The most worrying increase in antisemitism, Cas Mudde writes, is in terms of incidents which have exploded in the US since Trump’s election The terrorist attack on a San Diego synagogue, six months to the date after the terrorist attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue, was yet another painful reminder of two disturbing facts: (1) antisemitism is alive and deadly; and (2) antisemitism is part of the polarized partisan debate. As three victims were still being cared for in a San Diego hospital, conservatives from Meghan McCain to Zionist of America (ZOA) president Morton Klein were trying to link the terrorist attack to Muslim members of Congress – even though the suspected terrorist is both antisemitic and Islamophobic. Antisemitism is too serious to either ignore or instrumentalize. Often dubbed the “oldest hatred,” it is also still one of the most widely spread. According to a much-quoted 2014 survey by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), more than 1 billion people in the world “harbor antisemitic attitudes”. That is a good quarter of the global population! In western Europe the levels of antisemitism varied from 5% in the Netherlands to 69% in Greece, while in North America the range was from 9% in the US to 24% in Mexico. While the ADL study has been criticized for its methodology, the findings are overall consistent with other antisemitism studies, at least in terms of which countries are relatively high and low. Continue reading...
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