Antisemitism And Racism

This volume is designed to assist university faculty and students studying and teaching about antisemitism, racism, and other forms of prejudice. In contrast with similar volumes, it is organized around specific concepts instead of chronology or geography. It promotes conversation about antisemitism across disciplinary, geographic, and thematic lines rather than privileging a single methodological paradigm, a specific academic field, or an overarching narrative. Its twenty-one chapters by leading scholars in diverse fields address the relationship to antisemitism of concepts ranging from Anti-Judaism to Zionism. Each chapter not only traces the history and major scholarly debates around a key concept; it also presents an original argument, points to avenues for further research, and exemplifies a method of investigation.

The growing threat of antisemitism, racism and Islamophobia within the European political landscape poses urgent and difficult questions. These questions concern both commonalities and connections between these forms of prejudice and persecution, and differences regarding their discursive functions and the image of the ‘other’ they project. In this volume we interrogate the specific forms antiracism and anti-antisemitism take in the public sphere, their representation in scholarly discourses, and the fact that they increasingly seem to be at home in separate, and sometimes antagonistic, political and academic camps. We also address the conceptual resources and research tools required to study the unity that lies behind these varied phenomena. This collection has a new introduction and brings together papers that arose out of discussions in the European Sociological Association Network on Racism and Antisemitism, published in European Societies. The chapters relate to current issues in the area of racism and anti-Semitism such as the notable impact of the Israel-Palestine conflict on antisemitism in Europe, the contested ‘antizionist’ humour of Dieudonné in France, relations between antisemitic and Islamophobic attitudes in Italy and Spain, the problem of antisemitic reactions to Islamophobia in Arab media, the historical relation of antisemitism to other kinds of racism in German literary discourse and how their study can be instructive for the investigation of antisemitism and Islamophobia today, the difficulties Marxists internationally have faced in addressing concerns about antisemitism, and current disconnections between racism and antisemitism in the human sciences. These papers raise fundamental issues of understanding the modern world. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Studies.

At the close of the twentieth century the stereotyping and demonization of 'others', whether on religious, nationalist, racist, or political grounds, has become a burning issue. Yet comparatively little attention has been paid to how and why we fabricate images of the 'other' as an enemy or 'demon' to be destroyed. This innovative book fills that gap through an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural approach that brings together a distinguished array of historians, anthropologists, psychologists, literary critics, and feminists. The historical sweep covers Greco-Roman Antiquity, the MIddle Ages, and the MOdern Era. Antisemitism receives special attention because of its longevity and centrality to the Holocaust, but it is analyzed here within the much broader framework of racism and xenophobia. The plurality of viewpoints expressed in this volume provide fascinating insights into what is common and what is unique to the many varieties of prejudice, stereotyping, demonization, and hatred.

Are antisemitism and white supremacy manifestations of a general phenomenon? Why didn't racism appear in Europe before the fourteenth century, and why did it flourish as never before in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Why did the twentieth century see institutionalized racism in its most extreme forms? Why are egalitarian societies particularly susceptible to virulent racism? What do apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, and the American South under Jim Crow have in common? How did the Holocaust advance civil rights in the United States? With a rare blend of learning, economy, and cutting insight, George Fredrickson surveys the history of Western racism from its emergence in the late Middle Ages to the present. Beginning with the medieval antisemitism that put Jews beyond the pale of humanity, he traces the spread of racist thinking in the wake of European expansionism and the beginnings of the African slave trade. And he examines how the Enlightenment and nineteenth-century romantic nationalism created a new intellectual context for debates over slavery and Jewish emancipation. Fredrickson then makes the first sustained comparison between the color-coded racism of nineteenth-century America and the antisemitic racism that appeared in Germany around the same time. He finds similarity enough to justify the common label but also major differences in the nature and functions of the stereotypes invoked. The book concludes with a provocative account of the rise and decline of the twentieth century's overtly racist regimes--the Jim Crow South, Nazi Germany, and apartheid South Africa--in the context of world historical developments. This illuminating work is the first to treat racism across such a sweep of history and geography. It is distinguished not only by its original comparison of modern racism's two most significant varieties--white supremacy and antisemitism--but also by its eminent readability.

North American Edition of the UK Bestseller How identity politics failed one particular identity. ‘a must read and if you think YOU don’t need to read it, that’s just the clue to know you do.’ SARAH SILVERMAN ‘This is a brave and necessary book.’ JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER ‘a masterpiece.’ STEPHEN FRY

Discourse and Discrimination is a study of how racism, antisemitism and ethnicism are reflected in discourse. The authors first survey five established discourse analysis approaches before providing their own model and three case-studies. Drawing on a wide range of sources, they question why racism and anti-Semitism are still virulent worldwide.

Keith Kahn-Harris argues that the controversy over antisemitism today is a symptom of a growing "selectivity" in anti-racism caused by a failure to engage with the challenges that diverse societies pose. How did antisemitism get so strange? How did hate become so clouded in controversy? And what does the strange hate of antisemitism tell us about racism and the politics of diversity today? Life-long anti-racists accused of antisemitism, life-long Jew haters declaring their love of Israel... Today, antisemitism has become selective. Non-Jews celebrate the "good Jews" and reject the "bad Jews". And its not just antisemitism that's becoming selective, racists and anti-racists alike are starting to choose the minorities they love and hate. In this passionate yet closely-argued polemic from a writer with an intimate knowledge of the antisemitism controversy, Keith Kahn-Harris argues that the emergence of strange hatreds shows how far we are from understanding what living in diverse societies really means. Strange Hate calls for us to abandon selective anti-racism and rethink how we view not just Jews and antisemitism, but the challenge of living with diversity.