Anti-Semitism

Mark Worrell

Anti-Semitism is the active or passive, individual or collective, hatred of either empirically existing or purely mythological Jews, such that the signifier “Jew” functions as a representational substitute for social conduct or institutions deemed by the anti-Semite to be abnormal and pathological. Especially important is the manner in which “the Jew” stands in for excesses and deficiencies in social relations such that “Jews” embody a simultaneous “too much” and “not enough” logic. For example, Jews have been criticized for being simultaneously too egoistic and too altruistic or agents of both anomie (deregulation or normlessness) and fatalism (excessive regulation); in other words, “Jews” personify social imbalances. Anti-Semitism may manifest itself in religious, political-economic, ethnoracial, and cultural terms and is typically correlated positively with psychological authoritarianism and political models such as fascism, Nazism, right-wing populism, nativism, and other movements that scapegoat a pernicious “other.” It can find expression in reactions ranging from ...

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