Jewish Perceptions of Antisemitism in the European Union, 2018: A New Structural Look

This paper aims at providing a new systemic contribution to research about perceptions of antisemitism/Judeophobia by contemporary Jews in 12 European Union countries. The perspective – the viewpoint of the offended side – has been less prominent relatively in research literature on antisemitism. The data analysis demonstrates the potential power of Similarity Structure Analysis (SSA) as a better theoretical and empirical tool to describe and conceptualize the contents of chosen research issues. After a brief review of some methodological problems in the study of antisemitism, this paper will re-elaborate data first published in the report of the 2018 FRA study Experiences and Perceptions of Antisemitism – Second survey on Discrimination and Hate Crimes against Jews in the EU (FRA 2018a). Topics include the perceived importance of antisemitism as a societal issue, the contents of anti-Jewish prejudice and discrimination, channels of transmission, perpetrators of offenses, regional differences within Europe, and the role of antisemitism perceptions as a component of Jewish identification. Special attention is paid to the distinction between cognitive and experiential perceptions of antisemitism, and to the typology of practical, populist, political, and narrative antisemitism.

Exnominated Anti-Semitism? Reframing the Paranoid Hate-speech of Spanish National-populism

The aim of this publication is to critically rethink Manfred Böcker’s classic notion of “Antisemitismus ohne Juden” (Böcker, M. 2000. Antisemitismus ohne Juden: Die zweite Republik, die antirepublikanische Rechte und die Juden. Spanien 1931 bis 1936. Berlin: Peter Lang) and to translate it within the contemporary context of the Spanish Nationalpopulismus (Hirschmann, K. 2017. Der Aufstieg des Nationalpopulismus. Wie westliche Gesellschaften polarisiert werden. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung; Wilp, M. 2019. “Konfrontation statt Konsens: Der Aufschwung des Nationalpopulismus in den Niederlanden: Die politische Auseinandersetzung um Migration und Integration.” In Rechtspopulismus in Einwanderungsgesellschaften, edited by H. U. Brinkmann, and I. Panreck, 187–215. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften) represented by the radical party Vox España. The existence of a formula of “Anti-Semitism without Jews and without Anti-Semites” (Botsch, G., and C. Kopke. 2016. “Antisemitismus ohne Antisemiten?” In Wut, Verachtung, Abwertung Rechtspopulismus in Deutschland, edited by R. Melzer, D. Molthagen, A. Zick, and B. Küpper, 178–194. Berlin: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung; Wodak, R. 2018. “The Radical Right and Antisemitism.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right, edited by J. Rydgren, 1–33. Oxford: Oxford Handbooks Online) seems to acquire corporeity in the “Civil-War-like” lexical arsenals (Rivas Venegas, M. 2018. Propaganda activities of Willi Münzenberg in Support of the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. An Approximation to His Visual and Rhetorical Communication Strategies. Berlin: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung / Münzenberg Forum, 2019) of a party acutely connected to its Francoist past and to the paranoia of the “Francmason-Jewish-Bolshevist” conspiracy. This article aims to offer new perspectives on the study of national-populism via the parallel analysis of its “lexical arsenals” and visual-performative dispositives, what we here and in further publications identify as the messa in scena populista. It aims to fulfill the complex task of identifying the latent or indirect traces of Anti-Semitism in a party that chose the Muslim community as its preferred and most visible scapegoat, applied the tested political formula of the transnational nouvelle droite, yet never fully abandoned certain aspects of the Francoist and Spanish fascist worldview.

Miguel Serrano’s Antisemitism and its Impact on the Twenty-First-Century Countercultural Rightists

The Chilean writer Miguel Serrano (1917–2009) is one of the most important figures of the contemporary right-wing counterculture, standing next to figures such as Julius Evola and Savitri Devi. Accordingly, in the last two decades his antisemitic books have been published in places as disparate as Idaho, Rome, Bogota, Melbourne, and London. Likewise, diverse musicians have paid tribute to him, revealing that his influence goes beyond conventional far-right circles. This paper shows the impact of Serrano’s antisemitism on the twenty-first-century countercultural rightists, emphasizing both the local aspects –Latin American, Chilean– of his “Esoteric Hitlerism” and the global dimension of such an impact. This study argues that Serrano was essentially a Chilean right-wing intellectual who, by means of a noteworthy narrative and an irreducible activism, created an antisemitic oeuvre able to attract from Latin America a heterogeneous set of actors. In other words, Serrano shaped a local antisemitic appeal whose effects can be traced on a global scale today. This challenges some notions on Latin America as a mere receptacle of foreign anti-Jewish trends.

New Forms of Antisemitism, the Law, and the Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary France

Since 2012, hundreds of thousands of people mobilized and demonstrated against a French law that made both marriage and adoption possible for same-sex couples. In these demonstrations, seemingly heterogeneous groups and political traditions came together against those they saw as common enemies, namely Jews, LGBT people and feminists. Are these paradoxical alliances new? How have they transformed the public space and the imaginary of citizenship? The analysis of these activist repertoires shows that the ethos of anti-modernism, which has historically characterized reactionary groups, expressed itself through an obsessive focus and fear of the alleged undoing of gender, which is seen as emblematic of a post-modern society. Whether online or in demonstrations, a collection of political actors, ranging from the far-right to post-colonial second-generation groups, join forces in denouncing mass media, capitalism, and human rights, which they believe to be avatars of the decadence of their postmodern world. Their activism has reshaped the French political landscape.

Jews, Zionism and the Left in Brazil: Echoes of a Relationship

During considerable part of the twentieth century, the contacts between left-wing groups and the Jews in Brazil were relatively positive and amicable. In certain way, it could be found a kind of a symbiosis between sectors of the Jewish community and some groups of the Brazilian left. At present times, in contrast, any description of the interaction between Jewish organizations (especially Zionist ones) and Brazilian left-wing groups inevitably mentions political tensions and mutual accusations. In the last years suspicion, conflict, and a lack of dialogue have characterized the relations between a segments of the Brazilian Jewish population and some left-wing groups. This article intends to discuss and analyze the changes and processes through which the Brazilian Jews and some Left-wing Brazilian groups have passed.