THE EXPRESSION
Antisemitism, an old saying goes, is the canary in the coal mine. The implication is that, when antisemitism is rising in a society, this is a telltale sign that said society is in decline. In many cases throughout history, this has very much been true. For example, the Nazis rose to power -- and later led their country into a suicidal war -- by mobilizing German society with inflammatory antisemitic rhetoric.
Nevertheless, I’ve always really hated the expression, not because it’s necessarily untrue, but because of the implication that what really makes antisemitism matter is that Jew-hatred eventually poisons everything and everyone else. I think antisemitism matters because Jews are human beings, and that should be enough for us to act decisively against it, not because antisemitism might, in the future, affect other groups of people.
Regardless, I do think that it’s important for people to understand why and how antisemitism eventually might affect them too.
ANTISEMITISM AS A SIGN OF SOCIETAL DECLINE
Which came first: the chicken or the egg? In other words, do societies decline because of antisemitism, or does antisemitism rise because societies are in decline? In my opinion, it’s a little bit of both.
First, it’s important to understand how antisemitism functions. Antisemitism is not only a bigotry, but a worldview that relies on conspiracies, scapegoating, and projection. When things are bad -- for instance, when a society is in disarray -- people need someone to blame. When a child went missing in the Middle Ages, who was at fault? Why, the Jews, of course. When as much as 30 to 60% of the European population died from the Black Death in the 14th century, who was to blame? The Jews. When Weimar Germany suffered from economic hardships, who else could be at fault but the Jews?
I personally noticed this phenomenon in real-time in 2020, following the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests. Instead of holding American police to account for their police brutality, very quickly, antisemites swept in with the “Deadly Exchange” conspiracy theory, which absurdly posits that it’s the Jewish state that is at fault for police brutality in the United States (as though American police brutality didn’t exist before 1948!). In this sense, it’s obvious that antisemitism rises when societies are in strife.
On the other hand, pre-existing antisemitism will poison everything in a society. White supremacists and Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups, for example, often recruit followers with antisemitic rhetoric, but their violence targets more than just Jews. It doesn’t take long for hostile antisemitic environments to become hostile to many other groups of people.
"FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE..."
Surely you’ve heard the famous Martin Niemöller poem: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”
It is, perhaps, the quotation most often associated with the Holocaust and the Nazi persecution of Jews and political dissidents. And while Pastor Niemöller certainly had a point, the question bears repeating: why must others be targeted alongside Jews for antisemitism to matter? Shouldn’t antisemitism matter simply because Jews are human beings deserving of fundamental human rights and dignity?
As it turns out, Niemöller never quite got the memo. In the early 1930s, he not only openly agreed with Nazi ideology, but he voted the Nazis into power. His change of heart came not because he atoned for his antisemitism, but because he disliked how the Nazi Party was meddling with the Lutheran Church, which led to his eventual arrest. Even worse: after the Allied victory, he opposed the de-Nazification of Germany because he thought that it would “do more harm than good.”
In the end, it seems, for Niemöller, antisemitism only mattered when it affected him personally.
"FIRST THE SATURDAY PEOPLE, THEN THE SUNDAY PEOPLE"
The proverb “min sallaf es-sabt lāqā el-ḥadd qiddāmūh” — “after Saturday comes Sunday”— is used in many Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon, to describe the treatment of Middle Eastern Jews and Christians. A popular variation is “first the Saturday people [Jews, who observe Shabbat on Saturday], then the Sunday people [Christians, who attend church on Sundays.” The idea is that what has been done to the Jews of the Middle East is now what is being done to Middle Eastern Christians.
The origins of the phrase, with this particular meaning, are contested, but some historians trace it back to the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine and claim that it was coined by the followers of the Nazi collaborator Palestinian leader Haj Amin Al-Husseini. The phrase has also been attributed to the pro-Zionist Maronite Christians in Lebanon in the 1930s and 1940s. After the British authorities passed the 1939 White Paper, which virtually banned all Jewish immigration to and land purchases in Palestine, some Palestinian Arab Christians reportedly worried that they would be marginalized next.
In the 1940s and 1950s, virtually 100% of the Jewish population of the Middle East — which once numbered at around a million — was expelled from their homes in a series of systematic expulsions and massacres.
Unfortunately, much as the proverb predicts, Middle Eastern Christians have suffered a similar fate. In 1900, Christians made up about 13% of the population of the Middle East. Today, Christians form only 4% of the Middle Eastern population.
Assyrian, Maronite, Coptic, and other Native Middle Eastern Christians have been driven out of their homes by Islamic fundamentalist violence, a recent example being the massacres and executions perpetrated by ISIS.
JIHADIST GROUPS
Like white supremacist groups, Islamist jihadist groups such as ISIS have historically used antisemitic rhetoric as a “gateway drug” for recruitment. For example, Damon Joseph, also known as Abdullah Ali Yusuf, was indicted by a federal court in late 2018 for providing material support to ISIS. After an investigation, it seems that Joseph had been radicalized within a matter of months, following his conversion to Islam. Joseph, however, had espoused antisemitic beliefs for years, and it seems that his pre-existing antisemitic worldview influenced his fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.
According to former CIA agent John Kiriakou, after the CIA captured Abu Zubaydah, who at the time was believed to be the number three in Al Qaeda, Abu Zubaydah said that he never hated America and only wanted to kill Jews and attack Israel.
Similarly, in his 2002 “Letter to the American People,” in which he “explained” the 9/11 attacks, Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden justified his terrorist acts on the basis that the United States is allied with Israel and Jews allegedly “control” the American government.
Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War, Jihadist groups have recruited lone wolf attackers in third countries by inciting against Israel.
Hezbollah, which was formed to fight Israel’s existence, has now taken the lives of Syrians, Lebanese, Iranians, and much more.
Antisemitism is closely linked to Islamist terrorism, even terrorism that doesn’t specifically target Jews, and it should be considered an international security threat.
WHITE SUPREMACY
Antisemitism is foundational to white supremacy, but it is not exclusive to white supremacy. White supremacy does not exist without antisemitism, but white supremacists don’t exclusively target Jews, and non-white supremacist ideologies can be antisemitic, too. In other words, all white supremacists are antisemitic, but not all antisemites are white supremacists, and white supremacists are bigoted toward many other groups of people, too.
Antisemitism plays a very specific function within white supremacy. White supremacists rely on antisemitism to (1) scapegoat, and (2) divide and conquer. For example, white supremacists believe that Jews are behind a supposed “white genocide,” aiming to replace white folks with Brown and Black folks. In other words, what starts with Jews doesn’t just end with Jews.
White supremacist groups often recruit online with antisemitic rhetoric, and many violent white supremacists were radicalized by consuming antisemitic content.
In the 1920s, the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan is tied directly to the 1913 lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish American. The KKK then went on to terrorize Black Americans.
DOMESTIC TERRORISM, MASS SHOOTINGS
Many domestic terrorists and mass shooters have been radicalized through antisemitic rhetoric, even if their violence eventually targeted other people. Some examples include Nikolas Cruz, who murdered 17 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students and employees in 2018, and the perpetrators of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people.
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