backâ antisemitic conspiracy, which is when he first starts expressing rabid, genocidal Jew-hatred.
takeaway #3: antisemitism thrives in times of societal distress or uncertainty.
MANY ANTISEMITES HAVE SAT AT THE TABLE WITH JEWS
Given the vast majority of antisemites in the world have never met a Jew, itâs easy to assume that the solution to rabid Jew-hatred is to find a seat at the table with those who hate us. But while access to Jews can challenge a personâs pre-existing assumptions, itâs always important to keep in mind that antisemites donât necessarily dislike Jews as individuals.Instead, antisemites subscribe to a conspiracy theory about the Jewish people as a collective.Â
Beyond Dr. Bloch, Hitler himself had various Jews he thought of fondly. During his Vienna years, Hitler befriended Jewish figures such as Josef Neumann, Simon Robinson, and Samuel Morgenstern. Even after he rose to power, Hitler protected Bloch and Hugo Gutmann, Hitlerâs superior during World War I, who recommended him for the Iron Cross.
And even so, Hitler was an ardent believer of conspiracies of collective so-called Jewish power, so much so that he ordered the extermination of Europeâs Jews.
BOTH SIDES OF THE SPECTRUM ARE EQUALLY VULNERABLE
The right-to-left political spectrum as we know it today is a rather new construct, dating back only to the period of the French Revolution (1789-1799). Antisemitism predates these political distinctions by millennia.
A comprehensive April 2023 study published in Natureâs Humanities and Social Sciences Communications journal found that your placement on the political spectrum is not necessarily what is predictive of your proclivity towards antisemitic thinking.
Instead, those with conspiratorial ways of thinking are likelier to be antisemites. Additionally, antisemites are also more likely to hold authoritarian views â on the right and the left â and are also more likely to want to âoverthrow social order.â
In terms of Hitlerâs antisemitic trajectory, this is of note because while Nazism is described as a far-right ideology, the Nazis intentionally named their party the National Socialist German Workers' Party specifically to appeal to both the German right and the left, with the words ânationalâ and âGermanâ meant to appeal to the right, while âsocialistâ and âworkersâ intended to appeal to the left.
POPULISM AS AN ENTRY POINT
As far as we know, Hitler first flirted with antisemitic sentiments thanks to the influence of Viennaâs populist mayor, Karl Lueger, who is both credited with transforming Vienna into a modern city and whose antisemitic rhetoric particularly vilified Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. He also advocated for racist policies against non-German speaking minorities and derided the city of Budapest with the moniker âJudapest.â
Many historians note that Lueger inflamed antisemitic sentiments in Vienna as a means to gain votes, and, in general, Jews did not suffer under his administration. Like Hitler, he had personal relationships with Jews.Â
Time and time again in history, populism and antisemitism have crossed paths. The reasons are not hard to identify: both antisemitism and populism rely on âanti-eliteâ us vs. them narratives, conspiracy theories, and local identity when Jews have so often been regarded as outsiders. As the study in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications journal found, those who wish to overthrow âsocial orderâ are likelier to be antisemites.
IS ANTISEMITISM A CONSEQUENCE OF JEWISH BEHAVIOR?
Well, antisemites certainly think so. The idea that individual and/or collective Jewish behavior is the cause or the motivating factor behind antisemitic violence is almost as old as antisemitism itself.Â
From the Jewish refusal to convert to Christianity to justifications over blood libels, antisemites have always contended that if Jews didnât behave as we do, we would be left alone.Â
Much of this alleged behavior, however, has been entirely fabricated by people who were already looking for an excuse to hurt us. Individual Jewish actions are projected onto the rest of us, and false stories that demonize us as a collective are used to justify anti-Jewish violence.
Letâs take a look at Hitlerâs case again. Though heâd already internalized antisemitic sentiments while in Vienna, it was the post-World War I stab-in-the-back myth that shifted his trajectory from that of a casual antisemite to the biggest mass murderer in all of Jewish history.
The stab-in-the-back myth was a conspiracy theory in post-World War I Germany that blamed German Jews for Germanyâs shocking defeat in World War I. The myth can be traced to Bruno Doehring, a Lutheran pastor who started speaking of âJewish betrayalâ nine months before Germanyâs surrender. The myth became central to Nazi ideology.
In reality, 75-80% of military age Jewish men fought valiantly for Germany in World War I, with some 12,000 losing their lives. Another 30,000 earned medals for their bravery.
ANTISEMITIC CONSPIRACIES THRIVE WHEN SOCIETAL PROBLEMS PEAK
Hitlerâs rapid descent from casual antisemite to genocidal happened in the context of Germanyâs shocking defeat during World War I, which had not only reportedly heavily shaken Hitler, but was followed by a period of severe social and political instability and economic distress. Thatâs because when people are suffering, they often look to a scapegoat for their problems.
Even before October 7th, violent antisemitic incidents were on the rise worldwide. Tensions surrounding Donald Trumpâs first presidential election, COVID, and racial injustice became the perfect breeding ground for the proliferation of antisemitic conspiracy theories. Much of the response to October 7th, particularly on social media, which then crossed over into real life, was the result of a steady stream of antisemitic and anti-Israel conspiracies and disinformation that had been fed to the public online for years. The celebrations that occured on October 8th did not happen in a vacuum.
THIS WAS HERSCHEL GRYNSZPANÂ
Herschel was born in 1921 in Hanover, Germany to Zindel and Rivka, two Polish Jews. In 1936, after unsuccessfully attempting to immigrate to the British Mandate, Herschel settled, illegally, in France.Â
In 1938, Poland passed a law denaturalizing all Polish Jews residing abroad; this included Herschelâs parents. In response, the Nazis arrested and deported all Polish Jews from Germany to Poland. Approximately 12,000 Jews, including Herschelâs parents and siblings, were deported, but Poland initially refused to admit them. They remained trapped at the German-Polish border.
"Then they took us in police trucks, in prisoners' lorries, about 20 men in each truck, and they took us to the railway station. The streets were full of people shouting: Out with the Jews! Off to Palestine!"
Testimony of Sendel Grynszpan at the Eichmann trial
A few days later, Herschel received a letter in Paris from his mother, stuck at the German-Polish border, in which she pleaded for help. Some days later, Herschel wrote a farewell card to his family and purchased a firearm. He walked into the German embassy, identifying himself as a German and claiming to have important intelligence, and assassinated a diplomat named Ernst vom Rath.
The Nazis used the assassination as the pretext for Kristallnacht, a pogrom that is widely regarded as the start of the Holocaust.
"In the afternoon the death of the German diplomat Rath is announced. Thatâs good...I brief Hitler on the affair. He decides: allow the demonstrations to go on. Withdraw the police. The Jews should feel the people's fury. Thatâs right. I issue appropriate instructions to the police and party. Then I give a brief speech on the subject to the Partyâs leadership. Thunderous applause. Everyone dashed to the telephone. Now the people will act."
The diary of Joseph Goebbels
THE ASSASSINATION REALLY HAPPENED. IT WASA ALSO AN EXCUSE
The assassination of Ernst Vom Rath really happened. A Jew really did kill him. But no serious historian today would blame Grynszpan for the anti-Jewish violence that proliferated across Germany and Austria in response.Â
Instead, most historians would agree that the Nazi Party weaponized the incident to create a societal permission structure for antisemitic violence. Indeed, Goebbels own private diaries suggest that the Nazis knew exactly what they were doing.Â
One could argue that Grynszpan was irresponsible or reckless; that what he did poured fuel on an already precarious situation for Germanyâs Jews. But he was not responsible for the subsequent murder of hundreds â maybe up to a thousand â Jews on Kristallnacht.
Responsibility for that lies with the perpetrators, including the Nazis and their collaborators, alone.
THIS WAS ALWAYS THE INTENTION
Hamas and its allies carried out October 7 with the full knowledge that Israelâs response would be unlike anything Gaza had ever experienced before.
In a 2022 internal memo, Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the attack, expected Israel to drop a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip.
In documents recovered by the Wall Street Journal, Sinwar wrote that the high Palestinian death toll was an asset to the Palestinian cause.
In an October 2023 program on Lebanese television, Ghazi Hamad of the Hamas political bureau confirmed that the sacrifice of Palestinian civilians is part of their war strategy.
Hamas knew that a high death toll would create a permission structure for anti-Israel animus around the world â or worse. As we know by now, the line between anti-Israel animus and anti-Jewish animus appears to be nonexistent.
WHAT'S ISRAEL'S ROLE IN ALL THIS?
One could argue that the way that Israel has responded since October 7th has, like Grynszpanâs actions, been reckless, handing antisemites the perfect excuse on a platter. That could potentially be a valid argument.
But any sincere reading of that argument must take into account that the way that Israel is perceived does not exist in a vacuum. That perception is shaped not just by Israelâs actions alone but by pre-existing biases and a media and NGO ecosystem that is quick to condemn first and gather evidence later as it pertains to the Jewish state. Many of the so-called ârecklessâ actions on Israelâs part have not happened at all. But people believe that they have.
The track record is clear: from the media rushing to report claims that were later proven false to whistleblowers in just about every NGO claiming that there has been an urgency to condemn Israel, oftentimes before gathering evidence, the way Israel is understood is not limited to Israelâs real behavior, and those same forces that are eager to weaponize Israelâs actions as a permission structure for Jew-hate are also willing to lie about what Israelâs actions may or may not be.Â
To be clear, this does not mean every accusation against Israel is a lie. But it does mean that lies muddy perceptions about Israelâs actions and policies.
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Iâm so tired of this dishonest argument.
