Anti-Semitism Rising for 133rd Year in a Row

Despite it being a made-up word describing an imaginary phenomenon, anti-Semitism surged again this year, sparking calls for more censorship, more Holocaust education, more funding

It’s being reported in the press again this year that anti-Semitism, already at crisis levels, is rising—even surging. According to the Anti-Defamation League, there was a 36 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2022 from the 2,717 incidents tabulated in 2021, “the highest number on record since ADL began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979.” The ADL’s announcement of record-breaking anti-Semitism comes just as the White House unveils a first-ever nationwide strategy to “fight anti-Semitism.”

Just to be clear, there is no such thing as “anti-Semitism.” Bigotry is bigotry. Nobody’s experience of bigotry is special—not even if you call it something else when it happens to you. But the ADL argues bigotry is different when it happens to a Jew. Then it’s “anti-Semitism” and “the world’s oldest hate,” which is a bold claim to make about a “hate” that first appears in 1880.¹

While it may not be the world’s oldest hate, anti-Semitism is certainly the world’s longest continuously-increasing one. At newspaper article archiver, newspapers.com, you can search for articles by decade, country, and keyword. A search of American newspapers in every decade from the present back to the 1880s for “rising antisemitism,” “rise in antisemitism,” “rising anti-Semitism,” "and “rise in anti-Semitism” reveals a steady rise in articles reporting a steady rise in anti-Semitism. The search did not include terms like “increase in antisemitism”, “surge in antisemitic incidents,” “growing antisemitism,” “antisemitism on the rise,” “anti-Semitism is rising,” and so on, meaning the real number of articles published in the United States connecting the idea of “growing” with “anti-Semitism” (while simultaneously asserting anti-Semitism as something that actually exists) was certainly very much higher than indicated in the table below.

The decade of the 1880s saw no mentions at all of any one of the four search terms, which is not surprising since the world’s oldest hate had just been invented on the other side of the planet and hadn’t yet had time to make its way here and begin rising. But, by the 1890s, “anti-Semitism” as a rising phenomenon begins to appear in the nation’s newspapers. These appearances are few and remain that way from the 1890s through the 1920s.

During this period, there was a massive wave of Khazar immigration into the United States. The Khazars were descendants of a Turkic-Mongol people who converted to Judaism in the 7th Century. At the time, the Khazars controlled an area roughly where Ukraine is today. In 1065 A.D., shortly after they had converted to Christianity with a mass baptism in the river that runs through Kiev, the Rus conquered the Khazars and destroyed their empire. The Khazars were scattered across Russia and Eastern Europe. Their descendants became the shtetl Jews, remaining apart from the surrounding peoples and under the absolute authority of the Talmudic rabbinate.

The Khazarian “Eastern Jews” were racially and culturally distinct from the assimilated Western Jews in the United States and Europe and were viewed by them with hostility. (It was Western Jews in the United States whose country clubs denied membership to the Eastern Jews until influential historians like Caddyshack replaced the Western Jews with WASPs.) The wave of Eastern Jews brought with it a significant element of revolutionary, anarchist, and communist radicals. Native-born Americans, including Jews, grew increasingly alarmed and, in 1924, implemented what became essentially a 40-year time-out on immigration

Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent, the articles from which were published in book form as The International Jew, the World’s Foremost Problem, had a significant impact on the public’s view of Jews. It was distributed through Ford’s nationwide network of car dealerships, and, by 1926, it had the second highest circulation of any paper in the country. Today, of course, The International Jew is dismissed as an anti-Semitic screed, but the actual text seems to show an attempt at sober even-handedness on the part of the writer. A major component of the Dearborn Independent’s editorial content was the republication of what Jews wrote in the Jewish press, thus bringing to a far vaster, nationwide, gentile audience quotes that otherwise would have remained obscure. For example, Ford’s paper republished this April, 1919 quote from a Mr. Cohan in the decidedly non-mainstream newspaper, Communist:

Without exaggeration, it may be said that the great Russian social revolution was indeed accomplished by the hands of the Jews. Would the dark, oppressed masses of the Russian workmen and peasants have been able to throw off the yoke of the bourgeoisie by themselves? No, it was precisely the Jews who led the Russian proletariat to the dawn of the Internationale and not only have led, but are also now leading the Soviet cause which remains in their safe hands. We may be quiet as long as the chief command of the Red Army is in the hands of Comrade Leon Trotsky. It is true that there are no Jews in the ranks of the Red Army as far as privates are concerned, but in the committees and Soviet organizations, as commissars, the Jews are gallantly leading the masses of the Russian proletariat to victory. It is not without reason that during the elections to all Soviet institutions the Jews are winning by an overwhelming majority… The symbol of Jewry, which for centuries has struggled against capitalism, has become also the symbol of the Russian proletariat, which can be seen even in the adoption of the Red five-pointed star, which in former times, as it is well known, was the symbol of Zionism and Jewry. With this sign comes victory, with this sign comes the death of the parasites of the bourgeoisie… Jewish tears will come out of them in sweat of drops of blood.

By the mid-1920s, news of the genocidal horrors occurring inside Russia had reached the outside world and it was now anti-Semitic to repeat for a gentile audience what a Jewish writer didn’t hesitate to write in 1919. Henry Ford was vilified as an anti-Semite, a stigma he carries to this day.

So, we see that by the 1920s, the term “anti-Semitism” had gained a second function. While its original purpose as an obstacle to Jewish assimilation remained in place, it had also become an effective tool with which to control what was and what was not permitted in the public discourse, which is to say that it could influence the political course of the United States.

In the 1930s, the number of articles in American newspapers characterizing anti-Semitism as both real and rising began to climb.

This is the only report on “rising anti-Semitism” that reflects my personal lived experience. It does seem like there is a rise in anti-Semitism in the press.

The perpetually rising aspect of anti-Semitism betrays the fundamental fraud at the heart of it—the absurdity of the very concept of the particularization of what is, after all, a human emotion. Even within the infinitely complex and ephemeral emotional world of a single individual’s life, it would be foolish to try to separate out the occurrences of a single emotion as discrete objects stripped of context, then count them, assigning “good” or “bad” to an increase or decrease, depending on the emotion.² All emotions are only ever rational or irrational. That’s it. If I hate you because you were born in Mexico, my hate is irrational. If I hate you because you are raping my daughter, my hate is rational and may be necessary to provide me with the means to stop you harming my daughter—i.e., to ensure I act in terms of the world as it really is.

But this is exactly what the “anti-Semitism” hucksters claim they do with a human emotion, but on the scale of an entire population of humans. I can just picture Jonathan Greenblatt late at night watching the ticker at the Anti-Defamation League’s anti-Semitism reporting tool. His report of record-breaking anti-Semitism is to be released the next day and they are still eleven incidents shy of setting a new record. “Come on swastikas, come on swastikas,” he mutters over and over as he stares at the screen. “Damn it,” he says finally, grabbing a pack of colored chalk and putting on a black turtle-neck. “I won’t be long, dear…”

The search function at newspapers.com returns the results by state. Below, are the five states with the most “rising anti-Semitism” newspaper articles by decade:

2020s

1. Florida 663

2. New Jersey 170

3. New York 151

4. Texas 116

5. California 110

2010s

1. Florida 1,372

2. New Jersey 326

3. New York 265

4. Pennsylvania 243

5. Missouri 228

2000s

1. Florida 738

2. California 516

3. New York 250

4. Illinois 226

5. Pennsylvania 221

1990s

1. Florida 678

2. California 548

3. New York 527

4. Pennsylvania 281

5. Illinois 199

1980s

1. Florida 428

2. California 323

3. New York 314

4. Pennsylvania 200

5. New Jersey 168

1970s

1. California 103

2. Florida 68

3. New Jersey 60

4. New York 54

5. Pennsylvania 46

1960s

1. California 141

2. New York 103

3. New Jersey 101

4. Florida 99

5. Texas 95

1950s

1. New York 77

2. Wisconsin 47

3. Pennsylvania 37

4. Ohio 31

5. California 30

1940s

1. Nebraska 67³

2. Pennsylvania 51

3. New York 49

4. Wisconsin 49

5. New Jersey 40

1930s

1. New York 71

2. California 52

3. Missouri 40

4. Pennsylvania 39

5. Wisconsin 38

1920s

1. New York 9

2. Wisconsin 7

3. Missouri 6

4. Indiana 5

5. Ohio 4

Check out Florida. Florida enters the top five in the 1960s in the fourth spot. By the 1980s, Florida has moved into the top spot as the state with the most “rising anti-Semitism” articles published in the state’s newspapers. It has remained in the top spot ever since. Since 2010, there have been four times as many “rising anti-Semitism” articles published in Florida as there have been in the next nearest state, New Jersey.

Remember, the original purpose behind the invention of anti-Semitism was to strike fear into Jews—to make Jews feel unaccountably and perpetually menaced (and a growing menace is, of course, much worse than a mere menace). If your shtick is “fighting anti-Semitism,” your best donors will be among the more easily frightened elderly, among the wealthy, among Jews. So, yeah, Florida.

Anti-Semitism is a sham and the Anti-Defamation League is a grift. Of course, as long as we have humans, we’ll have shams and grifts. It’s anti-Semitism’s second purpose as a tool to control public discourse that is more worrisome.

The vast majority of these rising anti-Semitism articles are similar to this one from the Sun-Sentinel in 2020 reporting on that year’s ADL report of a record-breaking rise in anti-Semitism (they don’t even bother changing the wording from year to year):

The [ADL] tracked more than 2,100 anti-Semitic incidents throughout the United States last year, which was the highest level ADL has found since it began its tracking efforts in 1979.

I imagine all such articles include, as this one did, a demand that public officials speak out against anti-Semitism, tips like on how to get high tech companies to remove “harmful” speech from the Internet, and an encouragement to readers to report promptly to the ADL anti-Semitic incidents like chalk swastikas on sidewalks and mentions of Hitler in playground taunts by visiting the ADL’s donation button-equipped website.

Since 2000, an article of this nature, i.e., an ADL propaganda advertisement and fundraising letter, has been published in a newspaper in the state of Florida every three days on average. So, perhaps it’s not surprising that, after suffering nearly a quarter century of bombardment by ADL propaganda, Florida is the state most fully compliant with the political demands of the ADL.

Along with the usual demands for more taxpayer funds for Holocaust education, Jewish security, and so on, the ADL demands the nationwide adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism.

From the IHRA’s home page:

The IHRA is the only intergovernmental organization mandated to focus solely on Holocaust-related issues, so with evidence that the scourge of antisemitism is once again on the rise, we resolved to take a leading role in combating it.

On the rise again? That’s one indefatigable scourge.

But to begin to address the problem of antisemitism, there must be clarity about what antisemitism is. 

Indeed, since, really, anti-Semitism isn’t. Here is their definition:

Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

Okay, the definition of run-of-the-mill bigotry, awkwardly worded. But then the IHRA goes on to provide examples of such bigotry. And that’s where we go off the rails.

In 2019, Florida adopted the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and included the examples in the text of the bill. The bill, HB 269, passed through both houses of the state’s legislature unanimously (amazing) and Governor Ron DeSantis flew to Israel to sign it into law (also amazing). Since the White House adopted the same last month in preparation for a national implementation, it’s worth looking at these examples.

Under the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, it is anti-Semitic to “[accuse] Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group…” Thus, the IHRA defines Mr. Cohan’s statement quoted above that the Bolshevik Revolution “was indeed accomplished by the hands of the Jews,” an act of anti-Semitism regardless whether it is factually true. Predictably, the IHRA definition also makes it an act of anti-Semitism to “[deny] the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people” also regardless of factual truth. Thus the right of every human to determine the reality of the world around him—to decide for himself what is and isn’t true—is removed under the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. It denies our human ability to reason—to act rationally in terms of the world as it really is—our very humanity, itself.

The IHRA is careful to state in bold across the top of the page that its definition is “non-legally binding” because if the state enforced such a definition the result would be blatant tyranny and the violent enslavement of the human mind by the powerful. So, the IHRA’s definition is only a “working definition,” see? Not to worry.

But, let’s look at what has transpired in Florida since the passage of HB 269 in 2019. In addition to providing the definition of anti-Semitism, HB 269 made “religion” one of the protected classes along with race, gender, etc.. It limited the application of the definition to public schools and who could be opposed to protecting little kids from hate? But in 2023, the state legislature passed HB 741 (again unanimously in both houses) making “harassment” of a member of a protected class a third degree felony (and, again, Governor DeSantis flew to Israel to sign the bill into law). If you hand a Jew a flyer in Florida containing Mr. Cohan’s statement that the Bolshevik Revolution “was indeed accomplished by the hands of the Jews,” and he claims to feel threatened by this information, you can be charged with a third degree felony and, with hate crime enhancements, spend the next ten years in prison.

True, but “anti-Semitic.” Ten years imprisonment in Florida. Soon, the US.

Anti-Semitism is a real menace after all, but to all humanity. Its power rests in the credibility we give it.

1. In 1880, Tsar Alexander II “the Liberator” was still the Russian emperor. His efforts to emancipate the Russian Jews was being mightily resisted by the rabbinate, who saw emancipation as fatal to their own power.

2. This is a tragic flaw behind much of modern psychotherapy, where feeling fear, for example, is “bad” and feeling safe is “good.” Either feeling may be rational or irrational depending on the context.

3. I would love to know the story behind this unexpected entry in the top spot.