Anti-Semitism, in political terms the discrimination against or persecution of Jews, is nowadays associated in most people’s minds with Hitler’s Germany. In fact it has a very much longer history, has had some political importance in most Western societies, and is by no means a spent force. The historical origins of anti-Semitism are complex and date back to the Middle Ages and beyond. Most European nations practised some form of discrimination against Jews, more or less intermittently and with varying degrees of clerical approval, for centuries before 19th-century anti-Semites, and later the National Socialist party, changed the emphasis of anti-Semitism from religious to racial hatred. To Hitler the Jews constituted an international conspiracy and exercised the real power in all the nations opposed to Germany, whether capitalist or communist.
Modern anti-Semitism is a common element in right-wing political creeds for a largely functional reason: such creeds base much of their appeal on nationalism and an ideal of national unity that denies the existence of important conflicts within the nation. It is a common feature of societies, from the level of the playground to international relations, to have a group of ‘outsiders’ against whom others can unite; racism often characterizes the selection of this group.
In a political system such a group might be blamed for the social ills that might otherwise be attributed to the rulers or the social system. These reflexes can exist in both right-wing and left-wing systems, as evidenced by Nazi and Soviet anti-Semitism. Where a Christian tradition is an important part of the historic national identity, anti-Semitism is a peculiarly, if sadly, apt creed. Thus, for example, American right-wing movements such as the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan have tended to be most popular in parts of the American South where Christian fundamentalism is very strong; such movements have never omitted to add anti-Semitism to their anti-black stance, despite the integration of Jews into American society. From the 1980s onwards economic depression and increased immigration, particularly from the Third World and Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, led to a resurgence in support for neo-fascism in Europe; again, anti-Semitism was often a strong element of such political platforms, even though immigration of Jews was minimal. In the new Eastern European party systems, anti-Semitism was a feature of several right-wing nationalist parties. The Arab–Israeliconflict, and anti-Zionism in the Arab states and elsewhere, are not primarily anti-Semitic phenomena, but it is hard to determine how much latent anti-Jewish sentiment lies behind the more objective problems of the existence of the State of Israel.
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