Antisemitism: The Perfect Prejudice

Jews are in a "competition" of victimhood. But they didn’t want it and they didn’t start it.

An antisemitic cartoon published by a Libyan news outlet on October 20th, 2023 depicts the Israeli prime minister covered in blood and eating a child. (photo: The Anti-Defamation League)

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This is a guest essay written by Pat Johnson of Pat’s Substack.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.

Share this essay using the link: https://www.futureofjewish.com/p/antisemitism-is-the-perfect-prejudice

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Jews are engaged in a competition of victimhood.

This is a common assertion — so common that one can hardly raise the issue of antisemitism, the Holocaust, or almost anything else about Jews without someone crassly raising the non-sequitur: “Jews aren’t the only ones who have suffered.”

It is a core tenet of antisemitism that Jews falsely or exaggeratedly emphasize their experiences with discrimination. They are said to elbow other victims out of the way with their narratives of woe.

So here is the hard truth: Jews are in a competition of victimhood.

But they didn’t want it and they didn’t start it. This competition was created and is sustained as a way to justify and perpetuate the oppression of Jews.

Accusing Jews of always crying “Antisemitism!” is an antisemitic tactic to inoculate antisemites against efforts to challenge antisemitism.

And it works wonders!

A Canadian politician ranted:

“The Armenians didn’t suffer. The Palestinians aren’t suffering. The Rwandans aren’t suffering. … It’s always you people. You’re the only people in the history of the world who have suffered.”¹

Any decent person should read comments like these and understand instantly that this is not a person of goodwill and their opinions are garbage. But they are so widespread — more than one in four Canadians believes “Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust” and one in 10 subscribe to the idea that “Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind” — they need to be confronted.²

I feel like refuting overt racism risks legitimizing it. But anyways. The idea that Jews push the oppression of others off the agenda is not only despicable, it’s also wrong. 

Jewish individuals and organizations, especially Holocaust education groups, have been at the forefront of challenging every genocide and attempted genocide in living memory. I would venture that, were it not for Jewish activists, most Canadians would never have heard of Darfur.

Do we need to remind folks — again — that Jewish individuals acting on the Jewish value of tikkun olam (Hebrew for “repairing of the world”) have been engaged in almost every good cause and fight against oppression? But, sure, they probably have some ulterior motive, those crafty devils.

It is a grotesque act of racism to accuse Jews of eclipsing the tragedies of others when it is Jews who have probably done disproportionately more than any other segment of society to raise awareness of precisely these situations.

I had a charming interaction with a small-town Saskatchewan newspaper editor recently. For an organization opposing antisemitism that I’m involved in, I sent a letter to the editor of most newspapers in Canada about the need to confront anti-Jewish racism. Here’s what I got back from one guy:

“FYI: There has not been any crisis proportion of antisemitism in this part of the country. Not sure what this is all about! I do note a crisis proportion of xenophobia towards the new Mexican, African and Asian immigrants. It might be worth looking into. Just saying.”

Here’s what I’m just saying: This editor is Case Study 7,263 in exactly what I’m talking about.

In a brief interaction with me, he dismissed the overwhelming Canadian statistics on antisemitism from the government of Canada and every other source counting these things — “I tend to look at the sources when studying statistical data,” he said.

Then he went there …

“Is this a competition? It would appear to be just that with the creation of your organization.”

So, an organization contesting antisemitism is creating a “competition”?

I would love to hear this dude’s take on Black Lives Matter, Truth and Reconciliation, and #MeToo.

But here is the saddest part: It is so often precisely the people who advance social justice and racial equality who dismiss Jewish concerns. Our hearts are big enough to have compassion for every group experiencing discrimination or oppression — until we get to Jewish people. Then it’s suddenly a competition.

Who is turning this into a contest? Not the Jews.

I call antisemitism the “perfect prejudice” because its very characteristics are the poison pills that prevent it from being defeated. In a time when discrimination is measured by the presence or absence of power and privilege, antisemitism paints Jews as privileged and powerful — and automatically discounts them as potential victims or antisemitism as a cause for allyship.

Since antisemitism views Jews as disproportionately powerful (from controlling Hollywood and the banks to setting forest fires with gnarly space lasers), almost any contesting of antisemitism leads the perpetrator to declare they are being victimized by the Big Powerful Jews. (Victim-blaming is another of the core tenets of antisemitism. There are a lot of these.)

On the global stage, inevitably, the accusation extends to the Jewish state. Edward Said, a Palestinian-American philosopher and academic, wrote: “We [Palestinians] are the victims of the victims, the refugees of the refugees.”

There is a massive global socio-psychological phenomenon going on around Jews and antisemitism. Put simply, any guilt a citizen of the world has for antisemitism can be negated if we recast the victim (Jews) as the perp.

Et voilà, social justice activists who champion every people and cause can throw the Jews (and the Israelis) to the wolves. (That’s what the whole “Zionists are Nazis” and “Palestinian Holocaust” things are all about.)

Even those of us who are not deeply engaged in social justice work can ignore repeated pleas of Jews and their allies to stand against antisemitism because, “Well, you know. The Jews are powerful. They’ll be fine.”

See the problem?

You either do or you don’t.

And that is the problem.

Antisemitism is the perfect prejudice because the antisemitic goggles through which we view antisemitism allow us to carry on with our antisemitism certain that Jewish concerns about antisemitism are just those people trying to elbow every other group out of the way.

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1. “Quebec politician blasts Jews, immigrants for not understanding sovereignty.” CBC News.

2. “ADL Global 100”