Different Antisemitisms: On Three Distinct Forms of Antisemitism in C | Page 36

Jews in Belgium, Italy, France, the UK and Sweden. Those who carry out such attacks are
mainly identified as persons with Muslim extremist views and/or political left-wingers. This
kind of antisemitism is relatively often demonstrated by acts of violence towards Jewish
institutions, symbols and persons.
This kind of antisemitism is much less present in the former communist East-European
countries Hungary and Latvia, than in the West-European countries that have absorbed large
numbers of Muslim immigrants in the decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Aufklärungsantisemitismus, i.e. critique of core Jewish practices, and accusations
against Jewish representatives and individuals because of it is very frequently heard in
Sweden and Germany, and often, but not as intensely, in the UK and France. To some extent,
this kind of critique might actually be a disguised attack on the numerically much more
significant Muslim population in the country. Muslims and Jews share the tradition of
circumcising their sons – albeit at quite different stages in the boys’ development and by
slightly different techniques – and slaughtering animals according to similar religious
prescriptions. Those who criticize these religiously based traditions are mostly persons who
perceive themselves as “progressive”, liberal and left-wing oriented. The critique is usually
presented as comments in the public debate and sometimes takes the shape of proposing legal
prohibition of the Jewish practices in question.
As can be seen in Figure 31, the three forms of antisemitism are present today in various
degrees in the countries included in this study. In Belgium and France all three forms exist on
a fairly high level, whereas in Sweden, Germany and the UK, the kind of anti-Jewish
sentiments that dominate the picture, Aufklärungsantisemitismus, should perhaps not be
counted as proper antisemitism, even if it is of course clearly anti-Jewish. Many of those who
advocate that position do not share the values and attitudes of those who manifest the two
other kinds of antisemitism.
There might of course be persons who share all three sets of antisemitic attitudes. The
popular idea that it is “the same old antisemitism” that again and again pops-up and “shows
its ugly face” does not, however, find support in our study. It is more likely that there are
actually three distinct antisemitisms in play. Of course, a number of persons might at the same
time, for example, hold classic antisemitic stereotypes, be hostile towards Israel and in favor
of prohibiting core Jewish customs such as the manufacture of kosher meat products and
circumcision. However our data do not suggest that there should be a significant correlation
between them – rather that they are inspired by different underlying “philosophies”, carried
by different social groups, and manifested in different ways.
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