An Antony Lerman talk

JVL foreword

On Sunday 2 October 2022 Anthony Lerman spoke to a JVL webinar organised by the JVL Education Group on the topic of his new book “Whatever Happened to Antisemitism?”

Here is the text of his presentation, divided into two parts: a summary of the argument of the book, and practical suggestions for resistance going forward.

A video of the talk will also be posted in due course, with other materials from the session, on our education page. Links will be added here when ready.

Antony Lerman:

When I started writing this book five years ago, I began by quoting a comment by Professor David Feldman made in a February 2017 lecture:

‘[My] starting point’, he said . . . ‘is our present confusion over what antisemitism is . . . When it comes to antisemitism many of us literally don’t know what we’re talking about and are happy to admit it. And as for the rest of us who think we do know what antisemitism is, we are congenitally unable to agree among ourselves.’

Of course, I could not know for certain whether, by the time the book appeared, the quote would still apply. But if I needed any independent validation of the continued relevance of David’s words—conclusions I had already myself reached at that time—it handily came to me five years on, in May, when I received Peter Beinart’s endorsement of my book:

‘The contemporary debate about antisemitism’, he wrote, ‘is both incoherent and appalling. It’s incoherent because there is no consensus definition about what antisemitism is.’

During these years there have been many attempts, from different political perspectives, to explain why this was the case, but also, and more often, to deny that there was any genuine confusion on the grounds that it was just the antisemitism ‘deniers’ who were confused—those who refused to accept the so-called internationally recognised International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which codifies ‘new antisemitism’ as antisemitic anti-Zionism. For the ‘working definition’s promoters, IHRA settled the matter once and for all. Nonetheless, a constant stream of controversies—most prominently the Labour antisemitism crisis—provided seemingly limitless material for continued, bitter argument. While some efforts to explain the confusion had much merit, most interventions were made by protagonists rushing to judgement on the basis of very little considered reflection on what had, or so often had not, occurred. I held the view that to fully understand what was going on it was necessary to take into account the wider historical and political context, and the longer view; and to bring to bear some new or neglected analytical approaches and experience to our understanding of where we are now. And this was what I aimed to do in my book.

I will first provide an overview of the book’s argument and conclusions, and then focus on some of my ideas that I think are of particular relevance for those looking for new ways to confront the ignorance, distortion, misrepresentation, exaggeration and manipulation around antisemitism that feeds anti-Palestinian racism and diverts attention from real antisemitism—a set of circumstances that make Jews more, not less, vulnerable.

Summary of argument and conclusions

In my book I show that over the last forty years, antisemitism has been redefined as ‘new antisemitism’, both when discussed in the public space and as a subject of academic study, though the redefinition has not been universally accepted. Central to that redefinition is the myth of the ‘collective Jew’, the resonant metaphor for Israel, defined as the Jewish state. Those responsible for the IHRA redefinition insist that it was a result of years of scholarly research and discussion. In fact, it was originally and fundamentally a political project, opportunistically planned and implemented, by a small group, behind closed doors—not an open-ended academic endeavour.

In tracing the development of the concept of ‘new antisemitism’—and the discourse used to disseminate it—I follow the course of discussion on antisemitism, Zionism and anti-Zionism using reports of conferences and seminars, quoting from relevant journals, magazines and newspapers, and focusing on the thinking of a few people whose teaching, writing and interventions in public debates were especially influential on the way that the ‘new antisemitism’ and ‘collective Jew’ discourses became dominant.

I begin by quoting data from polls showing widespread public confusion and ignorance about antisemitism and what the word means, and deep division over it among Jews. Disinformation in the media about alleged antisemitic incidents did not help. Also, Jewish defence bodies and representative organizations often exaggerated the degree to which antisemitism was a serious current danger, even when this conflicted with everyday experience.

I pay special attention to one particular area of confusion: the use and abuse of antisemitic stereotypes and tropes. This has been an important factor in some of the key controversial incidents of alleged and unproven antisemitism in recent years, especially in relation to Jeremy Corbyn. Everyone seems to think they know what a trope is, but this is far from the truth. Arguments over these incidents, most of which I judge to be devoid of antisemitism, continue to this day

Much of the confusion is closely linked to the question of the relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, which itself is central to one of the key themes of the book: interrogating the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’, said to be spread by anti-Israel left and Islamic groups whose opposition to the Jewish state was fuelled by antisemitism. For many Jewish observers this proved that anti-Zionism and antisemitism were one and the same.

I therefore examined how the idea developed from the 1970s, focusing first on the angry reaction among Jewish groups and Israel’s supporters to the adoption of UN General Assembly resolution 3379 which determined that ‘Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination’.  The collapse of communism in 1989 brought significant changes: for some, new freedoms and the end of state-sponsored antisemitism and restrictions on organised Jewish life; but also a resurgence of popular antisemitism generated by new groups ‘nostalgic’ for the fascist and Nazi traditions pre-1939. This brought a significant diminution in antisemitism for some, and a resurgence of it for others. Panic over that resurgence dissipated, but there was mounting alarm at alleged growing ‘new antisemitism’. So much so that by the turn of the century, ‘new antisemitism’ was well on the way to becoming the ‘orthodox’ understanding of antisemitism.

This did not come about through discussions alone. An institutional infrastructure developed, described by Dr Esther Romeyn in Patterns of Prejudice as the ‘(anti)-“new antisemitism” transnational field of racial governance’, which fleshed out and disseminated ‘new antisemitism’ theory. I map the entities populating this field: the Israeli government, pro-Israel advocacy groups, Zionist organisations, Jewish communal defence bodies, research institutes, university departments, think tanks, sympathetic governments and international governmental and non-governmental bodies and more. Of crucial importance was the Israeli government’s decision in 1988 to establish the Government Monitoring Forum on Antisemitism, with the aim of implementing a new policy, with the help of the Mossad, putting Israel at the head of international Jewish efforts to combat antisemitism, increasingly focused on alleged antisemitic criticism of Israel. The policy waxed and waned during the 1990s, as Oslo dominated Israel’s agenda, but by the turn of the century, most Jewish organizations worldwide, some previously somewhat sceptical, fell in line, and Israel engaged in exploiting the issue of antisemitism. more seriously.

The central tenet of ‘new antisemitism’—Israel as ‘the persecuted “collective Jew” among the nations’—though contested throughout the 1990s and beyond, ultimately became, through pressure from institutions, academics and activists, the main plank of the dominant discourse about antisemitism. But the key turning point was 9/11. Reports of an explosion of global antisemitism, said to be directed largely at Israel, led to ‘new antisemitism’ discourse becoming ever more dominant. Israel reacted by reconfiguring and upgrading the status of its institutions dealing with antisemitism at the governmental level in the early 2000s, and strengthened its developing world leadership role, determinedly weaponizing antisemitism to deflect criticism of its policies.

The scene is then set for a decisive step-change: the codification of ‘new antisemitism’ in the ‘working definition’ of antisemitism published on the website of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) in 2005. I already mentioned that this was the result of a political project. Participants invited to contribute to discussions had to be sympathetic to ‘new antisemitism’ analysis.

An informal, practical understanding of antisemitism had prevailed for decades among antisemitism researchers. But the heads of the Jewish groups driving the EUMC discussions insisted that there was a clamour for a new definition, without which ‘new antisemitism’ could not be successfully combated. There was no clamour and combatting antisemitism was not in crisis. Nonetheless, ‘New antisemitism’ theory radically broke the consensus. The EUMC working definition destroyed it completely.

Post-9/11 the growing new anti-antisemitism institutional infrastructure helped generate and amplify the moral panic. In a very significant move, Israel finally committed itself to full occupation of the leadership role in the fight against the ‘new antisemitism’. By the early 2010s, government and state institutions and agencies were contributing decisively to coordinating anti-antisemitism activity in many countries, further adding to the field of transnational racial governance.

Meanwhile, the EUMC ‘working definition’ had achieved significant international attention and approbation, but the organization’s successor, the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), distanced itself from the text. Under pressure from the major US Jewish organizations in particular, and backed by the Israeli government, it was reintroduced, with marginal changes, into the public domain by the IHRA in 2016. It was assiduously disseminated by IHRA officials, and the Jewish organizations, and quickly attracted very favourable international attention.

At this point, with IHRA providing Israel with unprecedented cover for its anti-Palestinian agenda, I deconstruct the narrative at the heart of the ‘working definition’: the notion of ‘Israel, the persecuted “collective Jew” among the nations’, which is both metaphor and concept. I expose this as a myth: a state cannot have the attributes of a human being.  Furthermore, by making it untouchable, the myth encourages deification of the state. From a Jewish religious point of view, this is also idolatrous. And it is antisemitic too, because the parallel reduces the ‘Jew’ to a singularity, implying that all Jews are the same. An obvious antisemitic trope. And finally, the concept is also blatantly racist in another sense: it completely erases the Palestinian minority from the Israeli reality.

I show that seeing Israel as the persecuted ‘collective Jew’ is reinforced by the attack by Jewish groups on human rights culture and organizations for being an alleged antisemitic conspiracy against the Jewish state. Moreover, I also demonstrate how Israel leverages its very favourable geopolitical situation, its status as probably the leading military and economic power in the region, its normalising of relations with many Arab states, and its fruitful relations with Russia, China and India, to secure acquiescence in the government’s portrayal of the state as under attack from viral antisemitic delegitimization.

I then discuss four other antisemitism-linked discourses that are also deployed to reinforce the ‘collective Jew’ myth.

• First, reference to acting against antisemitism as a ‘war’, even though you cannot fight a war against an abstract noun. I argue that it is not enough to defend its use because it is ‘only’ a metaphor; it dangerously raises unrealistic expectations as to what can be achieved. Moreover, the use of the word reveals much about the problematic nature of anti-antisemitism activity. As I go on to demonstrate, even the generals waging the war acknowledge that it is not being won, yet they get away with portraying failure as success by in effect saying there is no alternative.
• Second, the use of medical analogies—antisemitism as a virus. Such analogies rarely come with proposed cures, and they turn antisemites, for whom antisemitism is a choice, into unwitting victims.
• Third, the insistence that nothing less than the ‘eradication’, ‘elimination’, or ‘rooting out’ of antisemitism are acceptable strategies for dealing with the problem. We may of course yearn for ‘the end of antisemitism’, but, like any racism, its eradication is impossible. But constantly demanding it serves the interests of anti-new antisemitism warriors because it sanctions the continuity of complaint, which acts as a permanent barrier to the attainment of justice for the Palestinians.
• Finally, apocalypticism: repeated prophesies of antisemitic Armageddon.  The prophets of antisemitic doom—journalists, activists and academics alike—see all Jews as vulnerable, but most serious is the alleged ever-present threat of annihilation of Israel by hostile Islamic forces. Belief sustains this narrative, not evidence. So it matters not if it doesn’t happen. And if the apocalyptic claims are questioned, it’s the questioner who comes under suspicion for ‘downplaying’ antisemitism.

The book starts with confronting confusion and ends with the stark reality of its consequences. Anti-Zionism—a form of legitimate political discourse and belief—has been conflated with antisemitism—a form of racial hostility and hatred. This equation, labelled ‘new antisemitism’, which targets the ‘collective Jew’—a bogus metaphor and concept—was codified in the form of the IHRA ‘working definition’ of antisemitism, with the result that antisemitism has been redefined to be what it is not. Redefinition has resulted in the production of a racist charter actively applied against the Palestinians, based on the prohibition of freedom of speech. And I could find nothing to say in my conclusion that offered any serious evidence of imminent change in this dire situation.

Practical resistance

Yes, it’s a pessimistic book. But I also conclude that ‘resistance is not just an option, but a necessity’. And my contribution to that resistance is to be brutally honest about how we got to where we are now. Without that, it’s hard to see a way forward.

It’s clear from my book that the two overarching areas of my concerns are:

1. The institutional infrastructure: the (anti)-‘new antisemitism’ transnational field of racial governance
2. New antisemitism discourse, but especially around the notion of the collective Jew and how its various iterations serve as a shield protecting Israel from criticism.

Ideally, I would be advocating the dismantling of both. But as far as the first is concerned, achieving its demise is obviously a pipe dream. However, it should be remembered that there are institutions, apart from our own dissenting networks, that set themselves apart from the ‘(anti)-“new antisemitism” transnational field of racial governance’ and can be allies in countering its influence. They represent a counter narrative of great weight. But as we know, the ‘hot mess’ of antisemitism discussion is by no means just confined to political groups. The academy is tearing itself apart over antisemitism. The preponderance of research bodies focusing on current antisemitism are aligned with and disseminate work suffused with new antisemitism thinking. And there is nothing genteel about their work. So it is not just good scholarship that’s needed, it’s scholarship that isn’t serving the corrupting agenda of the government of Israel. A research institute or think tank devoted to truth telling on antisemitism and exposing anti-Palestinian racism disguised as objective research, within a broad anti-racist context would not go amiss. But bodies like JVL clearly do not have access to resources to create such an institution.

Dismantling and replacing the narrative is, in my view, a different matter.

What I have learnt from writing this book is just how powerful words are in setting the agenda and controlling the narrative. Occupy that space and your opponents are always playing catchup.

Dismantling the narrative, the discourse propping up new antisemitism, is certainly possible. That does not just mean subjecting it to searching critique. It’s necessary, but what has to result from it is a good news story conveying a positive outcome for all from the river to the sea and in affected ethnic, religious and cultural communities worldwide: which can cover far more than just Jews, Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians. The ‘new antisemitism’ story is irredeemably negative, dispiriting, uninspiring. One of the sources of the ‘collective Jew’ metaphor is the lachrymose view of Jewish history which argues that Jewish historic evolution is largely characterised as the constant repetition of Jewish sufferings. This is not historically accurate. It offers no hope. And worshiping the Jewish state as the corrective to that condition is sterile.

Pro-Palestinian Jews experience abuse and demonisation. But that does not mean that dismantling the ‘collective Jew’ notion and crafting a positive narrative requires demonisation of the state of Israel, however aggrieved by the actions of the state anyone might justifiably be. What Israeli governments do can be truly horrific, but it should not be seen as exceptional. States do these things. It’s appallingly normal. I suggest we need to normalise discourse about Israel, not exceptionalise it. The Israelis are past masters at exceptionalising their situation. A normal state can be expected to follow rules, not break them. A normal state is a state of all its citizens.

Another area of vulnerability in the new antisemitism regime that my book reveals is the failing nature of the strategy of those leading the effort to combat antisemitism. And we know they are failing, by their own admission. Their antisemitism reports consistently show antisemitism getting worse. They will hardly ever criticise those prophesying an imminent apocalypse. They stand before parliamentary select committees, US congressional hearings and UN committees and speak of the existential dangers posed by current antisemitism. And since they, and the politicians they are addressing, will be satisfied with nothing less than complete eradication of antisemitism, while at the same time speaking of it as an incurable disease, for anyone who is really listening, they are in a double bind. But as they are the main voices being listened to and are seen as the experts, what they are confronting is seen to be beyond anyone’s control. The politicians are rarely presented with any alternative leadership in the fight against antisemitism. This cosy self-reinforcing reality is ripe for exposure.

Seen to have moral authority—for example by operating under the aegis of organizations like the IHRA—you find remarkably little by way of searching critique of the leadership of those claiming they are waging a war on antisemitism. And quite often, those of us who do criticise feel obliged to preface our criticisms with acknowledgement of just how serious is the problem of antisemitism today in order to get a hearing in the public space, even though we know how exaggerated it can be. And by doing this we unwittingly contribute to the kind of hierarchy of racism revealed in the Forde report. I found a highly original and very effective method for critiquing ‘anti-antisemitism’ in the work of the Columbia University professor Gil Anidjar, who wants to see himself as a warrior in this war but is deeply troubled by the ‘nearly complete lack of public self-reflection on the part of the thinkers, writers, militants and leaders of WAS’.  Crucially, if the war is a political and social movement, Anidjar expects that its leaders would ‘vocally proclaim [its] affinity with, its centrality in the spread of democracy and freedom . . . [its] tend[ency] towards realising equality [or towards] crystallising privilege’—but he leaves the matter hanging in the air. Nonetheless, the answer is easy to come by. Statements by the ‘war’s’ leaders are replete with such proclamations, and yet the evidence suggests precisely the opposite. The ‘war’s’ principal victims are the Palestinians—denied democracy, freedom and equality.

The so-called ‘war’ on antisemitism is essentially an elite enterprise, dominated by governing structures and official bodies. It is not a social movement. There are no grassroots clamouring or mobilising for action. Its leaders expect to address and influence establishments, security forces, governments. They are accountable to no one. The ‘war’s sources of funding are not transparent. It relies on the fact that ‘Jews do count’.

With this, I’ve now offered some building blocks for an alternative discourse or narrative as one basis for confronting the false antisemitism narrative of which the IHRA WD is seminally emblematic.

One final point. So much comes down to the equation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism—like the myth of the ‘collective Jew’, a core assertion of ‘new antisemitism’. The notion is historically and politically without foundation. However, many of us who unfailingly point this out nonetheless often acknowledge that the issue is that anti-Zionism can cross a point on a continuum and merge with antisemitism, and the issue is therefore determining where that point is. For many years I subscribed to this idea. But in my reflections on this as I was writing my book, I came to the conclusion that this is false.

The implication seems to be that full-blown antisemitism and full-blown anti-Zionism are at the two ends of this continuum, as if there is some organic relationship between the two things. There isn’t. The two are completely different phenomena, and we cede far too much to the anti-antisemitism forces maintaining the idea that this continuum exists.

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I hope you find my explanation for the ‘hot mess’ Beinart refers to plausible and the ideas for deploying some of my conclusions to craft a new narrative that dismantles ‘new antisemitism’ useful—a term we need to cancel and which even its promoters rarely use these days, not because they have abandoned it, but rather because it has so successfully become the default understanding of antisemitism, there is no need to use the word’ new’. It’s the only antisemitism most Jews now recognise. There is a great deal more food for thought in my book, so, if you haven’t yet, I end by urging you to read it.