The West’s New Antisemitism Crisis: Why Right Now?

Alexander H. Joffe

BESA Center

September 23, 2018

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The antisemitism crises exploding in the British Labour Party and threatening to erupt in the US Democratic Party have complex sources in both the elites and the middle class. These include the logic of socialism, which opposes Jewish difference; rejection of the nation-state, which Jews still embrace; and conventional nineteenth-century beliefs in Jewish greed and conspiracies. Post-colonial guilt has also led to multiculturalism and societal self-mortification through Muslim mass immigration, which has enormously exacerbated antisemitism and terrorism. The trends in Europe and Britain portend negative changes in the US for Jews and Israel.