Anti-Semitism: You've Come A Long Way, Baby

In The National Post, John Kay writes about the focus of Anti-Semitism has changed, from the Nazi paradigm of the Jew as "a piece of filth — a rogue pathogen within gentile society" to today. While the view still remains that

the Jew (or, to give the fig leaf its due, “the Jewish state”) is a scourge upon the world, everything has changed. The Jew is no longer diseased and wretched. Just the opposite: He is an omnipotent, teched up superman, murdering a defenseless Palestinian child from above.

John Kay describes 3 factors that have led to this necessary adaptation by Anti-Semites:

The first is ideology: When the Nazis went down to defeat, they took with them the intellectual basis of “germ-theory” anti-Semitism — the toxic notion that certain races or groups are genetically inferior or parasitical. In our era, to compare Jews to leeches is to announce oneself as a bigoted creature from society’s discredited fringe.

The second reason is tied up with the history of Israel itself: After the Jews established their own state in 1948, it became impossible to typecast them as mere parasites contaminating foreign hosts. This was especially true after the Six-Day War of 1967, in which Israel scored a crushing military victory against Egypt, Jordan and Syria — not the sort of maneuver you’d expect from typhus-stricken old men.

The third reason is political: The leaders who find anti-Semitism useful today aren’t extreme nationalists such as Hitler, Stalin or Mussolini (though Hugo Chavez admittedly has been wandering into that territory). Instead, they are radical Muslims — and their allies in Western activist groups, who speak the tropes of anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, anti-Americanism, anti-racism and all the other fashionable antis. In this left-wing intellectual climate, disparaging any race or religion per se is off limits. The preferred tactic is to disparage the allegedly colonial, imperialist, racist etc. nature of their actions.

As part of this adaptation of Anti-Semitism, the main source no longer comes from the right--but rather from the left:

These days, the hatemongers targeting Jews’ right to live peacefully spout the mantras of “social justice” and “peace studies,” not racial purity...

It also must be admitted that the anti-Semitism of today is a lot more subtle than the old-fashioned variety: Except in clear cases of blood libel such as the IAH poster, it’s often hard to tell where legitimate criticism of Israel ends and Jew-hatred begins. As a result, Jews themselves — middle-aged university professors and career feminists, most typically — are often drawn into radicalized campaigns against Israel, and sometimes even can be seen marching gullibly arm-in-arm with Kafiyeh-clad protestors chanting for Jewish blood in Arabic.

This change has made addressing Anti-Semitism that much harder:

Vilifying Nazis is easy. Taking on politically correct Muslims and campus lefties on parade is hard. Anti-Semitism thrives when lazy people look the other way. That much, at least, hasn’t changed.

Kay leaves out pseudo- scholars and diplomats--but his point is well taken.

Read the whole thing.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

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