Should we stop using the term ‘antisemitism’?
JVL Introduction
In a challenge to the current orthodoxy, the Israeli journal “Zion” has produced a special issue entitled “Antisemitism: Between Historical Concept and Public Discourse”.
In its lead article Jewish historian Prof David Engel argues that “antisemitism is an arbitrary, vague and flawed term used to refer to an overly broad array of historical, social and political phenomena from different eras and different places that aren’t necessarily all linked.”
At stake in this debate are some of the fundamental categories we use to describe major historical events. Do they obscure our understanding more than they enlighten us? Do they help or hinder our struggles together to oppose “race” hatred in the world today?
This article was originally published by Haaretz on Tue 29 Sep 2020. Read the original here.
Renowned Jewish Historian: Stop Using the Term ‘Antisemitism’
Professor David Engel insists events that occurred in different eras and different places aren’t necessarily connected
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Despite the efforts of some Zionists to redefine antisemitism to suit their political objectives, I’m with Havi Dreifuss on this one. Once you start dropping terms or political categories because their exact content changes though history, or because others wish to distort their meanings, where do you stop? If there is ever any cause for doubt, you have to do a bit of explanatory work, that is all.
I am not Jewish however I am sensitive to the increasing anti-Semitism that is supposed to exist in England but I have not experienced any actual anti-Semitism, Engels approach looks likely to reduce perceived anti-Semitism so even if it does not effect actual anti-Semitism it would seem to be a very worthwhile approach.
Anti Zionism is not Anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism should be against the law, and stamped on wherever it arises…as with all forms of racism. Zionism is a far right dogma that believes it is superior to others….
Why not ‘antisemitisms’ – different manifestations of prejudice or discrimination against Jews?
I find myself strongly drawn to Engel’s argument. The essential root of the word ‘antisemitism’ is conflicted in meaning before we consider anything else.
It has also always contained the seeds of counterproductive exclusivity/exceptionalism in an area that needs a recognition of commonalities.
Finally, the zionist lobby has now so distorted meaning for sectarian political purposes that the term has been badly damaged as a descriptor of anything.
I would suggest that it’s been commonly accepted in the social sciences (even before post-structuralism) that general concepts are all open to ‘deconstruction’, reducing them to fragments bounded by the vagaries of time and space, precariously linked together in the mind of an observer. However it is also the case that general concepts are unavoidably implicated in all historical and contemporary narratives of social life, by both participants and observers. There must therefore always be a critical attitude towards their deployment: not only their limitations in relation to time and space, but their ‘essentially contested’ nature means that their use requires political and ethical justification: there is no value-free position. However there can (and should) be interpretation and justification of general concepts that is supported by good well-researched evidence and by critical awareness of their inevitable limitations and the need to consider seriously their implications in relation to human well-being and social justice. So I’m not totally impressed by Engel’s (typically historian’s) commitment to detailed and careful study of phenomena, admirable though it is: I don’t think you can (or should) completely duck out of the ethical and political debate engendered by the use of general concepts such as anti-Semitism.
It is often pointed out that there is no such thing as a “semite” (semitic = a linguistic family of languages, not peoples, or nations, or races or co-religionists). It follows, that “antisemite”, too, must be of questionable definitional value. To lump the long, documented history of persecution of Jews into one category – is this not precisely the mirror image of the sort of conspiracy trope which is rightly condemned as a racist habit of thought? By accepting such a racist framing, does this not inevitably fuel such thinking in the very process of calling it out in such an unvariegated way? Professor Engel’s dissent from the consensus view offers much food for thought.
Keep it simple. Most people understand that antisemitism is anti Jewish racism. Calling anti Jewish racism something different or distinguishing between different forms it has taken over time serves little purpose. The same is true with regard to expanding it usage to include anti zionism.
All forms of racism are a social construct. That does not mean that they, and their effects are unreal. There is no scientific basis for “races”. That does not make discrimination, oppression and racist violence any less real for its victims.
All forms of racism develop and adopt different characteristics in speciifc historical and social conditions. But they also retain core features, not least in the form of their victims. Therefore the argument that there is no one undifferentiated form of antisemitism is a red herring. Furthermore the understanding of all racisms are in themselves contested in specific ways at different times. Crucially, as Zionism emerged as a response to antisemitism, the attempt to conflate anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel with antisemitism has taken on particular prominence since the late 1960s and particularly since the early 2000s. Similarly the attempt to read back modern antisemitism as an unbroken continuum with previous forms of Jew-hatred is also true of other forms of modern racism.
Nonetheless, none of this should lead us to dismiss the real threat of antisemitism today, not least in the era of Trump, the rising far right and growth of conspiracy theory. It is vital to understand the permanence and resilience of antisemitism as a reactionary ideology. Its perverse strength lies in its ability to offer an albeit fantastical, explanatory power of social, economic and systemic crisis and it constantly threatens to re-emerge in such conditions. In many ways, antisemitism has retained its original features from the latter part of the 19th century to a greater degree than other forms of racism that arose in the modern era.
It is also a weaponising ideology for the far right and fascists. It is a clear and present danger, and whilst analyses of its development, use and abuses are indeed important, it exists as a specific ideological form. We did not choose the name, any more than we chose the characteristics of “the Jew” that the antisemite ascribes to us. However, it describes a real form of social reaction and ideology. By reducing it simply to a set of discrete, specific phenomena or prejudices we ultimately obscure rather than reveal its social reality.
We obscure that reality at our peril. Here, now, more than any point since the end of WWII.
Rob, if as you claim, Zionism emerged as a response to antisemitism, why was Herzl. the founder. of Jewish Zionism, so friendly to the extreme antisemite Drumont. (who ranted that ‘the Jews should be circumcised – up to the neck’)? post 1933, Zionism has certainly benefited from antisemitism – a completely different matter.
Until 1945 most gentile Zionism was unashamedly antisemitic (Shaftesbury and most Christian Zionists of that era, Balfour, Ramsay MacDonald) and today’s extreme right still are (Bannon, Gorka etc)