So what's new? Rethinking the ‘new antisemitism’ in a global age

ABSTRACT

Judaken discusses the various strands that constitute the so-called ‘new antisemitism’. He argues that this is not the first time a new crisis of antisemitism has been heralded. Indeed, in the wake of every major struggle in the Arab-Israeli conflict since the Six Day War, prominent scholars and advocates have sounded the alarm about a crisis resulting from the rise of what they designated a ‘new antisemitism’. Moreover, what writers point to as the vectors of the new antisemitism—Holocaust denial, the antisemitism of the extreme left, antisemitism in the Islamic world, anti-Zionism as antisemitism, even anti-racism as antisemitism—all have a fairly long history. What has changed are the role of information technologies and the geo-global context in which they function. These technologies have both facilitated the global dissemination of antisemitism as well as furnishing new means of combatting it. At bottom, this electronic warfare is both a symptom and a cause of the global forces at work in antisemitism today. After delineating the constellation of factors in the rise of global antisemitism post-September 2000, Judaken then draws on the work of Léon Poliakov, Judith Butler, Jean-Paul Sartre and the Frankfurt School, among others, to assess what Pierre-André Taguieff most aptly calls the ‘new Judaeophobia’.     

The logic of anti-Zionism: Soviet elites in the aftermath of the Six-Day War

Despite the opening of Soviet archives, and the surge in scholarly interest in anti-Zionism, scholars have not used declassified archive documents to shed new light on Soviet anti-Zionism in the wake of the Six-Day War. Based on such documents, Gjerde’s article challenges a view of post-1967 Soviet anti-Zionism that has been prevalent since it emerged during the Cold War: that it represented a ‘disguised’ form of antisemitism that Soviet leaders used as a political tool. To the contrary, Gjerde argues, the archive documents suggest Soviet anti-Zionism was more than a propaganda invention. Within higher Soviet echelons, a particular logic existed that fostered a view of ‘Zionism’ as an immense, conspiratorial threat to the Soviet Union. In one sense, this logic grew out of a more general tendency to view nonconformity as conspiracy: the Soviets had established extremely narrow boundaries for what constituted acceptable Jewish identity; and, when some Soviet Jews began to voice nationalist sentiments after the Six-Day War, Soviet leaders saw this expression of nonconformity as essentially a hostile act, warranting severe counter-measures. This is not to say Soviet anti-Zionism was not antisemitic but rather that to explain it merely as a propaganda tool is to ignore much of the complexity of its emergence.     

The image of the Jews in Hungarian public opinion

ABSTRACT

Nowhere has the debate about a ‘new antisemitism’ been as fierce and relevant as in France. In recent years this country has witnessed high recorded levels of antisemitism, prompting many commentators to claim the existence of an anti-sémitisme nouveau. Something has indeed changed, at least in terms of the nature, frequency and perpetrators of antisemitic violence in France. Previously connected exclusively to the extreme right, it has now also become associated with a group that is itself a victim of discrimination: ethnic minority youths living in the poor suburbs (banlieues). Peace first discusses and explains the statistics produced by the French watchdog on racism and antisemitism as well as the effects of the Middle East conflict. He then traces the debate on this ‘new antisemitism’ in the French context, contrasting the views of the label's promoters and opponents. He argues that, while antisemitism has undoubtedly evolved, the ‘new’ label is effectively erroneous as it fuses supposedly leftist and ‘Muslim’ antisemitism into one entity when they are not necessarily linked. In addition, he offers vital clarification of the distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism along with suggestions for further research.     

Fighting with phantoms: a contribution to the debate on antisemitism in Europe

ABSTRACT

The point of departure of this paper is the polarization of ways of thinking about antisemitism in Europe, between those who see its recent resurgence and those that affirm its empirical marginalization and normative delegitimation. The historical question raised by this polarization of discourses is this: what has happened to the antisemitism that once haunted Europe? Both the current camps—‘alarmists’ and ‘deniers’, as they are sometimes known, or, perhaps more accurately, new antisemitism theorists and their critics—have the strength to challenge celebratory views of European civilization. One camp sees the return to Europe of an old antisemitism in a new and mediated guise. The other sees the return to Europe of a rhetoric of antisemitism that is not only anachronistic but also delusory and deceptive. Overshadowing this debate is the memory of the Holocaust and the continuing presence of the Israel–Palestine conflict. The aim of this paper is to get inside these discourses and deconstruct the dualism that generates homogenizing and stigmatizing typifications on either side. The spirit of Hannah Arendt hovers over this work and the question of the meaning of her legacy runs through the text.     

The limits of analogy: comparing Islamophobia and antisemitism

ABSTRACT

The predicament faced by Muslims today, either in the United Kingdom specifically or in the West more generally, is often compared with the predicament faced by Jews at some point in the past. Muslims, it is suggested, are the new Jews. Klug's article homes in on one element in this view, the claim that Islamophobia is the new antisemitism, and considers the analogy between them. An introductory section sketches the political context, after which Klug focuses on logical or conceptual issues. The two middle sections contain the core of the analysis: consideration of the two terms ‘antisemitism’ and ‘Islamophobia’ in relation to the concepts they denote, followed by an examination of the concepts as such. Certain conclusions are drawn about both their general logic and their specific logics. The final section returns to the political context and, via critique of a thesis put forward by Matti Bunzl, discusses the uses of the analogy. Klug argues that the question we need to ask is not ‘Are Islamophobia and antisemitism analogous?’ but ‘What is the analogy worth?’ The value of the analogy lies in the light it sheds on the social and political realities that confront us in the here and now. Does it illuminate more than it obscures? These things are a matter of judgement. Klug leans towards asserting an analogy between antisemitism in the past and Islamophobia in the present, within limits.     

Reviews

Book reviews: Robinson, Cedric J., Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (reviewed by Frederick Knight); Robinson, Cedric J., Black Movements in America (reviewed by Frederick Knight)     

China–Japan interaction in the Middle East: a battleground of Japan's remilitarization

As most studies on Middle East–East Asian relations focus on the interregional dimension, the manner in which relations between East Asian powers influence, and are influenced by, their policies in the Middle East are largely overlooked. Attempting to add another layer to the study of Sino-Japanese relations, this article explores whether Sino-Japanese rivalry extends to the Middle East. This undertaking requires a conceptual distinction between measures related to Sino-Japanese competition in the Middle East and measures which are related to their rivalry. Building on a minimal definition of interstate rivalry, the article argues that neither the effort to secure energy supply nor their economic or political competition there is shaped by their rivalry. The only field that can be associated with that rivalry is Japan's quasi-military activity in the Middle East, which may enhance its security policy's revision. That, in turn, causes much concern and criticism in Beijing, thus assigning the region a certain role in their relations.     

Holocaust inversion,anti-Zionism and British neo-fascism: the Israel–Palestine conflict and the extreme right in post-war Britain

ABSTRACT

The British extreme right has always struggled to distance itself from the crimes of the Third Reich, not helped by the high level of Holocaust consciousness in Britain and by the importance of antisemitic conspiracy theory to British neo-fascist ideology. Bland’s article charts attempts by British neo-fascist actors to use Holocaust inversion and—by extension—anti-Zionism as a mask for their Nazi sympathies. It shall, first of all, demonstrate how the Israel–Palestine conflict was incorporated into British neo-fascist antisemitic discourse in the 1960s. It shall then use the 1980s National Front as a case study, to illustrate the manner in which the extreme right can use anti-Zionist activism as a tactic aimed at legitimizing its politics and gaining new supporters. The article therefore contributes to the historiographies of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in Britain, as well as to scholarly understandings of neo-fascism.     

The groupuscularization of neo-Nazism in Germany: the case of the Aktionsbüro Norddeutschland

Since the beginning of the 1990s, in the aftermath of a series of brutal attacks on foreigners and asylum-seekers, seventeen neo-Nazi organizations have been banned in Germany. In addition, public events such as the yearly marches in honour of Rudolf Hess have been prohibited. It is for this reason that some members of the neo-Nazi movement have turned to the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (National Democratic Party of Germany), which, under a new leadership, has opened its ranks to neo-Nazi skinheads. Another part of the violent far right has developed new organizational modes of operation, without central, rigid or formal structures. Small, locally based groups—the so-called freie Kameradschaften (free fellowships) have been set up and are operating mainly at a local or regional level. Co-operation between them is ­guaranteed by regular meetings and by longstanding contacts between their leaders. If the freie Kameradschaften are analysed as a social movement, one can identify numerous groupuscules within the German neo-Nazi scene that contribute, each in its own specific way, to its continuity, development and diversification. One of the more relevant of these groupuscules is the Aktionsbüro Norddeutschland (Northern Germany Action Bureau), whose ideology is openly neo-Nazi. Its main field of activity is its Internet website, from which it appeals to its supporters to take part in neo-Nazi demonstrations and virtually organized campaigns.     

‘The battlefield is in Brussels’: Islamophobia in the Visegrád Four in its global context

ABSTRACT

A common popular and scholarly opinion of Islamophobia in the so-called ‘Visegrád Four’ or ‘V4’ (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) sees it as caused by circumstances unique to Eastern Europe. Specifically to blame, it is alleged, is a distinctive local history of intolerance, especially antisemitism, and the fact that under socialism these countries were exempt from the post-war soul-searching that took place in Western Europe. Kalmar’s paper, instead, decentres Islamophobia in the V4 by considering it less as a limited regional phenomenon, and more in terms of how it is linked to Islamophobia in other European Union member states and the United States. As elsewhere, foremost among the conditions that encourage Islamophobia in the V4 is the alienation of certain publics on the periphery, which is an effect of global neoliberal policies. These have generated, along with Islamism and Islamophobia, a reinvented, essentializing discourse of difference between Eastern and Western Europe. In spite of that alleged difference, however, Islamophobic populism in the V4 is not just a regional threat to liberal democracy, but targets all of the European Union and the world.     

The IHRA Definition of Antisemitism: Defining Antisemitism by Erasing Palestinians

The IHRA definition is one of the most contentious documents in the history of efforts to combat antisemitism. Although it first became well known in the UK as a result of disputes within the Labour Party, the definition reaches well beyond that context, and has been adopted by universities, city councils, and governments. With its intensive focus on the critique of Israel as a marker of antisemitism, the IHRA definition has been heavily implicated in the suppression of Israel-critical speech in recent years. This article is among the first to adopt a global perspective on the definition—both its history and its content—clarifying the political stakes of this definition and broader paratextual apparatus for a general audience, and provides an explanation of why it should be rejected rather than used to censor Israel-critical speech.     

Shifting borders: Islamophobia as common ground for building pan-European right-wing unity

ABSTRACT

In recent years, Islamophobia has become a useful tool for right-wing parties to mobilize electors in many European nation-states. The general xenophobic campaigns of the 1980s have given way to Islamophobia as a specific expression of racism. It is not only the new incarnations of right-wing populist parties that are making use of Islamophobic populism, but also right-wing extremist parties, whose traditions hark back to fascist or Nazi parties. This development appears unsurprising, as Islamophobia has somehow become a kind of ‘accepted racism’, found not only on the margins of European societies but also at the centre. Another interesting concomitant shift is the attempt by such parties to gain wider acceptance in mainstream societies by distancing themselves from a former antisemitic profile. While the main focus on an exclusive identity politics in the frame of nation-states previously divided the far right and complicated transnational cooperation, a shared Islamophobia has the potential to be a common ground for strengthening the transnational links of right-wing parties. This shift from antisemitism to Islamophobia goes beyond European borders and enables Europe's far right to connect to Israeli parties and the far right in the United States. Hafez's article explores this thesis by analysing the European Alliance for Freedom, a pan-European alliance of far-right members of the European parliament that has brought various formerly antagonistic parties together through a common anti-Muslim programme, and is trying to become a formal European parliamentary fraction in the wake of its victory in the European elections in May 2014.     

Carbon democracy

Abstract

States that depend upon oil revenues appear to be less democratic than other states. Yet oil presents a much larger problem for democracy: faced with the threats of oil depletion and catastrophic climate change, the democratic machineries that emerged to govern the age of carbon energy seem to be unable to address the processes that may end it. This article explores these multiple dimensions of carbon democracy, by examining the intersecting histories of coal, oil and democracy in the twentieth century. Following closely the methods by which fossil fuels were produced, distributed and converted into other forms of socio-technical organization, financial circulation and political power, the article traces ways in which the concentration and control of energy flows could open up democratic possibilities or close them down; how connections were engineered in the post-war period between the flow of oil and the flows of international finance, on which democratic stability was thought to depend; how these same circulations made possible the emergence of the economy and its unlimited growth as the main object of democratic politics; and how the relations among forms of energy, finance, economic knowledge, democracy and violence were transformed in the 1967–74 oil–dollar Middle East crises.     

What Can Pro-Democracy Activists in Arab Countries Expect from the European Union? Lessons from the Union's Relations with Israel

In this article, we analyze the European Union's (EU) approach to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, showing that there is a wide gap between its normative opposition to the occupation, Israel's expanding settlement project, and the EU's foreign trade policy. Our argument is not only that there is no evidence of norm diffusion from the EU to Israel, but that within the EU itself there is no diffusion from the normative political stance to the EU's economic interests. The Israeli case suggests that the pro-democracy activists of Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria should be aware that the trade interests of the EU Member States will ultimately trump the EU's political declarations.     

Beyond the ‘Auschwitz syndrome’: Holocaust historiography after the Cold War

ABSTRACT

The end of the Cold war has seen an explosion in Holocaust history, and some significant changes in the main historiographical explanations. The ‘return of ideology’ that began displacing the ‘functionalist’ or ‘structuralist’ dominance of the 1980s remains strong. But it is being supplemented by very detailed regional and local studies, by analyses of different experiences of ghettoization in different places, and by a focus on the widespread plunder and corruption that accompanied the killing process. This enormous attention to detail reveals that the Holocaust unfolded differently in different places; but it also demonstrates the existence of an overall framework in which all the operations took place, what we might call an ‘antisemitic consensus’. Simultaneously, historians have broadened the discussion of the Holocaust, situating it into a transnational or world-historical context of imperialism and colonialism. Stone outlines in broad brush some of these themes, and asks what effects they have had and will continue to have on Europeans' self-understanding in an age in which the post-war anti-fascist consensus has been dismantled while Holocaust-consciousness is officially enshrined into European identity.     

Europe,the Final Solution and the dynamics of intent

ABSTRACT

The scale and scope of the ‘final solution’ of the ‘Jewish question’ were extreme even in the horrific annals of genocide. Bloxham attempts to shed light on the pattern of mass murder in its expansion and contraction by viewing the Holocaust in a set of temporally and culturally specific contexts. It places the Holocaust into a broader European framework of violent ethnopolitics and geopolitics from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. The Holocaust is depicted as an only partially discrete part of a continental process of traumatic flux, and a part, furthermore, that can itself be partially disaggregated into national and regional components. Bloxham moves from a general consideration of patterns of ethnic violence in the period to a closer causal explanation that shows the different valences of Nazi policy towards Jews in the lands directly ruled by Germany and those of Germany's allies respectively. He shows that the peculiarly extensive ambitions of the ‘final solution’ at its most expansive can only be explained when wider geopolitical and strategic contextual terms are factored in along with consideration of Nazi ideology and the internal dynamics of some of the key institutions of the perpetrator state.     

Creating the Islamic Republic of Iran: wives and daughters of martyrs,and acts of citizenship

This paper develops a notion of citizenship which accounts for interruptions of, and compliances with, routines in governance. It applies the concept beyond a legal status and electoral practice to decipher how everyday encounters with the state can lead to creative institutional reconfigurations. Focusing on the wives and daughters of martyrs from the Iran–Iraq war (1980–1988), this paper poses ideologically committed contestation and collaborations with national structures of power as acts of citizenship. With particular attention to temporality and constructive uses of memory, this discussion introduces a governing technique created and utilized by women to remake the state as they assert a self-determined citizenry status.     

Can service providing NGOs build democracy? Five contingent features

This article studies the role of service providing NGOs in the Middle East in promoting democracy. Challenging the assumption that service providing NGOs are apolitical, the authors argue that service providing NGOs play important roles in promoting democracy. They do so by serving as public arenas, or spaces in which members and beneficiaries practice democratic habits such as discussion and debate, collective problem solving, free expression, rights claiming, and the like—all of which contribute to the cultivation of a participatory form of democracy. Drawing upon existing literature, interviews, and participant observation of NGOs in Egypt, Lebanon, and Palestine, the authors argue that five features shape the role of service providing NGOs in promoting democracy. These include: (1) organizational readiness, or the organization's embeddedness in its beneficiary community and its organizational capacity; (2) organizational governance, or organization's commitment to participatory representation and transparency; (3) the nature of service an organization provides; (4) an NGOs' collaboration with other NGOs and the government; and (5) donor risk tolerance. The article's analysis contributes to our understanding of the varied, and often overlooked, roles of service providing NGOs, advancing the literature on NGO-state relations, NGO-donor relations, and democracy promotion.     

Islamophobia and the Europeanness of the other Europe

ABSTRACT

In this article, Sayyid’s focus is on the relationship between the emergence of Islamophobia and the crisis of Europeanness. What is it about Europeanness right now that makes one of its most vocal expressions an insistence on the Muslim question? To answer, or perhaps address, the question of why the Muslim question and why now, Sayyid places the formation of European identity in a postcolonial context. That is, the horizon opened by the decentring of the West not only geopolitically or economically but also culturally and philosophically is explored. East Central Europe in its various permutations—historical and cultural—provides an excellent platform to study the impact of the postcolonial on Europeanness. The East Central European experience of the postcolonial is inflected through a history of imperial articulations and peripheralizations that demonstrate not only the contingency of the idea of Europeanness but also its imbrication with the Orient.