Left-Wing Anti-Semitism

The BBC has an interesting item on the increase in anti-Semitism in Europe.

Many Jews in Europe say anti-Semitism is increasing, particularly on the internet, according to a survey by the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA). 

The survey of 5,847 Jewish people said 66% of those who responded considered anti-Semitism to be a problem. 

Three out of four respondents, 76%, believed anti-Semitism had increased over the past five years. 

The survey was carried out in 2012 in eight countries which are home to about 90% of the EU's Jewish population.

The full report can be found here.

What I find most interesting, from a historical perspective, about this latest manifestation of European anti-Semitism is that it is most prevalent among those with leftist political views, while such views were once found much more on the political right.

The respondents were asked to describe the political/religious views of those who they had observed involved in anti-Semitic remarks or actions in the past twelve months. The results:

The overall gap between left-wing and right-wing incidents is fourteen points, but it is much greater than that in western Europe – the overall numbers are distorted greatly by Hungary, where there is a strong neo-fascist movement (I believe that fascism is not right-wing, but that is a subject for another day).

When we consider only the six countries from the west, the unweighted averages are Left 58% and Right 36%.

While examining these results at country level, notable differences between EU Member States emerge. More respondents in Hungary, for example, tend to describe the person(s) involved in making negative comments about Jews as someone with a right-wing political view (79 %), while respondents in France (67 %) and Italy (62 %) were more likely than respondents from other countries to mention someone with a left-wing political view.

Historically, as mentioned, European anti-Semitism was found most strongly in the far right, probably the far right’s roots in monarchism created a connection to clericalism, which also tended to be pro-monarchist.

I think this new form of anti-Semitism has several causes.

One is that leftist sympathy for Palestinians has led to a broader embrace of Islam, with all its sense of victimization. As an aside, it has been amusing to see so many leftists studiously ignore, or even make excuses for, the most extreme homophobia in the world, as practiced in Arab countries, while simultaneously advocating for gay rights in the west.

Leftist hostility toward religion, and most especially those religions that represent the traditional Judeo-Christian culture of the west, also plays a major role, I think.

Meanwhile, even the most extreme right no longer has ties to monarchism and clericalism. Though religion certainly plays a major role in many rightist movements in the west, and especially in the US, it’s a different sort of religion than it once was, and one that is sympathetic rather than hostile, for the most part, to Judaism. Among some on the Christian right, I understand that they look at the existence of Israel as an important step in hastening the Second Coming (I'm not sure how big a role this plays).

Beyond religion, hostility toward western culture in general (a curious case of self-hatred) seems to motivate many on the left, and adds to their hatred of Israel, which they see as an outpost of the west. Although they try to differentiate this aspect of their hate as anti-Zionism, in practice it is indistinguishable from anti-Semitism.

That it is more prevalent on the left is in no way meant to minimize anti-Semitism on the right, of course. Nor does the fact that the survey was conducted in Europe mean that anti-Semitism is not far too prevalent in the US (where, I suspect but can't prove, the left/right divide on this point is even greater).