Casual anti-Semitism is poisoning public life

Anti-Semitism is now an integral feature of the contemporary Western Zeitgeist. Blaming Jews for the ills of human existence, making jokes at their expense and justifying violence directed at them – on the grounds that, after Israel’s war in Gaza, they surely had it coming – has become a regular occurrence.

The casual, almost taken-for-granted demonisation of Jewishness was illustrated by a small story earlier this month. At a pub quiz in the Crown pub in Boston Spa, West Yorkshire, just a few days after two Jewish men had been stabbed in London in Golders Green, the winning team had called itself ‘Golders Green should be Golders Greed’.

No doubt the quiz-team members thought that playing on anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jewish people was wonderfully satirical. Like most casual anti-Semites today, they probably took the view that the violence directed at Jews in Golders Green was justified because of Gaza.

What is particularly chilling about this story is that neither the staff nor those in attendance at the Crown appear to have raised any objection to the clear anti-Semitism in their midst. Maybe some of them thought that the renaming of Golders Green was funny. Perhaps some of the regulars thought that there was nothing objectionable about making fun of Jews. No doubt some present were bothered by the team’s name but were too embarrassed to raise their voice.

We only know about what happened because one of those at the quiz mentioned the incident to a family member who then made a public complaint. They said they were ‘ashamed to call the Crown my local’ after the staff failed to object to the name of the winning quiz team, and that what had occurred was ‘both insensitive and racist towards innocent British Jews’. They added that ‘for your information – I am not Jewish, and I have no connections. But I am a decent person.’

After being called out, the Crown’s manager apologised, stating it was ‘reviewing the incident with the quiz team and staff to ensure greater care is taken over team names and language used during future events’. This type of after-the-event apology, focussing on monitoring language, avoids what was really at stake here – not the absence of polite language, but the racist mocking of an entire people.

This case of the Crown quiz team is illustrative of the extent to which anti-Semitism has become acceptable among a significant section of British society.

Until recently, anti-Semitism masqueraded as anti-Zionism. Gaza served to justify the demonisation of and attacks on Jews on the streets of Western towns and cities. While some still hide behind Gaza to explain away – and implicitly justify – instances of explicit anti-Jewish violence, a growing number of anti-Semitic activists no longer pretend that their hatred for Jews has anything to do with the Middle East.

Take the intense wave of anti-Jewish hate that greeted a Sesame Street post on X marking Jewish American Heritage Month. Social-media users accused the show of promoting ‘Jewish supremacy’ and ‘propaganda’. One poster complained: ‘Great, a whole month just for Jews… like we don’t hear about their victimhood every day of every month.’

The now regularly heard anti-Semitic complaint – that ‘we’ have heard too much about Jews’ victimhood – is particularly significant. It serves to undermine and even negate the moral significance of the Holocaust. In doing so, it removes the main reason it has been difficult to be publicly and explicitly anti-Jewish over the past 80 years – namely, the memory of Jews’ victimisation in the Nazis’ death camps.

This is arguably the most distinct and important accomplishment of contemporary anti-Semitism. Its advocates have won a degree of public acceptance for the claim that a Jew can never be a victim. Whether this claim is justified because ‘you had it coming because of Gaza’, or because ‘you are the illegitimate beneficiary of Golders Greed’, does not matter. The erasure of Jewish suffering is one of the most vicious achievements of the anti-Semitic Zeitgeist.

Frank Furedi’s In Defence Of Populism is published by Polity later this month.