The simplest way to think about antisemitism is that it is a conspiracy theory. What differentiates hatred of Jews from many other prejudices is that it is often not grounded in the idea that one group of people is supposedly superior to another. Rather, as the writer Yair Rosenberg explains, it is predicated on a lie about how the world ‘really’ works.
It is a conspiracy theory that allows for Jews to be both capitalists and Bolsheviks, controllers of the media, banks and the global war machine. That Jews (which ones?) congregate (where?) to manage world affairs (will there be food after?) If this were true, then any action taken against this nefarious group of people would surely be legitimate?
And the patterns are everywhere, if you view the world in this way. To borrow a term from the American psychologist Abraham Maslow, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
This is how people from across the political spectrum can justify a belief that Jews, a tiny minority in this country and around the world, are not in need or worthy of protection. As if there wasn’t an attempt in living memory to wipe Jews off the face of the European continent.
That event, the Holocaust, was not the failure we like to imagine it. Not only because six million Jews were murdered, but because there are today fewer Jews in Europe than in 1939. For context, the population of Europe as a whole has risen by nearly half over that period.
Last night, two elderly Jewish bakers (and by the way, how has this device not been used for a sitcom yet?) were beaten up in Stamford Hill, the evening before Holocaust Memorial Day. This incident was, sadly, not unusual.
Last year, antisemitic incidents in Britain reached a record high. The Community Security Trust, a charity, recorded 1,308 such occurrences in the first half of 2021, a 49 per cent increase on the previous year.
So, when the last Holocaust survivors pass away, we will lose our living connection to those who witnessed Europe’s darkest hour. But the conspiracy theory that drove it? That is alive and well.
Elsewhere in the paper, Sue Gray: her name has spawned thousands of memes. But why do we fetishise older women in positions of authority, asks Claire Cohen?
In the comment pages, Andy Burnham says the whipping system is the reason MPs can’t act across party lines. Meanwhile, in ditching Spotify over Joe Rogan, Neil Young is the only loser, writes Jamie Collinson.
And finally, we say farewell to the great Barry Cryer, who passed away aged 86. After he reached 80, the comic was fond of saying he didn’t know how long he’d got left, but “these days I don’t dare buy a green banana”. Enjoy some of his best punchlines from throughout the years.
