I'm genuinely asking why.
No one that I know of has definitely proven what causes anti-semitism. We know that the history shows it is remarkably constant. Throughout the middle ages there were Jewish refugees in both Christian Europe and the Islamic world escaping antisemitism from the other region. Jews of course were marginalized in the pre Christian and pre islamic worlds too.
However, around the time of the French revolution, my understanding was that there was some hope amongst Jews that anti-semitism could be explained by specific religious doctrines and the anti-religious fervour of the french revolution might make antisemitism go away with it. Zionism - the view that there should be a Jewish majority nation in the middle east - started as a movement amongst Jews as a response to antisemitism amongst anti-Christian French revolutionaries. They basically concluded that the only place Jews could ever be safe is in a country that has a Jewish identity.
When it comes to explaining anti-semitism, I subscribe to the canary in the coalmine theory - that antisemitism is a symptom of disfunction in society. People scape goat Jews when there are deep problems in society. Jews are a visibile minority since they have visible markers (e.g. Yamaka's) which makes them easy to "other". They are also a difficult group to join (e.g. circumcision) which means it is rare for them not to be a minority which means when people are motivated to oppress them they often succeed. Third, they tend to be incredibly talented and successful which makes them the subject of a lot of conspiracy theories. Perhaps this unique combination of factors combined with human fallibility has made Jews vulnerable in every culture in the world
In recent times we have seen a spike of anti-semitism amongst the right when Trump got elected. The disfunction I would point to there would be the cult of personality around trump where no one on the right can question him without paying a social cost. That spike hasn't subsided
A much bigger spike happened amongst the left after oct 7 when a lot of political theories that were deeply popular with the elites were rejected as deeply unpopular with the general public (decolinization, transrights, viewing racism as a system rather than a prejudice etc). Now I am an academic, so its probably not terribly surprising that I find a lot of these ideas quite interesting and convincing. However, it is hard not to notice the level of disfunction in the political movement that came to become known as "woke".
All previous successful political actors on the left were pretty quickly marginalized amongst the Black lives matters movement - from the NAACP, to past civil rights leaders, to successful left wing political leaders- and replaced with activists who turned out to be grifters (Shaun King, the original BLM hashtag creators, Ibram Kendi). I think it was completely disfunctional for the left not to respect its political heros. So that was the first disfunction
second, the movement got very culty. I've grown up with labour policy trickling up from robust debates around bbqs and mutual respect. Any disagreement was seen as "right coded", "a dog whistle" and possibly even fascist. It is interesting to note that reduced policing in Black majority areas was the one policy area that had consensus support amongst "woke" activists but didn't manage to get majority support amongst African Americans. There are a lot of examples of this! The poor quality of policy came from lack of debate in my view. If you read academic "woke" literature like Beverly Tatum's work on racism as a system, you get much more sensible and nuanced discussion. So it wasn't the quality of thinkers available to the left it was the degree of cultiness making us stupid. Another disfunction
Third the movement argued that everything is politics. A very persausive argument going around the time would say "not being political is a privelege the marginalised don't have because their very existence is political". So everyone in elite circles felt a responsibility to make everything political, academics tried to make their work relate to politics, hollywood actors and movies had political messages non stop, same with journalists, coporate hr departments and ngos. The problem is the empirical claim that marganilised communities will be better off if we make everything political doesn't seem to be true. USA has always talked politics way more than Australia. Can anyone claim that marganilised communities are better off there? Politics tends to bring disfunction and disfunction tends to disproportionately affect vulnerable people. It is much better to have boundaries around politics - talk during election campaigns, particular sections of the news etc, rather than all the time. Again, disfunction
Fourth we worked with an internal contradiction. All institutions were argued to be colonialist, sexist, white supremicist. The problem is, these ideas were coming from the same institutions. So it ends up self defeating to undermined trust in institutions then trying to use those same institutions as an authority to push the ideas that undermined them. It's not clear how this was supposed to work as a political movement? We have seen a crash in trust in institutions, and what society functions without trust in institutions? Another disfunction
5th, the third problem of making everything political has made major elite institutions majorly partisan, so how are half the country supposed to trust elite insitutions when we talk about climate change, vaccines, birth rates, ai safety and the major challenges facing us that require deep scholarly thought but are a matter of public safety? Another deep disfunction. I would propose affirmative action for conservatives, though conservatives object to affirmative action as a policy so I'm not sure what to do. I think we need external intervention, since I have lost faith that we can self correct. In any case, there is no country that doesn't implement left wing values (equity, fairness, compassion etc) that is a single party state better than multiparty states. If that is true on the country level, why would it be different of institutions. Diversity of thought helps with the goals we care about when it comes to democracy, whereas one party states or institutions are disfunctional
The canary in a coal mine theory of antisemistism is that disfunction leads to scape goating Jews. In my view, after the growing backlash and public rejection of "woke" ideas. First Israel and then Zionist and then all Jews got scapegoated as the culmination of everything the elite class wanted to purge society of - racist, colonialist, nazi...I even saw an activist say opposing Israel is opposing climate change. With a mixture or truths, half truths, exaggerations and outright falsehoods, Israel and thenJews got associated to the worst crimes in Western history. Whenever people obsess over the Jews, the tendency is for regular folk to get into bonkers conspiracy theories about the Jews.
Once again we see this pattern predate oct 7 and rise after
Around 20 per cent of the British public believe Jews have outsized influence in world finance
www.thejc.com
Anti-Jewish prejudice isn’t a partisan divide—it’s a generational one.
www.theatlantic.com
The pattern seems to be in the canary in the coal mine theory of antisemitism disfunction-> scapegoating -> conspiracy theories propagating -> hate crimes -> pograms -> antisemitism comes for the rest of society
