How to Defeat Antisemitism — A Guide

First, admit that we can't. Second, treat it like a manageable chronic condition, not a curable bug.

We seem to be making progress on other prejudices, but antisemitism has gotten catastrophically worse in the past 25 years. (photo: Levi Meir Clancy/Unsplash)

Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.

---

This is a guest essay written by Pat Johnson, the Director of Upstanders Canada, founded to mobilize non-Jewish Canadians to stand up against antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

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

---

If majorities of respondents in many Western countries view the possibility of “something like the Holocaust” happening again, why aren’t we doing more to stop it?

Of course, a millennia-old problem is not going to be solved in a day, especially because antisemitism is in our civilizational DNA. So, while it is often compared with a virus, I think it is less like, say, the common cold  —  though antisemitism is tragically common  —  and more like a chronic manageable condition.

To take the human healthcare metaphor a tiresome step further, we may know from personal experience that people with manageable conditions who stay on top of their health issues can live long, healthy lives. Those with conditions that are ignored and allowed to deteriorate are likely to spiral into perpetual ill health and early death.

Most of us will probably not live to see the end of antisemitism  —  and, reading survey responses from those under 30, some of us might hope to shuffle off this mortal coil before the younger generation grasps the levers of power. However, our obligation, I guess, is to (the tedious metaphor again) try to manage our (society’s) health and prevent this potentially fatal disorder from spiraling out of control.

But first: There are very specific reasons why antisemitism presents a special challenge. We seem to be making progress on so many other prejudices. In our lifetimes, the fights against misogyny and homophobia have seen triumphs our great-grandparents could not have even remotely fathomed. (And, depending on their perspectives, may have been glad to not live to see.)

Antisemitism, meanwhile, has gotten catastrophically worse in the past 25 years  —  and, since October 7, 2023, has seen a horrifying hockey stick graph upsurge.

Why has the problem of antisemitism grown in Western countries while the fights against racism, misogyny, homophobia, and other social problems have seen extraordinary successes?

There must be many explanations. Here’s my go-to: Because antisemitism is the perfect prejudice. It comes replete with poison pills that keep it from being vanquished.

Here’s what I mean.

Antisemitism is a complex conspiracy theory that involves ideas of Jewish control  —  of media, finance, governments, the world, the weather, whatever. And, if it’s not economic power, such as in places and times when Jews undeniably were absolutely powerless, they were accused of having supernatural powers, of doing the devil’s work.

This concept of “Jewish power” is so embedded in our cultural DNA that even people of goodwill probably intuit that, while antisemitism is bad, the Jews are going to be just fine.

(An amusing and entertaining aside in a depressing conversation: There is a public service announcement from the American Jewish World Service, released in 2010 and featuring a parade of famous people. It is a masterpiece of a public service announcement. As is often the case, Sarah Silverman¹ offers a throwaway line that uses humor to illuminate something huge. At 3:20 in the video, she conspiratorially says, “Jews are fine.” It’s sublime. A three-word encapsulation of what I would argue is a global assurance that, despite centuries of pogroms and worse, antisemitism is nothing to worry about.)

In addition to the inherent bias we carry in our civilizational DNA about “Jewish power,” there is a tenacious idea that Jews are less a collection of individuals than a collective mass, like the Borg. This can (and, I believe, does) lead people to think that, while one Jew or two Jews or six million Jews may be killed, “The Jews” will be fine.

Alongside “Jewish power,” another relentless stereotype about Jews is that they are rich. In a cultural climate where the people who are most committed to fighting racism view wealth and power as the primary measuring sticks of prejudice and discrimination, as the very defining characteristics of oppression, those who are affected by these two rampant stereotypes cannot help but conclude that Jews do not need allyship.

By the very definition of racism that they have adopted, “anti-racists” classify Jews as oppressor, rather than oppressed, no matter how much Jewish blood is flowing.

It should not need to be said, though it clearly does, that any formulation that rests on “Group ABC is XYZ” is the very definition of prejudice. “Anti-racist” people seem to recognize this in every case but the Jewish one.

Then there are the attributions of particular behavioral traits to Jews. Foremost may be the idea that Jews have a unique “persecution complex,” that they are always “crying wolf.”

This is one of antisemitism’s most effective poison pills. Not only are we free to ignore Jewish pleas for tolerance at the best of times, but at moments like these, when Jews are reaching a fever pitch of appealing for sensitivity and allyship, their increasing anxieties can be dismissed as the quintessence of evidence that we needn’t pay attention to their hysterical paranoia. There they go again, now more than ever, with their wild imaginings of persecution.

There are many more examples I could use, but I’ve already taken enough of your day.

To summarize: It is my core belief that antisemitism is the perfect prejudice because it is an iceberg. Beneath it is an exponentially larger megalith that doesn’t even have consciousness of its own existence.

The obvious antisemitism is easy to spot and all good people contest it. But “good” people carry a complex of unconscious antisemitic biases about wealth, power, invincibility, collectivity, and a ton of other ideas that assure us that, of all the problems in the world, antisemitism is one we don’t need to worry so much about. As Sarah said, Jews are fine.

These, I think, are some of the reasons antisemitism has survival characteristics that ensure it perpetuates itself even among people of goodwill. It is the perfect prejudice because its infrastructure includes traits that have adapted themselves for self-preservation.

It is why people who call themselves “anti-racists,” are among the people most likely to exhibit antisemitism.

Am I hopeful? I’ve noted before that I am someone who smells flowers and looks for a coffin. But hope is a choice. At a minimum, action is an antidote to hopelessness and helplessness so, if for no other reason than our own mental wellbeing, we should throw ourselves into this task.

Then there are the words of Rabbi Tarfon, a sage of the early post-Temple period: “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”

We know we will not complete the work of defeating antisemitism. Accept that. And now redouble our efforts to control its virulence and its spread.

---

1. A famous American comedian