How “Antisemitism” Became a Weapon of the Right

It helps that Mazower, as a scholar of nationalism, is used to negotiating the risk that his research and arguments may turn into what the legendary English historian Eric Hobsbawm called “a politically or ideologically explosive intervention” in the present. From the beginning, he’s clear that On Antisemitism, though it isn’t strictly about nationalism, will deal at length with Israeli nationalist—that is, Zionist—ideology. It has to. The intellectual arc Mazower traces is the transformation of antisemitism’s meaning from persecution of Jews on ethnic or religious grounds to any criticism of anything Jews do, even if the Jews in question are the government and defense forces of the state of Israel. That transformation is intertwined with the historical evolution of Zionism, and Mazower does not think that it’s good for the Jews.

Growing up, I understood antisemitism as a form of discrimination that nearly killed my great-grandparents. My grandparents faced it in serious ways, my parents in smaller ones, and I, an American Jew born in 1991, hardly ever encountered it at all. When I did, the experiences were minor, almost laughable. But during Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza, when I was in my early twenties, I repeatedly found myself in conversations where my interlocutor referred to Israel as “you” or “you guys,” as if I were directly involved in its choices and campaigns. I thought this was antisemitic. I still do. Over the course of that invasion, though, I came to understand that my concept of antisemitism wasn’t universal. It seemed to be the inverse of what some others believed. According not only to the acquaintances I thought were antisemitic, but to a good number of the Jews around me and to the Israeli government itself, my Jewishness meant I was automatically associated with Israel. My ethnicity roped me into its nationalist program, even though I had no desire to live there and was politically opposed to Zionism. In fact, that opposition, which frequently manifested as critique of Israel, was, according to the Zionists around me, itself antisemitic. I’d thought I was an American Jew, but apparently, I was an Israeli antisemite.

All of this was immensely confusing in 2014. In the last two years, it’s gotten much, much worse. Mazower writes in his introduction to On Antisemitism, “Anyone who takes antisemitism seriously as an ongoing problem must surely therefore be dismayed by the confusion that exists around the term, not to mention the overuse that threatens to strip it of meaning.” In part, this is a rhetorical strategy for creating consensus, since many readers who do consider criticism of Israel antisemitic also take antisemitism seriously as an issue. It’s a clear way to assert the full stakes of his work, which Americans are now seeing in real time. Since returning to the presidency, Donald Trump has harassed and tried to defund universities—starting, not coincidentally, with Columbia—on the spurious grounds that they foster antisemitism. His Department of Homeland Security has illegally detained foreign students for supporting Palestinian rights. Powerful Democrats, meanwhile, have smeared New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani with groundless claims that he’s an antisemite. It doesn’t help “Jews or anyone else,” Mazower writes, “when the ongoing struggle against discrimination and prejudice is used opportunistically to try to destroy the autonomy of universities, political freedoms, and liberty of thought itself.” In short, if we don’t agree on what antisemitism is, we—no matter who we are—risk having it used against us.