Defining anti-Semitism

Walter Russell Mead explains how to define anti-Semitism.

The truth is that anti-Semitism is alive and well and not even particularly rare; it’s just that many of today’s anti-Semites like to think of themselves as enlightened, modern people and get all huffy and hissy if anyone accuses them of prejudice in any form. Many who in past times would have been open and honest about their anti-Semitism, now try to hide the truth even from themselves.

But anti-Semitism involves belief in any or all of the following ideas:

Jews are more clannish than other people and act in concert to support a specifically Jewish agenda.

Jews deploy extraordinary wealth with almost superhuman cunning in support of the Jewish agenda.

As a religious and national minority, Jews cannot flourish without attacking the traditional values of their host society. In every country Jews seek to weaken national culture, religion, values and cohesion.

Jews are not a national group or a people in the way that others are; they do not have the same right to establish a nation state that other peoples do.

Where Jewish interests are concerned, the appearance of open debate in our society and many others is a carefully constructed illusion. In reality, Jews work together to block open debate on issues they care about and those who resist the Jewish agenda are marginalized in public discussion.

These ideas are the five pillars of anti-Semitism; you don’t have to believe them all — any one will do. Being an anti-Semite does not necessarily make you a Nazi. You are an anti-Semite. That doesn’t make you a Nazi; Hitler added a sixth pillar of anti-Semitism that the only way to successfully oppose the Jewish agenda was to kill all the Jews.

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