Reports of Rising Antisemitism Up 13,144% since 1920s

Fed up gentiles decide to just go ahead and hate the Jews already.

Three days ago, The Times of India carried a story titled, “What the Amsterdam clashes tell us about rising antisemitism.”

Four days ago, The Cleveland Jewish News carried a piece titled, “Australian Jews confront rising antisemitism.”

A week ago, the local Fox station in Chicago broadcast “Christian, Jewish leaders gather to address rising antisemitism in Chicago.”

And, eleven days ago, NPR’s All Things Considered aired “Two Jewish Democrats reflect on Congressional efforts to combat surge in antisemitism.”

Last year, even prior to October 7th, it was being reported in the press that antisemitism, already at crisis levels, was rising—even surging. According to the Anti-Defamation League, there was a 36 percent increase in antisemitic incidents in 2022 from the 2,717 incidents tabulated in 2021, “the highest number on record since ADL began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979,” they said.

Antisemitism may or may not be the world’s oldest hate, but it 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 surge in articles reporting a rise in antisemitism.¹

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 by the Russian rabbinate and hadn’t yet had time to make its way here and begin rising.² But, by the 1890s, “antisemitism” 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 Jewish immigration into the United States. These were “Eastern Jews,” culturally distinct from the assimilated Western Jews already in the United States and Europe and viewed by them with hostility.³ 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 antisemitic 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…⁴ Jewish tears will come out of them in sweat of drops of blood.

Jewish tears will come out of them in sweat of drops of blood? What kind of person even talks like that?

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

So, we see that by the 1920s, the term “antisemitism” 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 antisemitism as rising (not to mention “real”) began to climb.

The perpetually rising aspect of antisemitism betrays the fundamental fraud at the heart of it—the absurdity of the very concept of the particularization of hate—a human emotion, after all. Even within the ephemeral and infinitely complex 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.⁵ 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.

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 and excessively worded, but worded in such a way that, in theory, if a gentile mentions to another gentile that he doesn’t watch Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News because of its biased reporting on Israel, he can be found guilty of antisemitic discrimination.

But then the IHRA goes on to provide examples of such bigotry. The real mischief is in the examples.

Under the IHRA definition of antisemitism, it is antisemitic 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 antisemitism. However, Mr. Cohan was not charged with antisemitism for making the statement. Mr. Ford was for repeating it.

Antisemitism functions politically as a weapon—available only to Jews—with which to bludgeon gentiles into political submission. It is applied selectively, as in the case of Henry Ford, and it is applied without regard for factual accuracy, also as in the case of Henry Ford.

This indifference to factual truth assaults the right of all humans to determine the reality of the world around them—to decide for themselves what is and isn’t true. Under the IHRA definition of antisemitism, if encoded into law, our human capacity to act according to our own reason—to act rationally in terms of the world as we perceive it—is denied.

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.

Representative Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ05) introduced in the last Congress the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which codifies into law the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism. It passed the House with bipartisan support but did not make it to the floor of the Senate for a vote before the Congress ended. It will likely be re-introduced in the 119th Congress. If it passes both houses and ends up on Trump’s desk, will he sign it? I’m afraid he will, thus delivering us into political servitude.

1. 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 “antisemitism” (while simultaneously asserting antisemitism as something that actually exists) was certainly very much higher than indicated in the chart presented.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. Remember, “bourgeoisie” always means Christian middle class.

5. This is a 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.