Anti-Semitism Rising in Europe

I have a short list of reasons for writing this blog. I believe a few important topics and trends are being glossed over or ignored, and it's my hope to do them justice here. One is the growth of international anti-Semitism and an associated issue, rising American pseudo fascism, and their interrelated implications.

The topic is too involved to treat with short posts, and I haven't found the time to complete what's drafted.  But, when David Adesnik, a contributor to Oxblog, and a graduate student in international relations at Oxford, asks the following question:

"What the hell is going on here? You hear a lot about how ignorant Americans are, how 50% of us still believe that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. Next thing you know, 50% of Europeans will believe that the Mossad was responsible for 9/11."

And, he asks that question in response to poll results found in this article, I have to give him my answer, even if substantiation will come later. It's noteworthy that the article does an impressive job of glossing over anti-Semitism in Europe. The following results alarmed Adesnik:

European sympathy for the Palestinians runs high, while hostility toward Israel is often palpable.

And the anger is reaching new -- and disturbing -- levels: A poll of 3,000 people published last month by Germany's University of Bielefeld showed more than 50 percent of respondents equating Israel's policies toward the Palestinians with Nazi treatment of the Jews. Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed specifically believed that Israel is waging a "war of extermination" against the Palestinian people.

Half the people in Germany compare Israel's policies to Nazism. Two thirds believe Israel is guilty of ethnic cleansing, a war of extermination. That's right. Let's not gloss it over. It gets worse. It's not just Germany. A broader EU poll produced the following results:

... a majority of Europeans named Israel as the greatest threat to world peace. Overall, 59 percent of Europeans put Israel in the top spot, ahead of such countries as Iran and North Korea. In the Netherlands, that figure rose to 74 percent.

Israel is a greater threat to peace than the remaining two members of the axis of evil? Are Europeans daft? Sometimes I think the whole world is.

One way to explain these polls is to look at bigotry in America and then apply it in context to Europe. Here, we have our list of fascists. There's the KKK, skinheads and the American Nazi Party. There's David Duke, Matt Hale, The National Alliance, Fred Phelps, Bertollino and Story, Malik Zulu Shabazz and more. They mostly represent far extremes of the right wing. However, by being anti-Semitic, they tend to isolate themselves from the mainstream. The American Right is predominantly pro-Israel. Still there is a political connection between the radical anti-Semitics and extreme fringes of the Right.  It's based on likemindedness separated from Jew hatred.

On those fringes and creeping into the mainstream, a new phenomenon, a type of pseudo fascism, has materialized in harmony with the right wing in part for being pro-Israel.  This pseudo fascism focuses extreme prejudice at Islam and liberals. It's a result of trickle down (misunderstood) neoconservatism combined with years of indoctrination in right wing hate speech. It's a Manichaean mentality cultivated in a war environment-- black and white, good and evil, with us or against us.  It's ultimately eliminationist.  Less refined (or informed) fronts of the right wing blogosphere bristle with examples of this mindset. So does AM radio. You hear it from the callers more than the hosts, but the hosts do nothing to discourage it. It's not anti-Semitic, but extreme prejudice is what it is regardless of target.

On the American Left there's another group regularly accused of anti-Semitism for intellectually sympathizing with Palestine. The co-blogger here, TJ, slips in and out of this category, as does the popular Juan Cole. This group doesn't justify Israel's failings and atrocities in the ongoing unrest, but is not by definition racist despite the allegations. Through the frustrations of the debate and the ugliness of events, a disapproval of Israel emerges-- disapproval that's erroneously labeled anti-Semitic. That's the state of affairs here.

In Europe things are worse than the already dismaying polls indicate.  The same numbers you see in the Netherlands also apply to Russia.  The same basic mindsets described in America, are in Europe, but with a distinct difference. They're all anti-Semitic. In America, we have our pro-Israel conservatives (and others) tempering anti-Semitism, and in the case described above still alarmingly prejudiced against others.  In Europe, a similar mirror of the trickle down neoconservatives; who again are pro-war, pro-Israel, but promoting this eliminationist pseudo fascism; is the angry war protesters, who are anti-American, anti-Semitic, and who believe America is aligned with Israel in an eliminationist cause of their own.  One calls the other fascist, the pot calls the kettle black, prevailing political parties on both sides of the Atlantic gloss over dangerous ideological hatreds, while allowing an infiltration into the mainstream of these opposing pseudo fascisms. To what extent the ideologies will gain mainstream footholds is the question.

Europe's neo Nazis, skinheads and the like are much the same as ours, and make the papers with hate crimes just as regularly (probably more frequently). On the European Left, the Palestinian apologists are more numerous and more militant. Perhaps because of the groundswell of hatred beneath them alligned against Jews. Even at Adesnik's alma mater, a professor has explained his anti-Semitism in a letter denying acceptance to graduate school for a Jewish student:

Andrew Wilkie, the Nuffield professor of pathology and a fellow of Pembroke College at Oxford, allegedly informed graduate student Amit Duvshani in an e-mail message that he would not consider an Israeli for a position in his lab because, I have a huge problem with the way that Israelis take the high moral ground from their appalling treatment in the Holocaust, and then inflict gross human rights abuses on the Palestinians because they wish to live in their own country.

The email was confirmed and the professor apologized. Anway, this is my short answer to David Adesnik about what the hell is going on with those polls. And I agree with the rest of his quoted comments :

You hear a lot about how ignorant Americans are, how 50% of us still believe that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. Next thing you know, 50% of Europeans will believe that the Mossad was responsible for 9/11.

I just hope our idiots aren't on a collision course with their idiots. While the polls suggest these are already mainstream issues, and the trends need monitoring, the courses cannot collide until governments start pursuing specific anti-Israel and/or anti-Islamic policies. More on that later. Meanwhile, American pseudo fascism, as so carefully researched and detailed by David Neiwert, has it's sibling rival across the pond.

--Zap

Comments

[Torrid]

I'm thankful I was only lumped into the "harmless Israel critic of the American Left" category!

More seriously, I think it's interesting how I get excused because I'm merely more correct in my criticisms, without overstating relative crimes against humanity. Essentially, I'm given a pass for being critical of Israel the country, as opposed to The Jews. But isn't that what these survey questions ask?--how people feel about Israel and their policies? I certainly grant that these people are _mistaken_ that what they're doing is anywhere near as bad as Auschwitz. The recent PBS series was a stark reminder--10,000 a day at the crematoria when they ran full tilt. But we know why they're mistaken; they don't know about the Holocaust, as you say. That's an educational failure, although in hypersensitive Germany for people not to know is wigged out. Maybe it's not as hypersensitive as the last time I was there.

But I think charges of bigotry and racism--certainly racism--need to be backed up with active anti-Semitic events. Growth in fascist movements. Increase in violent hate crime. Etc. I know that's part of your discussion too, but what I hear from these posts is that Europe is entirely too sympathetic towards the Palestinian cause, and that makes them dangerously anti-Semitic. I say yes on one, no on two.

Also, Europe has a growing number of Muslim immigrants who take surveys. Survey ringers, in this case.

Welcome Oxblogians!

[Penta]

TJ: Most evidence is anecdotal. For the simple reason that people probably don't want to know the truth, there's little quantitative work done. But...the anecdotes make the otherwise uncaring like me shudder.

Rabbis throughout most of Europe have told Jews not to wear kippot in public, for example.

Also, how...insane a lot of the reaction has gotten. See the numerous academic boycotts.

That is very creepy. It takes the historically clued in maybe 5 seconds to remember that one of the first acts of Hitler was to remove Jews from academia.

Now, am I saying we're anywhere near there? No. Emphatically, no.

But it does set off the spidey-sense, y'know? The instinct that says 'Uh oh, those chains aren't quite so tight anymore'.

We had that demon locked away and bound to the rocks for a long time, and I think we've gotten complacent.