Philip Slayton’s latest book is Antisemitism: An Ancient Hatred in the Age of Identity Politics.
Graves vandalised with swastikas at the Jewish cemetery in Quatzenheim, close to the border with Germany in the Alsace region, on the day of nationwide marches against a rise in antisemitic attacks on Feb. 19, 2019.FREDERICK FLORIN/AFP/Getty Images
We live in an age of democracy – at least, some of us. We live in an age of populism, fertile ground for conspiracy theories. We live in an age of identity politics destroying common aspirations and pitting us one against the other. We live in an age when social media turbocharges the worst aspects of populism and identity politics.
Together, these features of our life today – democracy, populism, identity politics and social media – create the crucible of modern antisemitism.
Who is the antisemite? Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher and writer, gave a compelling answer in his book, Anti-Semite and Jew, written and published during the Holocaust. The antisemite, Sartre wrote, “considers himself an average man, modestly average, basically mediocre. … This man fears every kind of solitariness … he is the man of the crowd. … He has made himself an anti-Semite because that is something one cannot be alone.”
“There is a passionate pride among the mediocre, and anti-Semitism is an attempt to give value to mediocrity as such, to create an elite of the ordinary.”
The antisemite believes he gives value to his mediocrity by joining with others to hate Jews. By so doing, he is no longer alone. He is no longer impotent. He is transformed. He has joined the elite of the ordinary. Occasionally, the mediocre man is not just mediocre. He is deranged, perhaps a psychopath. He may murder. He may join with others to murder.
Democracy and its surrounds empower this elite of the ordinary. The distinguished German historian, Gotz Aly, reaches a startling conclusion in his book, Europe Against the Jews 1880-1945: “Well-intentioned educational policies and state-supported desires to lift the masses socially – both of which can be counted among twentieth-century Europe’s great triumphs – served to increase hatred. The same is also true of the best political ideas and those most deserving of continuation: democracy, liberty, popular participation, self-determination, and social equality.”
Well-intentioned educational policies, state-supported desires and the best political ideas, progressive as they may be, with the undisputable good consequences they often have, also serve to increase the sum total of hatred by giving power and a voice to those who hate. This is the great paradox and weakness, if not tragedy, of democracy.
Democracy is the best form of government for many reasons. Its attendant ideas – liberty, popular participation, self-determination and social equality – are much to be desired and cherished. But evil can flourish within democracy and feed off its attributes.
Distinct from democracy is populism. Its essence is not the basic democratic demand of “one man, one vote,” but rather a struggle against alleged ruling cliques. Populism pits a mythologized “the people” against imaginary traditional elites who, it is charged, rule only in their own interests.
Antisemitism easily fits within the populist narrative: Jews, some claim, are quintessential members of traditional elites – the elites of commerce, culture, academia, media – and care not a whit for those they control and exploit. The deep irony is that populists themselves, as Sartre points out, aspire to become an elite of their own. They seek to replace the elites that already exist. Sometimes they succeed.
Populists are attracted to conspiracy theories, and much antisemitism incorporates such theories. The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, proclaimed in 2021 by an international group of distinguished scholars, says: “What is particular in classic antisemitism is the idea that Jews are linked to the forces of evil. This stands at the core of many anti-Jewish fantasies, such as the idea of a Jewish conspiracy in which ‘the Jews’ possess hidden power that they use to promote their own collective agenda at the expense of other people.” Populists, with their bias against elites, real or imagined, are particularly attracted to anti-Jewish fantasies and the idea of a Jewish conspiracy.
Conspiracy theory is the particular province of Sartre’s mediocre men. He writes: “There are people who … do not want any acquired opinions; they want them to be innate. Since they are afraid of reasoning, they wish to lead the kind of life wherein reasoning and research play only a subordinate role, wherein one seeks only what he has already found.”
Karen Douglas, a social psychologist at the University of Kent, argues that people are attracted to conspiracy theories when important psychological needs are not being met. She identifies three such needs: the need for knowledge and certainty; the need to feel safe and secure when powerless and scared; and the need to feel unique.
Populism is closely tied to modern identity politics. Identity politics is the natural home of groups that consider themselves marginalized. Identity politics rejects universalism in favour of particularism, liberalism in favour of tribalism. It emphasizes individual cultural issues and ignores the complex nature of major problems, such as climate change, which cut across particular identities.
Identity politics turns its back upon traditional ideals that transcend group divides – the idea, for example, that skin colour doesn’t matter, an idea sometimes said, these days, to be a stalking horse for white privilege or supremacy. It repudiates universalist philosophical movements, including the concept of universal human rights. It narrows opportunities for agreement and tolerance. It drives us into our corners.
The rise of identity politics makes Jews more vulnerable in three ways. First, in an age of particularism, with society no longer held together by universal beliefs, with tolerance for others disappearing, and with groups competing for attention, it is more acceptable and common to criticize and attack anyone who does not share your identity, for that reason alone. Criticism and prejudice are simply politics as usual. And so, antisemitism seems more natural and acceptable, and flourishes more easily, than ever before.
Second, identity politics is exclusionary. It accentuates the idea of the Jew as the proverbial “Other.” Third, attempted assimilation into the broader community, a long-standing technique of Jewish minorities, is much more difficult in the age of identity politics. Meaningful broad communities that welcome others and ignore distinctions are dying rather than developing.
Mind you, assimilation of Jews into the broader community has always been a chimera. Stefan Zweig wrote in his beautiful book, The World of Yesterday, published in 1942 shortly after he and his wife died by suicide, that “for Jews, adaptation to the human or national environment in which they lived was not only a measure taken for their own protection, but also a deeply felt private need. Their desire for a homeland, for peace, repose and security, a place where they would not be strangers, impelled them to form a passionate attachment to the culture around them.”
This passionate attachment has seldom been reciprocated. Zweig was writing about Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century, before what he calls the “tragic downfall.” Sartre called assimilation “a dream.” The political theorist Hannah Arendt “wanted, above all, for her fellow Jews to abandon the delusion that a disavowal of their Jewishness or the goodwill of other peoples would somehow save them.” She called this delusion “worldlessness,” driven by a misplaced and shameful survival instinct that made Jews victims.
Populism and identity politics, two playgrounds for antisemitism, are turbocharged by social media. Social media has replaced personal contact. Perceptions about identity and attributes now come from unregulated posts, tropes and memes, not from interaction with real people.
The anthropologist Aomar Boum, in his 2013 book, Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco, observed that older Moroccans had intimate knowledge of Jews, or received such knowledge from their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, while younger Moroccans have never met a Jew and get their ideas about Jews solely from media.
A 2021 survey in Germany found that about half of the country’s citizens say they have never had any contact with Jews or Jewish life; their perceptions of Jewish life are predominantly shaped by political and historical events. A bizarre scheme called “Meet a Jew” was created in 2020 by the Central Council of Jews in Germany. It seeks to introduce Jews to non-Jewish people.
“It is really important to be visible to achieve the goal of normalcy, so Jewish people aren’t perceived as something unknown or foreign,” the project co-ordinator said.
What is to be done?
We must struggle against mindless populism and its attendant conspiracy theories. This may seem like a bromide. But the fight must be fought, although it will never be won.
We must reconsider identity politics. This will not be easy. Despite its evils, it has ethical and historic justifications that give it enormous traction and legitimacy. Who could deny, for example, the legitimacy of many of the grievances of women, racialized communities, Indigenous peoples and members of the LGBTQ community across the world? They were never properly protected by any concept of common humanity. Quite the contrary.
For so long, self-interest, privilege and prejudice cleverly hid behind a vague and superficial idea of common humanity. Realization of this explains, in part, the tenacious grip of identity politics. But the realization and the justification do not justify a wholesale and undiscriminating acceptance of identity politics that so often stands in the way of peace, reconciliation and understanding.
We must be on our guard against social media. Social media offers an easy and unprecedented platform for populists, conspiracy theorists and advocates of divisive identity politics. It has little or no editorial curation, despite the weak protestations of social-media bosses, the invocation by them of fatuous, self-invented “community guidelines,” “rules” and measures to “improve the user experience,” the self-righteous tut-tutting of academic and social commentators, the chest-thumping of confused politicians seeking an issue, and flailing ineffectual government hearings and attempts at regulation.
But we should be highly cautious about proposals for government regulation, direct or indirect, of social media. It is generally a bad idea to try to censor what some regard as wrong or offensive posts, or ban allegedly egregious individuals or organizations from participating in these platforms. Censorship by government is particularly dangerous, easily used by unscrupulous leaders in pursuit of an unsavoury agenda.
The price of freedom of expression, for being able to express your own views, is allowing a platform for the views of others, views that you may consider threatening, untrue or repellent. After all, these other people may regard your views the same way as you regard theirs.
So the correct response to misinformation is to give facts; the correct reply to a bad argument is a good argument. There are very few justifiable exceptions to freedom of expression on social media.
But what if the social-media depiction of Jews, the Jewish community, or Jewish affairs, is threatening, untrue or repellent? In the face of antisemitism, what should prevail, pleas for stringent regulation or appeals for freedom of expression? Most social-media antisemitism has lack of civility as its essence. Incivility is unpleasant, but seldom dangerous. Civility should not be enforced at the expense of freedom of expression. It is not the purpose of law to enforce civility; that is a job for civil society, using social pressure.
However, in some circumstances, lack of civility can incite violence, even mass violence. Then the calculus is different. Freedom of expression does not permit incitement to violence.
Finally, what of democracy, and of Sartre’s mediocre men who make up some of its citizenry? Despite democracy’s manifest flaws and dangers, we must embrace and protect it, for its virtues vastly outweigh its dangers. After all, what other form of government might we want?
As for the mediocre men who are antisemites, they will always be with us. We must watch them carefully.