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Almond | Sustainability | Sustainability
Almond production in California is concentrated mainly in the Central Valley, where the mild climate, rich soil, abundant sunshine and water supply make for ideal growing conditions. Due to the persistent droughts in California in the early 21st century, it became more difficult to raise almonds in a sustainable manner. The issue is complex because of the high amount of water needed to produce almonds: a single almond requires roughly of water to grow properly. Regulations related to water supplies are changing so some growers have destroyed their current almond orchards to replace with either younger trees or a different crop such as pistachio that needs less water.
thumb|Almond tree with blossoming flowers, Valley of Elah, Israel
Sustainability strategies implemented by the Almond Board of California and almond farmers include:
tree and soil health, and other farming practices
minimizing dust production during the harvest
bee health
irrigation guidelines for farmers
food safety
use of waste biomass as coproducts with a goal to achieve zero waste
use of solar energy during processing
job development
support of scientific research to investigate potential health benefits of consuming almonds
international education about sustainability practices |
Almond | Production | Production
+ Almonds (with shell), 2022 Country Tonnes 1,858,010 360,328 245,990 190,000 175,763 3,630,427Source: FAOSTAT of the United Nations
In 2022, world production of almonds was 3.6 million tonnes, led by the United States (table). Secondary producers were Australia and Spain. |
Almond | United States | United States
In the United States, production is concentrated in California where and six different almond varieties were under cultivation in 2017, with a yield of of shelled almonds. California production is marked by a period of intense pollination during late winter by rented commercial bees transported by truck across the U.S. to almond groves, requiring more than half of the total U.S. commercial honeybee population. The value of total U.S. exports of shelled almonds in 2016 was $3.2 billion.
All commercially grown almonds sold as food in the U.S. are sweet cultivars. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration reported in 2010 that some fractions of imported sweet almonds were contaminated with bitter almonds, which contain cyanide. |
Almond | Australia | Australia
Australia is the largest almond production region in the Southern Hemisphere. Most of the almond orchards are located along the Murray River corridor in New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. |
Almond | Spain | Spain
Spain has diverse commercial cultivars of almonds grown in Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia, Andalusia, and Aragón regions, and the Balearic Islands. Production in 2016 declined 2% nationally compared to 2015 production data.
The almond cultivar 'Marcona' is recognisably different from other almonds and is marketed by name. The kernel is short, round, relatively sweet, and delicate in texture. Its origin is unknown and has been grown in Spain for a long time; the tree is very productive, and the shell of the nut is hard. |
Almond | Toxicity | Toxicity
Bitter almonds contain 42 times higher amounts of cyanide than the trace levels found in sweet almonds. Extract of bitter almond was once used medicinally but even in small doses, effects are severe or lethal, especially in children; the cyanide must be removed before consumption. The acute oral lethal dose of cyanide for adult humans is reported to be of body weight (approximately 50 bitter almonds), so that for children consuming 5–10 bitter almonds may be fatal. Symptoms of eating such almonds include vertigo and other typical cyanide poisoning effects.
Almonds may cause allergy or intolerance. Cross-reactivity is common with peach allergens (lipid transfer proteins) and tree nut allergens. Symptoms range from local signs and symptoms (e.g., oral allergy syndrome, contact urticaria) to systemic signs and symptoms including anaphylaxis (e.g., urticaria, angioedema, gastrointestinal and respiratory symptoms).
Almonds are susceptible to aflatoxin-producing moulds. Aflatoxins are potent carcinogenic chemicals produced by moulds such as Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. The mould contamination may occur from soil, previously infested almonds, and almond pests such as navel-orange worm. High levels of mould growth typically appear as grey to black filament-like growth. It is unsafe to eat mould-infected tree nuts.
Some countries have strict limits on allowable levels of aflatoxin contamination of almonds and require adequate testing before the nuts can be marketed to their citizens. The European Union, for example, introduced a requirement since 2007 that all almond shipments to the EU be tested for aflatoxin. If aflatoxin does not meet the strict safety regulations, the entire consignment may be reprocessed to eliminate the aflatoxin or it must be destroyed.
Breeding programs have found the trait. High shell-seal provides resistance against these Aspergillus species and so against the development of their toxins. |
Almond | Mandatory pasteurization in California | Mandatory pasteurization in California
After tracing cases of salmonellosis to almonds, the USDA approved a proposal by the Almond Board of California to pasteurize almonds sold to the public. After publishing the rule in March 2007, the almond pasteurization program became mandatory for California companies effective 1 September 2007. Raw, untreated California almonds have not been available in the U.S. since then.
California almonds labeled "raw" must be steam-pasteurized or chemically treated with propylene oxide (PPO). This does not apply to imported almondsAgricultural Marketing Service (8 November 2006) "Almonds Grown in California: Changes to Incoming Quality Control Requirements" (, , and ) or almonds sold from the grower directly to the consumer in small quantities. The treatment also is not required for raw almonds sold for export outside of North America.
The Almond Board of California states: "PPO residue dissipates after treatment". The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reported: "Propylene oxide has been detected in fumigated food products; consumption of contaminated food is another possible route of exposure". PPO is classified as Group 2B ("possibly carcinogenic to humans").
The USDA-approved marketing order was challenged in court by organic farmers organized by the Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group which filed a lawsuit in September 2008. According to the institute, this almond marketing order has imposed significant financial burdens on small-scale and organic growers and damaged domestic almond markets. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in early 2009 on procedural grounds. In August 2010, a federal appeals court ruled that the farmers have a right to appeal the USDA regulation. In March 2013, the court vacated the suit on the basis that the objections should have been raised in 2007 when the regulation was first proposed. |
Almond | Uses | Uses |
Almond | Nutrition | Nutrition
thumb|Amandines de Provence, poster by Leonetto Cappiello, 1900, which shows a woman eating almond biscuits (almond cookies)
Almonds are 4% water, 22% carbohydrates, 21% protein, and 50% fat. In a reference amount, almonds supply of food energy. The almond is a nutritionally dense food, providing a rich source (20% or more of the Daily Value, DV) of the B vitamins riboflavin and niacin, vitamin E, and the essential minerals calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc. Almonds are a moderate source (10–19% DV) of the B vitamins thiamine, vitamin B6, and folate, choline, and the essential mineral potassium. They also contain substantial dietary fibre, the monounsaturated fat, oleic acid, and the polyunsaturated fat, linoleic acid. Typical of nuts and seeds, almonds are a source of phytosterols such as beta-sitosterol, stigmasterol, campesterol, sitostanol, and campestanol. |
Almond | Health | Health
Almonds are included as a good source of protein among recommended healthy foods by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). A 2016 review of clinical research indicated that regular consumption of almonds may reduce the risk of heart disease by lowering blood levels of LDL cholesterol. |
Almond | Culinary | Culinary
While the almond is often eaten on its own, raw or toasted, it is also a component of various dishes. Almonds are available in many forms, such as whole, slivered, and ground into flour. Almond pieces around in size, called "nibs", are used for special purposes such as decoration.
Almonds are a common addition to breakfast muesli or oatmeal. Colomba di Pasqua is the Easter counterpart of the two well-known Italian Christmas desserts, panettone and pandoro |
Almond | Desserts | Desserts
A wide range of classic sweets feature almonds as a central ingredient. Marzipan was developed in the Middle Ages. Since the 19th century almonds have been used to make bread, almond butter, cakes and puddings, candied confections, almond cream-filled pastries, nougat, cookies (macaroons, biscotti and qurabiya), and cakes (financiers, Esterházy torte), and other sweets and desserts.
The young, developing fruit of the almond tree can be eaten whole (green almonds) when they are still green and fleshy on the outside and the inner shell has not yet hardened. The fruit is somewhat sour, but is a popular snack in parts of the Middle East, eaten dipped in salt to balance the sour taste. Also in the Middle East they are often eaten with dates. They are available only from mid-April to mid-June in the Northern Hemisphere; pickling or brining extends the fruit's shelf life. |
Almond | Marzipan | Marzipan
Marzipan, a smooth, sweetened almond paste, is used in a number of elegant cakes and desserts. Princess cake is covered by marzipan (similar to fondant), as is Battenberg cake. In Sicily, sponge cake is covered with marzipan to make cassatella di sant'Agata and cassata siciliana, and marzipan is dyed and crafted into realistic fruit shapes to make frutta martorana. The Andalusian Christmas pastry pan de Cádiz is filled with marzipan and candied fruit. |
Almond | World cuisines | World cuisines
In French cuisine, alternating layers of almond and hazelnut meringue are used to make the dessert dacquoise. Pithivier is one of many almond cream-filled pastries.
In Germany, Easter bread called Deutsches Osterbrot is baked with raisins and almonds.
In Greece almond flour is used to make amygdalopita, a glyka tapsiou dessert cake baking in a tray. Almonds are used for kourabiedes, a Greek version of the traditional quarabiya almond biscuits. A soft drink known as soumada is made from almonds in various regions.
In Saudi Arabia, almonds are a typical embellishment for the rice dish kabsa.
In Iran, green almonds are dipped in sea salt and eaten as snacks on street markets; they are called chaqale bâdam. Candied almonds called noghl are served alongside tea and coffee. Also, sweet almonds are used to prepare special food for babies, named harire badam. Almonds are added to some foods, cookies, and desserts, or are used to decorate foods. People in Iran consume roasted nuts for special events, for example, during New Year (Nowruz) parties.
In Italy, colomba di Pasqua is a traditional Easter cake made with almonds. Bitter almonds are the base for amaretti cookies, a common dessert. Almonds are also a common choice as the nuts to include in torrone.
In Morocco, almonds in the form of sweet almond paste are the main ingredient in pastry fillings, and several other desserts. Fried blanched whole almonds are also used to decorate sweet tajines such as lamb with prunes. Southwestern Berber regions of Essaouira and Souss are also known for amlou, a spread made of almond paste, argan oil, and honey. Almond paste is also mixed with toasted flour and among others, honey, olive oil or butter, anise, fennel, sesame seeds, and cinnamon to make sellou (also called zamita in Meknes or slilou in Marrakech), a sweet snack known for its long shelf life and high nutritive value.
In Indian cuisine, almonds are the base ingredients of pasanda-style and Mughlai curries. Badam halva is a sweet made from almonds with added colouring. Almond flakes are added to many sweets (such as sohan barfi), and are usually visible sticking to the outer surface. Almonds form the base of various drinks which are supposed to have cooling properties. Almond sherbet or sherbet-e-badaam, is a common summer drink. Almonds are also sold as a snack with added salt.
In Israel almonds are used as a topping for tahini cookies or eaten as a snack.
In Spain Marcona almonds are usually toasted in oil and lightly salted. They are used by Spanish confectioners to prepare a sweet called turrón.
In Arabian cuisine, almonds are commonly used as garnishing for Mansaf.
In British cuisine, almonds are used for dessert items such as Bakewell tart and Battenberg cake. |
Almond | Milk | Milk
Almonds can be processed into a milk substitute called almond milk; the nut's soft texture, mild flavour, and light colouring (when skinned) make for an efficient analog to dairy, and a soy-free choice for lactose intolerant people and vegans. Raw, blanched, and lightly toasted almonds work well for different production techniques, some of which are similar to that of soy milk and some of which use no heat, resulting in raw milk.
Almond milk, along with almond butter and almond oil, are versatile products used in both sweet and savoury dishes.
In Moroccan cuisine, sharbat billooz, a common beverage, is made by blending blanched almonds with milk, sugar and other flavourings. |
Almond | Flour and skins | Flour and skins
Almond flour or ground almond meal combined with sugar or honey as marzipan is often used as a gluten-free alternative to wheat flour in cooking and baking.
Almonds contain polyphenols in their skins consisting of flavonols, flavan-3-ols, hydroxybenzoic acids and flavanones analogous to those of certain fruits and vegetables. These phenolic compounds and almond skin prebiotic dietary fibre have commercial interest as food additives or dietary supplements. |
Almond | Syrup | Syrup
Historically, almond syrup was an emulsion of sweet and bitter almonds, usually made with barley syrup (orgeat syrup) or in a syrup of orange flower water and sugar, often flavoured with a synthetic aroma of almonds. Orgeat syrup is an important ingredient in the Mai Tai and many other Tiki drinks.
Due to the cyanide found in bitter almonds, modern syrups generally are produced only from sweet almonds. Such syrup products do not contain significant levels of hydrocyanic acid, so are generally considered safe for human consumption. |
Almond | Oils | Oils
thumb|left|upright=0.5|Almond oil
Almonds are a rich source of oil, with 50% of kernel dry mass as fat (whole almond nutrition table). In relation to total dry mass of the kernel, almond oil contains 32% monounsaturated oleic acid (an omega-9 fatty acid), 13% linoleic acid (a polyunsaturated omega-6 essential fatty acid), and 10% saturated fatty acid (mainly as palmitic acid). Linolenic acid, a polyunsaturated omega-3 fat, is not present (table). Almond oil is a rich source of vitamin E, providing 261% of the Daily Value per 100 millilitres.
When almond oil is analyzed separately and expressed per 100 grams as a reference mass, the oil provides of food energy, 8 grams of saturated fat (81% of which is palmitic acid), 70 grams of oleic acid, and 17 grams of linoleic acid (oil table).
Oleum amygdalae, the fixed oil, is prepared from either sweet or bitter almonds, and is a glyceryl oleate with a slight odour and a nutty taste. It is almost insoluble in alcohol but readily soluble in chloroform or ether. Almond oil is obtained from the dried kernel of almonds. Sweet almond oil is used as a carrier oil in aromatherapy and cosmetics while bitter almond oil, containing benzaldehyde, is used as a food flavouring and in perfume. |
Almond | In culture | In culture
thumb|1897 illustrationillustration from Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen, 1897
The almond is highly revered in some cultures. The tree originated in the Middle East. In the Bible, the almond is mentioned ten times, beginning with Genesis 43:11, where it is described as "among the best of fruits". In Numbers 17, Levi is chosen from the other tribes of Israel by Aaron's rod, which brought forth almond flowers. The almond blossom supplied a model for the menorah which stood in the Holy Temple, "Three cups, shaped like almond blossoms, were on one branch, with a knob and a flower; and three cups, shaped like almond blossoms, were on the other … on the candlestick itself were four cups, shaped like almond blossoms, with its knobs and flowers" (Exodus 25:33–34; 37:19–20). Many Sephardic Jews give five almonds to each guest before special occasions like weddings.
Similarly, Christian symbolism often uses almond branches as a symbol of the virgin birth of Jesus; paintings and icons often include almond-shaped haloes encircling the Christ Child and as a symbol of Mary. The word "luz", which appears in Genesis 30:37, sometimes translated as "hazel", may actually be derived from the Aramaic name for almond (Luz), and is translated as such in the New International Version and other versions of the Bible. The Arabic name for almond is لوز "lauz" or "lūz". In some parts of the Levant and North Africa, it is pronounced "loz", which is very close to its Aramaic origin.
The Entrance of the flower (La entrada de la flor) is an event celebrated on 1 February in Torrent, Spain, in which the clavarios and members of the Confrerie of the Mother of God deliver a branch of the first-blooming almond-tree to the Virgin. |
Almond | See also | See also
Fruit tree forms
Fruit tree propagation
Fruit tree pruning
List of almond dishes
List of edible seeds
Candied almonds
Dragée – a candy. |
Almond | References | References |
Almond | External links | External links
University of California Fruit and Nut Research and Information Center
Almond
Category:Edible nuts and seeds
Category:Flora of temperate Asia
Category:Pollination management
Category:Snack foods
Almond oil
Category:Crops
Category:Fruit trees
Category:Symbols of California
Category:Taxa named by August Batsch
Category:Drought-tolerant trees |
Almond | Table of Content | short description, Description, Taxonomy, Sweet and bitter almonds, Etymology, Origin and distribution, Cultivation, Varieties, Breeding, Pollination, Diseases, Pests, Sustainability, Production, United States, Australia, Spain, Toxicity, Mandatory pasteurization in California, Uses, Nutrition, Health, Culinary, Desserts, Marzipan, World cuisines, Milk, Flour and skins, Syrup, Oils, In culture, See also, References, External links |
Demographics of Antigua and Barbuda | Short description | 350px|alt=|thumb|upright=1.4| Antigua and Barbuda population pyramid in 2020.
This article is a demography of the population of Antigua and Barbuda including population density, ethnicity, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population. |
Demographics of Antigua and Barbuda | Population size and structure | Population size and structure
thumb|300px|right|Population of Antigua and Barbuda, Data of FAO, year 2005; Number of inhabitants in thousands.
According to the 2011 census the estimated resident population of Antigua and Barbuda was 86,295.
The estimated population of is , according to |
Demographics of Antigua and Barbuda | Structure of the population | Structure of the population
Table: Population by Sex and Age Group (Census 27.V.2011):
Age GroupMaleFemaleTotal% Total 40 986 44 581 85 567 100 0–4 3 361 3 262 6 623 7.74 5–9 3 272 3 188 6 460 7.55 10–14 3 690 3 638 7 329 8.57 15–19 3 554 3 519 7 073 8.27 20–24 3 206 3 418 6 624 7.74 25–29 3 135 3 512 6 647 7.77 30–34 3 101 3 516 6 617 7.73 35–39 3 049 3 699 6 748 7.89 40–44 3 124 3 588 6 712 7.84 45–49 2 893 3 348 6 241 7.29 50–54 2 416 2 694 5 110 5.97 55–59 1 763 1 957 3 721 4.35 60–64 1 398 1 569 2 968 3.47 65–69 1 066 1 172 2 238 2.62 70–74 690 810 1 500 1.75 75–79 527 654 1 181 1.38 80–84 331 520 850 0.99 85–89 214 298 512 0.60 90–94 72 122 193 0.23 95+ 27 57 84 0.10Age groupMaleFemaleTotalPercent 0–14 10 323 10 088 20 411 23.85 15–64 27 640 30 820 58 460 68.32 65+ 2 927 3 633 6 560 7.67 unknown 96 40 136 0.16
Table: Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (01.VII.2021, based on the results of the 2011 Population Census.
Age GroupMaleFemaleTotal% Total 47 556 51 781 99 337 100 0–4 3 534 3 464 6 998 7.04 5–9 3 546 3 483 7 029 7.08 10–14 3 620 3 511 7 131 7.18 15–19 3 473 3 387 6 860 6.91 20–24 3 961 3 944 7 905 7.96 25–29 3 892 3 930 7 822 7.87 30–34 3 511 3 795 7 306 7.35 35–39 3 348 3 815 7 163 7.21 40–44 3 280 3 749 7 029 7.08 45–49 3 174 3 850 7 024 7.07 50–54 3 152 3 662 6 814 6.86 55–59 2 819 3 345 6 164 6.21 60–64 2 247 2 627 4 874 4.91 65–69 1 532 1 834 3 366 3.39 70–74 1 095 1 379 2 474 2.49 75–79 698 920 1 618 1.63 80+ 674 1 086 1 760 1.77Age group MaleFemaleTotalPercent 0–14 10 700 10 458 21 158 21.30 15–64 32 857 36 104 68 961 69.42 65+ 3 999 5 219 9 218 9.28 |
Demographics of Antigua and Barbuda | Vital statistics | Vital statistics
Average populationLive birthsDeathsNatural changeCrude birth rate (per 1000)Crude death rate (per 1000)Natural change (per 1000)Infant mortality rateTFR 1950 ~46 0001 654 5351 11935.711.624.2 1951 ~48 0001 676 6051 07134.712.522.2 1952 ~50 0001 612 5261 08632.310.521.8 1953 ~51 0001 687 5991 08833.011.721.3 1954 ~52 0001 660 5321 12831.910.221.7 1955 ~53 0001 880 5161 36435.79.825.9 1956 ~53 0001 917 4971 42036.19.426.8 1957 ~53 0001 764 5121 25233.09.623.4 1958 ~54 0001 818 5511 26733.810.323.6 1959 ~54 0001 831 5171 31433.89.524.3 1960 ~55 0001 878 5381 34034.39.824.5 1961 ~55 0001 768 5031 26531.99.122.8 1962 ~56 0001 787 4051 38231.77.224.5 1963 ~57 0001 833 5741 25932.010.021.9 1964 ~59 0001 886 5001 38632.28.523.7 1965 ~60 0001 742 4841 25829.28.121.1 1966 ~61 0001 745 4921 25328.78.120.6 1967 ~62 0001 794 4401 35428.97.121.8 1968 ~63 0001 811 5131 29828.78.120.5 1969 ~64 0001 527 4101 11723.76.417.4 1970 ~65 0001 540 4111 12923.66.317.3 1971 ~66 0001 700 4141 28625.66.219.4 1972 ~67 0001 573 4551 11823.46.816.6 1973 ~68 0001 257 377 88018.55.512.9 1974 ~69 0001 274 496 77818.67.211.3 1975 ~69 0001 336 463 87319.36.712.6 1976 ~70 0001 522 4911 03121.87.014.8 1977 ~70 0001 429 489 94020.37.013.4 1978 ~71 0001 342 402 94019.05.713.3 1979 ~71 0001 397 469 92819.86.613.2 1980 ~70 0001 238 387 85117.65.512.1 1981 ~70 0001 177377 80016.95.411.5 1982 ~69 0001 152 394 75816.75.711.0 1983 ~68 0001 174 404 77017.35.911.3 1984 ~67 0001 126 386 74016.85.811.1 1985 ~66 0001 190 405 78518.16.211.9 1986 ~65 0001 130 383 74717.55.911.6 1987 ~63 0001 104 417 68717.46.610.8 1988 ~63 0001 107 389 71817.76.211.5 1989 ~62 0001 137 415 72218.36.711.7 1990 ~62 0001 288 433 85520.87.013.8 1991 63 8781 178 438 74018.97.011.9 1992 64 6821 256 442 81419.87.012.8 1993 65 5051 228 455 77318.97.011.9 1994 66 4161 271 451 82019.16.812.3 1995 67 6081 347 434 91319.76.313.4 1996 68 6121 400 429 97119.96.113.8 1997 68 8901 448 468 98020.06.513.6 1998 69 8661 366 456 91018.46.112.3 1999 70 8561 329 509 82017.56.710.8 2000 72 3101 528 4471 08119.76.213.5 2001 76 8861 350 462 88817.66.011.617.8 2002 77 6651 193 444 74915.45.79.717.6 2003 78 4121 227 454 77315.75.89.914.7 2004 79 1961 257 516 74115.96.59.422.3 2005 80 0071 190 497 69314.96.28.713.51.6 2006 80 8551 195 465 73014.85.89.08.41.6 2007 81 7361 282 471 81115.75.89.917.91.86 2008 82 6631 438 538 90017.46.510.917.42.06 2009 83 6241 404 515 88916.86.210.614.32.02 2010 84 6221 245 498 74714.75.98.812.91.78 2011 85 5671 232 475 75714.45.68.820.31.75 2012 86 7931 174 507 66713.55.87.716.21.66 2013 88 0691 093463 63012.45.37.111.01.53 2014 89 3911 100590 51012.36.65.711.81.53 2015 90 7551 159527 63212.85.87.08.61.58 2016 92 1571 063542 52111.55.95.612.21.45 2017 93 5811 108599 50911.86.45.49.01.50 2018 95 0141 015 58143410.76.14.622.71.36 2019 96 4531 088618 47011.36.05.312.01.45 2020 97 8951 163 574 58911.96.05.96.01.53 2021 99 337 649 6.6 2022 100 772 |
Demographics of Antigua and Barbuda | Ethnic groups | Ethnic groups
The population of Antigua and Barbuda, is predominantly black (91.0%) or mixed (4.4%). 1.9% of the population is white and 0.7% East Indian. There is also a small Amerindian population: 177 in 1991 and 214 in 2001 (0.3% of the total population). The remaining 1.6% of the population includes people from the Middle East (0.6%) and China (0.2%).
The 2001 census disclosed that 19,425, or 30 per cent of the total population of Antigua and Barbuda, reported their place of birth as a foreign country. Over 15,000 of these persons were from other Caribbean states, representing 80 of the total foreign born. The main countries of
origin were Guyana, Dominica and Jamaica. Approximately 4,500 or 23 per cent of all foreign
born came from Guyana, 3,300 or 17 per cent came from Dominica and 2,800 or 14 per cent
came from Jamaica. The largest single group from a country outside the region came from the
United States. Of the total of 1,715 persons, nine per cent of the foreign born, came
from the United States while three per cent and one per cent came from the United Kingdom and Canada, respectively. Many of these are the children of Antiguans and Barbudans who had emigrated to these countries, mainly during the 1980s, and subsequently returned. |
Demographics of Antigua and Barbuda | Languages | Languages
Antiguan and Barbudan Creole, English |
Demographics of Antigua and Barbuda | Religion | Religion
Protestant 68.3% (Anglican 17.6%, Seventh Day Adventist 12.4%, Pentecostal 12.2%, Moravian 8.3%, Methodist 5.6%, Wesleyan Holiness 4.5%, Church of God 4.1%, Baptist 3.6%), Roman Catholic 8.2%, other 12.2%, unspecified 5.5%, none 5.9% (2011 est.) |
Demographics of Antigua and Barbuda | References | References |
Demographics of Antigua and Barbuda | External links | External links
*– National Bureau of Statistics of Antigua & Barbuda
Antigua & Barbuda profile – Caribbean Community Statistics
Category:Society of Antigua and Barbuda |
Demographics of Antigua and Barbuda | Table of Content | Short description, Population size and structure, Structure of the population, Vital statistics, Ethnic groups, Languages, Religion, References, External links |
Politics of Antigua and Barbuda | Short description | The politics of Antigua and Barbuda takes place in a framework of a unitary parliamentary representative democratic monarchy, wherein the sovereign of Antigua and Barbuda is the head of state, appointing a governor-general to act as vice-regal representative in the nation. A prime minister is appointed by the governor-general as the head of government, and of a multi-party system; the prime minister advises the governor-general on the appointment of a Council of Ministers. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of the Parliament. The bicameral Parliament consists of the Senate (seventeen-member body appointed by the governor-general) and the House of Representatives (seventeen seats; members are elected by proportional representation to serve five-year terms).
Antigua and Barbuda has a long history of peaceful changes of government. Since the 1951 general election, the party system has been dominated by the Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party (ABLP), for a long time was dominated by the Bird family, particularly Prime Ministers Vere and Lester Bird. The opposition claimed to be disadvantaged by the ABLP's longstanding monopoly on patronage and its control of the media, especially in the 1999 general election. The opposition United Progressive Party (UPP) won the 2004 election, and its leader Winston Baldwin Spencer was prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda from 2004 to 2014.
The elections to the House of Representatives were held on 12 June 2014. The Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party government was elected with fourteen seats. The United Progressive Party had three seats in the House of Representatives. ABLP won 15 of the 17 seats in the 2018 snap election under the leadership of incumbent Prime Minister Gaston Browne.
Constitutional safeguards include freedom of speech, press, worship, movement, and association. Antigua and Barbuda is a member of the eastern Caribbean court system. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. Jurisprudence is based on English common law. |
Politics of Antigua and Barbuda | Executive branch | Executive branch |
Politics of Antigua and Barbuda | Executive branch leadership | Executive branch leadership
As head of state, King Charles III is represented in Antigua and Barbuda by a governor-general who acts on the advice of the prime minister and the cabinet. |
Politics of Antigua and Barbuda | Legislative branch | Legislative branch
250px|thumbnail|left|The parliament building in St. John's.
Antigua and Barbuda elects on national level a legislature. Parliament has two chambers. The House of Representatives has 19 members: 17 members elected for a five-year term in single-seat constituencies, and 2 ex officio members (president and speaker). The Senate has 17 appointed members. The prime minister is the leader of the majority party in the House and conducts affairs of state with the cabinet. The prime minister and the cabinet are responsible to the Parliament. Elections must be held at least every five years but may be called by the prime minister at any time.
There are special legislative provisions to account for Barbuda's low population relative to that of Antigua. Barbuda is guaranteed one member of the House of Representatives and two members of the Senate. In addition, there is a Barbuda Council to govern the internal affairs of the island. |
Politics of Antigua and Barbuda | Political parties and elections | Political parties and elections |
Politics of Antigua and Barbuda | Administrative divisions | Administrative divisions
thumb|Map of Antigua's six parishes
The country is divided into six parishes, Saint George, John, Mary, Paul, Peter, and Phillip which are all on the island of Antigua. Additionally, the islands of Barbuda and Redonda are considered dependencies. |
Politics of Antigua and Barbuda | Judicial branch | Judicial branch
Antigua and Barbuda is a member of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court. This court is headquartered in Saint Lucia, but at least one judge of the Supreme Court resides in Antigua and Barbuda, and presides over the High Court. The current High Court judges are Nicola Byer, Ann-Marie Smith, Jan Drysdale, Rene Williams, and Tunde Bakre as of September 2024.
Antigua is also a member of the Caribbean Court of Justice, although it has not yet acceded to Part III of the 2001 Agreement Establishing a Caribbean Court of Justice.Agreement Establishing a Caribbean Court of Justice , available here. Its supreme appellate court therefore remains the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Indeed, of the signatories to the Agreement, as of December 2010, only Barbados has replaced appeals to Her Majesty in Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice.
In addition to the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, Antigua and Barbuda has a Magistrates' Court, which deals with lesser civil and criminal cases. |
Politics of Antigua and Barbuda | Movements | Movements
Republicanism in Antigua and Barbuda
Federalism in Antigua and Barbuda
Barbudan independence movement |
Politics of Antigua and Barbuda | Political pressure groups and leaders | Political pressure groups and leaders
Antigua Trades and Labour Union
People's Democratic Movement |
Politics of Antigua and Barbuda | International organisation participation | International organisation participation
Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States
ALBA
Caribbean Community
Caribbean Development Bank
Community of Latin American and Caribbean States
Commonwealth of Nations
United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
Food and Agriculture Organization
Group of 77
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
International Civil Aviation Organization
International Criminal Court
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
International Fund for Agricultural Development
International Finance Corporation
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
International Labour Organization
International Monetary Fund
International Maritime Organization
Intelsat (nonsignatory user)
Interpol
International Olympic Committee
International Telecommunication Union
Non-Aligned Movement (observer)
Organization of American States
Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States
OPANAL
United Nations
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNESCO
Universal Postal Union
World Confederation of Labour
World Federation of Trade Unions
World Health Organization
World Meteorological Organization
World Trade Organization |
Politics of Antigua and Barbuda | References | References
|
Politics of Antigua and Barbuda | Table of Content | Short description, Executive branch, Executive branch leadership, Legislative branch, Political parties and elections, Administrative divisions, Judicial branch, Movements, Political pressure groups and leaders, International organisation participation, References |
Telecommunications in Antigua and Barbuda | Short description |
Telecommunications in Antigua and Barbuda are via media in the telecommunications industry. |
Telecommunications in Antigua and Barbuda | Telephone | Telephone
Telephones – main lines in use: 37,500 (2006)
country comparison to the world: 168
Telephones – mobile cellular: 110,200 (2006) (APUA PCS, Cable & Wireless, Digicel)
country comparison to the world: 177
Telephone system:
domestic: good automatic telephone system
international: 3 fiber optic submarine cables (2 to Saint Kitts and 1 to Guadeloupe); satellite earth station – 1 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean) |
Telecommunications in Antigua and Barbuda | Radio | Radio
Radio broadcast stations: AM 4, FM 6, shortwave 0 (2002)
+ Radio Stations of Antigua and Barbuda Band / Freq. Call Sign Brand City of license Notes AM 620 V2C ABS Radio and TV Saint John's, Antigua ABS; 5 kW AM 1100 ZDK Radio ZDK Saint John's, Antigua Owner: Grenville Radio; 20 kW AM 1160 Unknown Radio Lighthouse Saint John's, Antigua 10 kW AM 1580 Unknown Unknown Judge Bay, Antigua 50 kW FM 88.5 Unknown Power FM Saint John's, Antigua FM 89.7 Unknown Catholic Radio Saint John's, Antigua 2 kW FM 90.5 V2C-FM ABS Radio and TV Saint John's, Antigua repeats AM 620 FM 91.1 Unknown Observer Radio Saint John's, Antigua FM 91.9 Unknown Hitz 91.9 Saint John's, Antigua FM 92.3 Unknown Radio Lighthouse Saint John's, Antigua repeats AM 1160 FM 92.9 VYBZ-FM Vybz FM Saint John's, Antigua FM 93.9 Unknown Caribbean SuperStation Saint John's, Antigua repeats Caribbean SuperStation from Trinidad FM 95.7 Unknown Zoom Radio Saint John's, Antigua FM 97.1 ZDK Radio ZDK Saint John's, Antigua repeats AM 1100 FM 98.5 Unknown Red Hot Radio Saint John's, Antigua FM 99.1 Unknown Hit Radio Music Power Saint John's, Antigua FM 100.1 Unknown (ZDKR-FM?) Sun FM Saint John's, Antigua FM 101.5 Unknown Second Advent Radio Saint John's, Antigua 20 watts FM 102.3 Unknown Variety Radio Saint John's, Antigua FM 103.1 Unknown Life FM Codrington, Barbuda 1 kW FM 103.9 Unknown Life FM Saint John's, Antigua repeats 103.1 Codrington FM 104.3 Unknown Nice FM Codrington, Barbuda FM 107.3 Unknown Crusader Radio Saint John's, Antigua SW 3.255 mHz V2C ABS Radio and TV Saint John's, Antigua Repeats AM 620
Radios: 36,000 (1997) |
Telecommunications in Antigua and Barbuda | Television | Television
Television broadcast stations: 2 (1997) (including ABS-TV)
Televisions: 31,000 (1997) |
Telecommunications in Antigua and Barbuda | Internet | Internet
Internet Service Providers (ISPs): Cable & Wireless, Antigua Computer Technologies (ACT), Antigua Public Utilities Authority (APUA INET)
Internet hosts: 2,215 (2008)
country comparison to the world: 140
Internet users: 60,000 (2007)
country comparison to the world: 158
Country codes: AG |
Telecommunications in Antigua and Barbuda | Demographics | Demographics
+Internet Users by EthnicityQ48 EthnicQ55 Internet UseYesNoDon't know/Not statedAfrican descendent47.42%50.74%1.84%Caucasian/White83.27%16.03%0.70%East Indian/India58.66%40.08%1.26%Mixed (Black/White)64.34%33.35%2.31%Mixed (Other)61.22%37.62%1.16%Hispanic31.78%66.80%1.42%Syrian/Lebanese60.77%36.76%2.48%Other59.46%39.71%0.83%Don't know/Not stated20.58%70.61%8.81%Total48.35%49.81%1.84%
+Household internet access by ethnicityQ48 EthnicQ25 4 Internet accessNoYesDon't know/not declaredAfrican descendent51.99%38.20%9.81%Caucasian/White14.56%82.83%2.61%East Indian/India36.63%54.93%8.44%Mixed (Black/White)39.47%54.60%5.93%Mixed (Other)41.76%51.53%6.71%Hispanic67.68%20.56%11.76%Syrian/Lebanese29.48%69.39%1.13%Other34.02%58.96%7.02%Don't know/Not stated53.86%27.58%18.56%Total50.83%39.61%9.57% |
Telecommunications in Antigua and Barbuda | See also | See also
Antigua and Barbuda
History of telecommunication
List of telecommunications terminology
Outline of telecommunication |
Telecommunications in Antigua and Barbuda | References | References |
Telecommunications in Antigua and Barbuda | External links | External links
Antigua and Barbuda, SubmarineCableMap.com
Antigua and Barbuda
Antigua |
Telecommunications in Antigua and Barbuda | Table of Content | Short description, Telephone, Radio, Television, Internet, Demographics, See also, References, External links |
Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force | Short description | The Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force (ABDF) is the armed forces of Antigua and Barbuda. The ABDF has responsibility for several different roles: internal security, prevention of drug smuggling, the protection and support of fishing rights, prevention of marine pollution, search and rescue, ceremonial duties, assistance to government programs, provision of relief during natural disasters, assistance in the maintenance of essential services, and support of the police in maintaining law and order. The force entered its current form on 20 December 1995.
The ABDF is one of the world's smallest militaries, consisting of 245 personnel. The first militia in Antigua was established in the 1600s, having fought against the French capture of the island in 1666. The governor oversaw the force, and by 1820 the island had a 945-man militia. The island continued to maintain this force for much of the colonial era, and by 1 September 1981 the Antigua Volunteer Defence Force was renamed to the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force preceding independence. The force has undergone various reforms, and the present force was reestablished on 1 June 1956. |
Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force | Organisation | Organisation
thumb|right|200px|380X Defender of the ABDF Coast Guard during the "Tradewinds 2013" joint training-exercise
The ABDF consists of five branches:
Antigua and Barbuda Regiment – comprises four line companies and is the infantry unit and fighting arm of the defence force.
Service and Support Unit – provides administrative, logistic and engineer support to the rest of the defence force.
Coast Guard – the maritime element of the defence force.
Air Wing – the aerial element of the defence force.
Cadet Corps – voluntary youth organisation. |
Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force | Defence Board | Defence Board
The Defence Board is in charge of overseeing the leadership, management, and discipline of the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force as well as all other matters pertaining to it. The Defence Board has the authority to govern its work, how it will carry out its duties, and the responsibilities of its members. It can also assign any member of the Board any authority or duty, by publishing a notice in the Official Gazette; consult with non-members as appropriate, including officers commanding units of the Force, regarding matters pertaining to their units; and the officers are required to attend the meetings as the Board requests; decide on the protocol to be followed in conducting its business; and provide for any other matter that it deems necessary or desirable for achieving the better performance of its functions. |
Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force | Officers | Officers
A person cannot be appointed to the force unless they have received a recommendation from a board, known as the Commissions Board in the Defence Act. This board is made up of the chairman, who is appointed by the Chief of Defence Staff; the Chairman of the Public Service Commission, or in his absence, the Vice Chairman of the Public Service Commission; and an individual appointed by the Defence Board for a duration determined by the Board. His Majesty has the authority to appoint people to the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force, and the Governor-General may act in that capacity. A commission may be awarded for a predetermined amount of time or for an unlimited amount of time. |
Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force | Reserve forces | Reserve forces
There are two classes in the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force Reserve. The soldiers enlisted, deemed to be enlisted, or re-engaged in accordance with this Part for service in that class; the Reserve soldiers of the second class who have, upon written application to the appropriate military authority, been accepted by that authority for service in the first class; and the soldiers transferred to the first class in accordance with section 31 of the Defence Act comprise the first class. The soldiers who are members of the second class by virtue of Part IV of the Defence Act, the officers who are appointed or transferred to that class, and the soldiers who are enlisted, deemed to be enlisted, or re-engaged in accordance with Part IX of the Defence Act for service in that class are all included in the second class.
Each officer and soldier in the first class of the Reserve is required to report for duty at the location and for the duration determined by the Defence Board. They are also required to meet all training-related requirements. Subject to any general directives from the Defence Board, the requirements of the related section may be disregarded in whole or in part with regard to any unit of the first class of the Reserve, as well as with regard to any individual officer or soldier of the first class of the Reserve, by his commanding officer. Nothing stops a Reserve officer or soldier from participating in optional training in addition to any mandated training.
The first class of the Reserve, or as many officers and soldiers of that class as the Board deems necessary, may be called out on temporary duty by the Defence Board when needed. Under section 203, officers and soldiers who are called out for duty are not required to serve for more than ninety days at a time. Because the worker is a Reserve member who is called out in accordance with the section, no employer may fire or give notice of termination to any worker. When an employer violates, they are guilty of a crime and face a maximum fine of $5,000, a maximum sentence of two (2) years in jail, or both. This applies even in cases of summary conviction.
The Governor-General may, on the advice of the Prime Minister, by proclamation order that the Reserve, or any class thereof, be called out on permanent service in the event of a state of war, insurrection, hostilities, or public emergency; the Defence Board will then take appropriate action. When called out on permanent duty, every Reserve officer and soldier is eligible to stay on permanent duty until told otherwise. Every officer and soldier belonging to such a class, as the case may be, to the part of any class so called out, shall attend in person at the designated location whenever the whole or any part of the first class of the Reserve is called out on temporary or permanent service; or whenever the whole or any part of the second class of the Reserve is called out on permanent service. The Defence Board shall cause every officer or soldier subject to such call-out to be served with a notice requiring him to attend at the time and place specified in the notice in the event that the first class of the Reserve is called out on temporary service or the Reserve is called out on permanent service.
An officer of the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force may file a summarily complaint against a person who willfully takes away pawns, wrongfully destroys or damages, carelessly loses anything issued to him as an officer or soldier of the Reserve, or willfully refuses or fails to deliver up anything issued to him as an officer or soldier as a debt owed to the Crown. This applies even if the amount exceeds the normal monetary limit on a magistrate's jurisdiction.
A Reserve soldier may be released at any point during the duration of their service in the Reserve by the appropriate military authority under the prescribed conditions. |
Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force | Enlistment and terms of service | Enlistment and terms of service
A recruiting officer will not enlist anyone in the Force unless they are satisfied that the potential recruit has received, comprehended, and wishes to be enlisted after receiving a notice in the prescribed form from anyone who wants to join the regular Force. A recruiting officer is not allowed to enlist a minor under the age of eighteen into the regular force unless written consent has been obtained from at least one parent, from any parent who may have parental rights and powers over the minor, from any person whose whereabouts are known or can be determined with reasonable effort, or from any person who is in fact or legally responsible for the minor. For the purposes of the Defence Act, an individual who is willing to enlist will be considered to have reached, or not reached, the age of eighteen if the recruiting officer is satisfied—either through the production of a certified copy of an entry in the register of births, or by any other evidence that seems sufficient to them. The period of time that an individual may enlist in the regular force is as follows: in the case of an individual who is 18 years of age or older at the time of enlistment, a term of colour service that does not exceed 12 years as prescribed; in this case, the term of service in the Reserve will apply to the portion of the term that is prescribed as a term of colour service, and the remaining portion will apply to a term of service. In the case of an individual who is younger at the time of enlistment, the period of time that is prescribed will begin on the date that the individual reaches the age of eighteen years or a term not to exceed 12 years, as specified, starting on the day he reaches that age and consisting of the portion of it that is prescribed as a term of colour service and the remaining portion as a term in the reserve.
Any soldier of good character who has served their full term of colour service or who will be serving in the Reserve in two years may, with permission from the appropriate military authority, re-engage for an additional period of colour service and Reserve duty as prescribed; however, the additional period of colour service, when combined with the original period of colour service, may not exceed a total continuous period of 22 years colour service from the date of the soldier's original attestation or the date he became eighteen years old, whichever comes first. Any soldier who has completed 22 years of colour service may, if he so chooses and with the consent of the appropriate military authority, continue to serve in all capacities as if his colour service term had not yet expired. However, on the date that he notifies his commanding officer that he wishes to be discharged, he may be eligible for discharge at the end of the three-month period. Any soldier whose term of colour service expires during a public emergency, war, insurrection, hostilities, or other exigency of duty may be kept in the Force and have their service extended for an additional period of time as directed by the Defence Board and the appropriate military authority.
Every regular force soldier who is eligible for discharge will be released as soon as possible, subject to the Defence Act. However, until they are released, they are subject to military law as stipulated by the Act. When a regular force soldier is serving outside of Antigua and Barbuda at the time of his discharge, he has two options: if he wants to be discharged in Antigua and Barbuda, he will be sent there at no cost as soon as possible, and he will be released either when he arrives in Antigua and Barbuda or, if he agrees to a delay in discharge, six months after arriving; else, he will be released where he is currently serving. Releasing a soldier from the regular force requires authorization from the appropriate military authority, unless they are being released in accordance with a court-martial sentence. Upon their release from active duty, all regular force soldiers will receive a certificate of discharge that includes the necessary information. Every regular Force soldier who is scheduled to be transferred to the Reserve may do so in accordance with the Act, but they will remain subject to military law until they are transferred. When a regular Force soldier serving outside of Antigua and Barbuda is scheduled to be transferred to the Reserve, he will be sent there at no cost to him and will be transferred to the Reserve upon arrival, or within six months of his arrival if he agrees to a delay in transfer; he may, however, choose to be transferred to the Reserve without having to return to Antigua and Barbuda. When a regular Force soldier is being transferred to the Reserve, the appropriate military authority has the authority to immediately discharge him without providing a reason.
A court-martial sentence, a Defence Board order, or an order from an officer not lower than Major or a corresponding rank who has been given permission by the commanding officer may be the only ways that a warrant officer or non-commissioned officer's rank may be lowered. If a regular force warrant officer is demoted to the ranks, he or she may request to be discharged, barring a state of war, insurrection, hostilities, or public emergency. Anytime during the duration of the soldier's term of engagement, the competent military authority may release a regular force soldier for the prescribed reasons. Regular Force soldiers have the right to request their discharge at any point within three months of the date of their first attestation. If they do so, they will be released as soon as possible after paying a sum not to exceed EC$500. However, they will still be subject to military law until their discharge under the Act. A soldier of the regular Force who was a member of a Commonwealth Force at any point within three months prior to the date of his first attestation is exempt from this. |
Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force | Former deployments | Former deployments
In 1983, fourteen men of the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force were deployed to Grenada during the Operation Urgent Fury.
In 1990, twelve soldiers were sent to Trinidad and Tobago after a failed coup attempt by a radical group against the constitutionally elected government headed by Prime Minister A.N.R. Robinson.
In 1995, members of the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force were deployed in Haiti as a part of Operation Uphold Democracy. |
Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force | Current deployments | Current deployments |
Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force | Alliances | Alliances
– Mercian Regiment |
Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force | See also | See also
Regional Security System |
Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force | References | References |
Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force | General and cited references | General and cited references
|
Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force | External links | External links
Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force official website
Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force on Facebook
Article on the ABDF by Dr Dion Phillips
Category:National security of Antigua and Barbuda
Category:Military units and formations established in 1981 |
Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force | Table of Content | Short description, Organisation, Defence Board, Officers, Reserve forces, Enlistment and terms of service, Former deployments, Current deployments, Alliances, See also, References, General and cited references, External links |
Antisemitism | short description | Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite.See, for example:
Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemitic tendencies may be motivated primarily by negative sentiment towards Jews as a people or negative sentiment towards Jews with regard to Judaism. In the former case, usually known as racial antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by the belief that Jews constitute a distinct race with inherent traits or characteristics that are repulsive or inferior to the preferred traits or characteristics within that person's society. In the latter case, known as religious antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by their religion's perception of Jews and Judaism, typically encompassing doctrines of supersession that expect or demand Jews to turn away from Judaism and submit to the religion presenting itself as Judaism's successor faith—this is a common theme within the other Abrahamic religions. The development of racial and religious antisemitism has historically been encouraged by anti-Judaism, which is distinct from antisemitism itself.
There are various ways in which antisemitism is manifested, ranging in the level of severity of Jewish persecution. On the more subtle end, it consists of expressions of hatred or discrimination against individual Jews and may or may not be accompanied by violence. On the most extreme end, it consists of pogroms or genocide, which may or may not be state-sponsored. Although the term "antisemitism" did not come into common usage until the 19th century, it is also applied to previous and later anti-Jewish incidents. Historically, most of the world's violent antisemitic events have taken place in Europe, where modern antisemitism began to emerge from antisemitism in Christian communities during the Middle Ages. Since the early 20th century, there has been a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents across the Arab world, largely due to the advent of Arab antisemitic conspiracy theories, which were influenced by European antisemitic conspiracy theories.
In recent times, the idea that there is a variation of antisemitism known as "new antisemitism" has emerged on several occasions. According to this view, since Israel is a Jewish state, expressions of anti-Zionist positions could harbour antisemitic sentiments, and criticism of Israel can serve as a vehicle for attacks against Jews in general.
The compound word was first used in print in Germany in 1879 as a "scientific-sounding term" for (), and it has since been used to refer to anti-Jewish sentiment alone. Due to the root word Semite, the term is sometimes subject to an etymological fallacy whereby it is incorrectly assumed to apply to racist hatred directed at "Semitic people", in spite of this being an obsolete racial concept. |
Antisemitism | Origin and usage | Origin and usage |
Antisemitism | Etymology | Etymology
thumb|1879 statute of the Antisemitic League
The word "Semitic" was coined by German orientalist August Ludwig von Schlözer in 1781 to designate the Semitic group of languages—Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew and others—allegedly spoken by the descendants of Biblical figure Shem, son of Noah.;
The origin of "antisemitic" terminologies is found in the responses of orientalist Moritz Steinschneider to the views of orientalist Ernest Renan. Historian Alex Bein writes: "The compound anti-Semitism appears to have been used first by Steinschneider, who challenged Renan on account of his 'anti-Semitic prejudices' [i.e., his derogation of the "Semites" as a race]." Psychologist Avner Falk similarly writes: "The German word "" was first used in 1860 by the Austrian Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider (1816–1907) in the phrase "" (antisemitic prejudices). Steinschneider used this phrase to characterise the French philosopher Ernest Renan's false ideas about how 'Semitic races' were inferior to 'Aryan races.
Pseudoscientific theories concerning race, civilization, and "progress" had become quite widespread in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, especially as Prussian nationalistic historian Heinrich von Treitschke did much to promote this form of racism. He coined the phrase "the Jews are our misfortune" which would later be widely used by Nazis. According to Falk, Treitschke uses the term "Semitic" almost synonymously with "Jewish", in contrast to Renan's use of it to refer to a whole range of peoples, based generally on linguistic criteria.
According to philologist Jonathan M. Hess, the term was originally used by its authors to "stress the radical difference between their own 'antisemitism' and earlier forms of antagonism toward Jews and Judaism."
thumb|Cover page of Marr's The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism, 1880 edition
In 1879, German journalist Wilhelm Marr published a pamphlet, (The Victory of the Jewish Spirit over the Germanic Spirit. Observed from a non-religious perspective) in which he used the word "" interchangeably with the word "" to denote both "Jewry" (the Jews as a collective) and "Jewishness" (the quality of being Jewish, or the Jewish spirit). Jaspal erroneously gives the date of publication as 1873. Marr uses the word "" (Semitism) on pages 7, 11, 14, 30, 32, and 46; for example, one finds in the conclusion the following passage: "" (Yes, I am convinced that I have articulated what millions of Jews are quietly thinking: World domination belongs to Semitism!) (p. 46). He accused the Jews of a worldwide conspiracy against non-Jews, called for resistance against "this foreign power", and claimed that "there will be absolutely no public office, even the highest one, which the Jews will not have usurped".
This followed his 1862 book "" (A Mirror to the Jews) in which he argued that "Judaism must cease to exist if humanity is to commence", demanding both that Judaism be dissolved as a "religious-denominational sect" but also subject to criticism "as a race, a civil and social entity". In the introductions to the first through fourth editions of "", Marr denied that he intended to preach Jew-hatred, but instead to help "the Jews reach their full human potential" which could happen only "through the downfall of Judaism, a phenomenon that negates everything purely human and noble."
This use of was followed by a coining of "" which was used to indicate opposition to the Jews as a people and opposition to the Jewish spirit, which Marr interpreted as infiltrating German culture.
The pamphlet became very popular, and in the same year Marr founded the "" (League of Antisemites), apparently named to follow the "" (Anti-Chancellor League). The league was the first German organisation committed specifically to combating the alleged threat to Germany and German culture posed by the Jews and their influence and advocating their forced removal from the country.
So far as can be ascertained, the word was first widely printed in 1881, when Marr published , and Wilhelm Scherer used the term in the January issue of .
The Jewish Encyclopedia reports, "In February 1881, a correspondent of the "" speaks of 'Anti-Semitism' as a designation which recently came into use ("Allg. Zeit. d. Jud." 1881, p. 138). On 19 July 1882, the editor says, 'This quite recent Anti-Semitism is hardly three years old.
The word "antisemitism" was borrowed into English from German in 1881. Oxford English Dictionary editor James Murray wrote that it was not included in the first edition because "Anti-Semite and its family were then probably very new in English use, and not thought likely to be more than passing nonce-words... Would that anti-Semitism had had no more than a fleeting interest!" The related term "philosemitism" was used by 1881. |
Antisemitism | Usage | Usage
From the outset the term anti-Semitism bore special racial connotations and meant specifically prejudice against Jews. The term has been described as confusing, for in modern usage Semitic designates a language group, not a race. In this sense, the term is a misnomer, since there are many speakers of Semitic languages (e.g., Arabs, Ethiopians, and Assyrians) who are not the objects of antisemitic prejudices, while there are many Jews who do not speak Hebrew, a Semitic language. Though antisemitism could be construed as prejudice against people who speak other Semitic languages, this is not how the term is commonly used.
The term may be spelled with or without a hyphen (antisemitism or anti-Semitism). Many scholars and institutions favor the unhyphenated form. Shmuel Almog argued, "If you use the hyphenated form, you consider the words 'Semitism', 'Semite', 'Semitic' as meaningful ... [I]n antisemitic parlance, 'Semites' really stands for Jews, just that." Emil Fackenheim supported the unhyphenated spelling, in order to "[dispel] the notion that there is an entity 'Semitism' which 'anti-Semitism' opposes."
Others endorsing an unhyphenated term for the same reason include the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance; historian Deborah Lipstadt; Padraic O'Hare, professor of Religious and Theological Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations at Merrimack College; and historians Yehuda Bauer and James Carroll. According to Carroll, who first cites O'Hare and Bauer on "the existence of something called 'Semitism, "the hyphenated word thus reflects the bipolarity that is at the heart of the problem of antisemitism".
The Associated Press and its accompanying AP Stylebook adopted the unhyphenated spelling in 2021. Style guides for other news organizations such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal later adopted this spelling as well. It has also been adopted by many Holocaust museums, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem. |
Antisemitism | Definition | Definition
Though the general definition of antisemitism is hostility or prejudice against Jews, and, according to Olaf Blaschke, has become an "umbrella term for negative stereotypes about Jews", a number of authorities have developed more formal definitions.
Writing in 1987, Holocaust scholar and City University of New York professor Helen Fein defined it as "a persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as a collective manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture as myth, ideology, folklore and imagery, and in actions—social or legal discrimination, political mobilization against the Jews, and collective or state violence—which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews."
Elaborating on Fein's definition, Dietz Bering of the University of Cologne writes that, to antisemites, "Jews are not only partially but totally bad by nature, that is, their bad traits are incorrigible. Because of this bad nature: (1) Jews have to be seen not as individuals but as a collective. (2) Jews remain essentially alien in the surrounding societies. (3) Jews bring disaster on their 'host societies' or on the whole world, they are doing it secretly, therefore the anti-Semites feel obliged to unmask the conspiratorial, bad Jewish character."
For Swiss historian Sonja Weinberg, as distinct from economic and religious anti-Judaism, antisemitism in its specifically modern form shows conceptual innovation, a resort to "science" to defend itself, new functional forms, and organisational differences. It was anti-liberal, racialist and nationalist. It promoted the myth that Jews conspired to 'judaise' the world; it served to consolidate social identity; it channeled dissatisfactions among victims of the capitalist system; and it was used as a conservative cultural code to fight emancipation and liberalism.
thumb|A caricature by C. Léandre (France, 1898) showing Rothschild with the world in his hands
In 2003, Israeli politician Natan Sharansky developed what he called the "three D" test to distinguish antisemitism from criticism of Israel, giving delegitimization, demonization, and double standards as a litmus test for the former.
Bernard Lewis, writing in 2006, defined antisemitism as a special case of prejudice, hatred, or persecution directed against people who are in some way different from the rest. According to Lewis, antisemitism is marked by two distinct features: Jews are judged according to a standard different from that applied to others, and they are accused of "cosmic evil". Thus, "it is perfectly possible to hate and even to persecute Jews without necessarily being anti-Semitic" unless this hatred or persecution displays one of the two features specific to antisemitism.
There have been a number of efforts by international and governmental bodies to define antisemitism formally. In 2005, the United States Department of State stated that "while there is no universally accepted definition, there is a generally clear understanding of what the term encompasses." For the purposes of its 2005 Report on Global Anti-Semitism, the term was considered to mean "hatred toward Jews—individually and as a group—that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity."
In 2005, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC, now the Fundamental Rights Agency), an agency of the European Union, developed a more detailed working definition, which stated: "Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities." It also adds that "such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity," but that "criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic." It provided contemporary examples of ways in which antisemitism may manifest itself, including promoting the harming of Jews in the name of an ideology or religion; promoting negative stereotypes of Jews; holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of an individual Jewish person or group; denying the Holocaust or accusing Jews or Israel of exaggerating it; and accusing Jews of dual loyalty or a greater allegiance to Israel than their own country. It also lists ways in which attacking Israel could be antisemitic, and states that denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor, can be a manifestation of antisemitism—as can applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation, or holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel.
thumb|1889 Paris, France elections poster for self-described "" Adolphe Willette: "The Jews are a different race, hostile to our own... Judaism, there is the enemy!" (see file for complete translation)
The EUMC working definition was adopted by the European Parliament Working Group on Antisemitism in 2010, by the United States Department of State in 2017, in the Operational Hate Crime Guidance of the UK College of Policing in 2014 and by the UK's Campaign Against Antisemitism. In 2016, the working definition was adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. IHRA's Working definition of antisemitism is among the most controversial documents related to opposition to antisemitism, and critics argue that it has been used to censor criticism of Israel. In response to the perceived lack of clarity in the IHRA definition, two new definitions of antisemitism were published in 2021, the Nexus Document in February 2021 and the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism in March 2021. |
Antisemitism | Evolution of usage | Evolution of usage
In 1879, Wilhelm Marr founded the (Anti-Semitic League).Richard S. Levy, "Marr, Wilhelm (1819–1904)" in Identification with antisemitism and as an antisemite was politically advantageous in Europe during the late 19th century. For example, Karl Lueger, the popular mayor of fin de siècle Vienna, skillfully exploited antisemitism as a way of channeling public discontent to his political advantage. In its 1910 obituary of Lueger, The New York Times notes that Lueger was "Chairman of the Christian Social Union of the Parliament and of the Anti-Semitic Union of the Diet of Lower Austria. In 1895, A. C. Cuza organized the and the in Bucharest. In the period before World War II, when animosity towards Jews was far more commonplace, it was not uncommon for a person, an organization, or a political party to self-identify as an antisemite or antisemitic.
The early Zionist pioneer Leon Pinsker, a professional physician, preferred the clinical-sounding term Judeophobia to antisemitism, which he regarded as a misnomer. The word Judeophobia first appeared in his pamphlet "Auto-Emancipation", published anonymously in German in September 1882, where it was described as an irrational fear or hatred of Jews. According to Pinsker, this irrational fear was an inherited predisposition.
In the aftermath of the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, German propaganda minister Goebbels announced: "The German people is anti-Semitic. It has no desire to have its rights restricted or to be provoked in the future by parasites of the Jewish race."Daily Telegraph, 12 November 1938. Cited in
After 1945 victory of the Allies over Nazi Germany, and particularly after the full extent of the Nazi genocide against the Jews became known, the term antisemitism acquired pejorative connotations. This marked a full circle shift in usage, from an era just decades earlier when "Jew" was used as a pejorative term. Yehuda Bauer wrote in 1984: "There are no anti-Semites in the world ... Nobody says, 'I am anti-Semitic.' You cannot, after Hitler. The word has gone out of fashion.", cited in: |
Antisemitism | Eternalism–contextualism debate | Eternalism–contextualism debate
The study of antisemitism has become politically controversial because of differing interpretations of the Holocaust and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. There are two competing views of antisemitism, eternalism, and contextualism. The eternalist view sees antisemitism as separate from other forms of racism and prejudice and an exceptionalist, transhistorical force teleologically culminating in the Holocaust. Hannah Arendt criticized this approach, writing that it provoked "the uncomfortable question: 'Why the Jews of all people?' ... with the question begging reply: Eternal hostility." Zionist thinkers and antisemites draw different conclusions from what they perceive as the eternal hatred of Jews; according to antisemites, it proves the inferiority of Jews, while for Zionists it means that Jews need their own state as a refuge. Most Zionists do not believe that antisemitism can be combatted with education or other means.
The contextual approach treats antisemitism as a type of racism and focuses on the historical context in which hatred of Jews emerges. Some contextualists restrict the use of "antisemitism" to refer exclusively to the era of modern racism, treating anti-Judaism as a separate phenomenon. Historian David Engel has challenged the project to define antisemitism, arguing that it essentializes Jewish history as one of persecution and discrimination. Engel argues that the term "antisemitism" is not useful in historical analysis because it implies that there are links between anti-Jewish prejudices expressed in different contexts, without evidence of such a connection. |
Antisemitism | Manifestations | Manifestations
thumb|Jews (identified by the mandatory Jewish badge and Jewish hat) being burned.
Antisemitism manifests itself in a variety of ways. René König mentions social antisemitism, economic antisemitism, religious antisemitism, and political antisemitism as examples. König points out that these different forms demonstrate that the "origins of anti-Semitic prejudices are rooted in different historical periods." König asserts that differences in the chronology of different antisemitic prejudices and the irregular distribution of such prejudices over different segments of the population create "serious difficulties in the definition of the different kinds of anti-Semitism."
These difficulties may contribute to the existence of different taxonomies that have been developed to categorize the forms of antisemitism. The forms identified are substantially the same; it is primarily the number of forms and their definitions that differ. Bernard Lazare, writing in the 1890s, identified three forms of antisemitism: Christian antisemitism, economic antisemitism, and ethnologic antisemitism. William Brustein names four categories: religious, racial, economic, and political. The Roman Catholic historian Edward Flannery distinguished four varieties of antisemitism:
Political and economic antisemitism, giving as examples Cicero and Charles Lindbergh;
Theological or religious antisemitism, also called "traditional antisemitism" and sometimes known as anti-Judaism;
Nationalistic antisemitism, citing Voltaire and other Enlightenment thinkers, who attacked Jews for supposedly having certain characteristics, such as greed and arrogance, and for observing customs such as kashrut and Shabbat;
Racial antisemitism, with its extreme form resulting in the Holocaust by the Nazis.
Louis Harap, writing in the 1980s, separated "economic antisemitism" and merges "political" and "nationalistic" antisemitism into "ideological antisemitism". Harap also adds a category of "social antisemitism".
Religious (Jew as Christ-killer),
Economic (Jew as banker, usurer, money-obsessed),
Social (Jew as social inferior, "pushy", vulgar, therefore excluded from personal contact),
Racist (Jews as an inferior "race"),
Ideological (Jews regarded as subversive or revolutionary),
Cultural (Jews regarded as undermining the moral and structural fiber of civilization). |
Antisemitism | Religious antisemitism | Religious antisemitism
thumb|The execution of Mariana de Carabajal (converted Jew), accused of a relapse into Judaism, Mexico City, 1601
Religious antisemitism, also known as anti-Judaism, is antipathy towards Jews because of their perceived religious beliefs. In theory, antisemitism and attacks against individual Jews would stop if Jews stopped practicing Judaism or changed their public faith, especially by conversion to the official or right religion. However, in some cases, discrimination continues after conversion, as in the case of Marranos (Christianized Jews in Spain and Portugal) in the late 15th century and 16th century, who were suspected of secretly practising Judaism or Jewish customs.
Although the origins of antisemitism are rooted in the Judeo-Christian conflict, other forms of antisemitism have developed in modern times. Frederick Schweitzer asserts that "most scholars ignore the Christian foundation on which the modern antisemitic edifice rests and invoke political antisemitism, cultural antisemitism, racism or racial antisemitism, economic antisemitism, and the like." William Nicholls draws a distinction between religious antisemitism and modern antisemitism based on racial or ethnic grounds: "The dividing line was the possibility of effective conversion [...] a Jew ceased to be a Jew upon baptism." From the perspective of racial antisemitism, however, "the assimilated Jew was still a Jew, even after baptism.[...] From the Enlightenment onward, it is no longer possible to draw clear lines of distinction between religious and racial forms of hostility towards Jews[...] Once Jews have been emancipated and secular thinking makes its appearance, without leaving behind the old Christian hostility towards Jews, the new term antisemitism becomes almost unavoidable, even before explicitly racist doctrines appear."
Some Christians such as the Catholic priest Ernest Jouin, who published the first French translation of the Protocols, combined religious and racial antisemitism, as in his statement that "From the triple viewpoint of race, of nationality, and of religion, the Jew has become the enemy of humanity." The virulent antisemitism of Édouard Drumont, one of the most widely read Catholic writers in France during the Dreyfus Affair, likewise combined religious and racial antisemitism. Drumont founded the Antisemitic League of France. |
Antisemitism | Economic antisemitism | Economic antisemitism
thumb|alt=Man kissing feet of another man with hooked nose, dropping money on his head|A World War II-era Slovak propaganda poster exhorts readers not to "be a servant to the Jew".
The underlying premise of economic antisemitism is that Jews perform harmful economic activities or that economic activities become harmful when they are performed by Jews.
Linking Jews and money underpins the most damaging and lasting antisemitic canards. Antisemites claim that Jews control the world finances, a theory promoted in the fraudulent The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and later repeated by Henry Ford and his The Dearborn Independent. In the modern era, such myths continue to be spread in books such as The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews published by the Nation of Islam and on the internet.
Derek Penslar writes that there are two components to the financial canards:Penslar p. 5
a) Jews are savages that "are temperamentally incapable of performing honest labor"
b) Jews are "leaders of a financial cabal seeking world domination"
Abraham Foxman describes six facets of the financial canards:
All Jews are wealthy
Jews are stingy and greedy
Powerful Jews control the business world
Jewish religion emphasizes profit and materialism
It is okay for Jews to cheat non-Jews
Jews use their power to benefit "their own kind"
Gerald Krefetz summarizes the myth as "[Jews] control the banks, the money supply, the economy, and businesses—of the community, of the country, of the world".Krefetz p. 45 Krefetz gives, as illustrations, many slurs and proverbs (in several different languages) which suggest that Jews are stingy, or greedy, or miserly, or aggressive bargainers.Krefetz pp. 6–7 During the nineteenth century, Jews were described as "scurrilous, stupid, and tight-fisted", but after the Jewish Emancipation and the rise of Jews to the middle- or upper-class in Europe were portrayed as "clever, devious, and manipulative financiers out to dominate [world finances]".Krefetz p. 47
Léon Poliakov asserts that economic antisemitism is not a distinct form of antisemitism, but merely a manifestation of theologic antisemitism (because, without the theological causes of economic antisemitism, there would be no economic antisemitism). In opposition to this view, Derek Penslar contends that in the modern era, economic antisemitism is "distinct and nearly constant" but theological antisemitism is "often subdued".Penslar p. 12
An academic study by Francesco D'Acunto, Marcel Prokopczuk, and Michael Weber showed that people who live in areas of Germany that contain the most brutal history of antisemitic persecution are more likely to be distrustful of finance in general. Therefore, they tended to invest less money in the stock market and make poor financial decisions. The study concluded, "that the persecution of minorities reduces not only the long-term wealth of the persecuted but of the persecutors as well." |
Antisemitism | Racial antisemitism | Racial antisemitism
thumb|A Jewish Soviet soldier taken prisoner by the German Army, August 1941. At least 50,000 Jewish soldiers were shot after selection.
Racial antisemitism is prejudice against Jews as a racial/ethnic group, rather than Judaism as a religion.
Racial antisemitism is the idea that the Jews are a distinct and inferior race compared to their host nations. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, it gained mainstream acceptance as part of the eugenics movement, which categorized non-Europeans as inferior. It more specifically claimed that Northern Europeans, or "Aryans", were superior. Racial antisemites saw the Jews as part of a Semitic race and emphasized their non-European origins and culture. They saw Jews as beyond redemption even if they converted to the majority religion.
Racial antisemitism replaced the hatred of Judaism with the hatred of Jews as a group. In the context of the Industrial Revolution, following the Jewish Emancipation, Jews rapidly urbanized and experienced a period of greater social mobility. With the decreasing role of religion in public life tempering religious antisemitism, a combination of growing nationalism, the rise of eugenics, and resentment at the socio-economic success of the Jews led to the newer, and more virulent, racist antisemitism.
In the early 19th century, a number of laws enabling the emancipation of the Jews were enacted in Western European countries. The old laws restricting them to ghettos, as well as the many laws that limited their property rights, rights of worship and occupation, were rescinded. Despite this, traditional discrimination and hostility to Jews on religious grounds persisted and was supplemented by racial antisemitism, encouraged by the work of racial theorists such as Joseph Arthur de Gobineau and particularly his Essay on the Inequality of the Human Race of 1853–1855. Nationalist agendas based on ethnicity, known as ethnonationalism, usually excluded the Jews from the national community as an alien race. Allied to this were theories of Social Darwinism, which stressed a putative conflict between higher and lower races of human beings. Such theories, usually posited by northern Europeans, advocated the superiority of white Aryans to Semitic Jews. |
Antisemitism | Political antisemitism | Political antisemitism
William Brustein defines political antisemitism as hostility toward Jews based on the belief that Jews seek national or world power. Yisrael Gutman characterizes political antisemitism as tending to "lay responsibility on the Jews for defeats and political economic crises" while seeking to "exploit opposition and resistance to Jewish influence as elements in political party platforms." Derek J. Penslar wrote, "Political antisemitism identified the Jews as responsible for all the anxiety-provoking social forces that characterized modernity."
According to Viktor Karády, political antisemitism became widespread after the legal emancipation of the Jews and sought to reverse some of the consequences of that emancipation. |
Antisemitism | Cultural antisemitism | Cultural antisemitism
Louis Harap defines cultural antisemitism as "that species of anti-Semitism that charges the Jews with corrupting a given culture and attempting to supplant or succeeding in supplanting the preferred culture with a uniform, crude, "Jewish" culture." Similarly, Eric Kandel characterizes cultural antisemitism as being based on the idea of "Jewishness" as a "religious or cultural tradition that is acquired through learning, through distinctive traditions and education." According to Kandel, this form of antisemitism views Jews as possessing "unattractive psychological and social characteristics that are acquired through acculturation." Niewyk and Nicosia characterize cultural antisemitism as focusing on and condemning "the Jews' aloofness from the societies in which they live."
An important feature of cultural antisemitism is that it considers the negative attributes of Judaism to be redeemable by education or by religious conversion. |
Antisemitism | Conspiracy theories | Conspiracy theories
Holocaust denial and Jewish conspiracy theories are also considered forms of antisemitism. Zoological conspiracy theories have been propagated by Arab media and Arabic language websites, alleging a "Zionist plot" behind the use of animals to attack civilians or to conduct espionage. |
Antisemitism | New antisemitism | New antisemitism
right|thumb|A sign held at a protest in Edinburgh, Scotland, January 2009
Starting in the 1990s, some scholars have advanced the concept of new antisemitism, coming simultaneously from the left, the right, and radical Islam, which tends to focus on opposition to the creation of a Jewish homeland in the State of Israel, and they argue that the language of anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel are used to attack Jews more broadly. In this view, the proponents of the new concept believe that criticisms of Israel and Zionism are often disproportionate in degree and unique in kind, and they attribute this to antisemitism."Antiglobalism's Jewish Problem" in Rosenbaum, Ron (ed.). Those who forget the past: The Question of Anti-Semitism, Random House 2004, p. 272.
Jewish scholar Gustavo Perednik posited in 2004 that anti-Zionism in itself represents a form of discrimination against Jews, in that it singles out Jewish national aspirations as an illegitimate and racist endeavor, and "proposes actions that would result in the death of millions of Jews". Proponents of this theory assert that the new antisemitism deploys traditional antisemitic motifs, including older motifs such as the blood libel.
Critics of the concept view it as trivializing the meaning of antisemitism, and as exploiting antisemitism in order to silence debate and to deflect attention from legitimate criticism of the State of Israel, and, by associating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, misusing it to taint anyone opposed to Israeli actions and policies. |
Antisemitism | History | History
Many authors see the roots of modern antisemitism in both pagan antiquity and early Christianity. Jerome Chanes identifies six stages in the historical development of antisemitism:
Pre-Christian anti-Judaism in ancient Greece and Rome which was primarily ethnic in nature
Christian antisemitism in antiquity and the Middle Ages which was religious in nature and has extended into modern times
Traditional Muslim antisemitism which was—at least, in its classical form—nuanced in that Jews were a protected class
Political, social and economic antisemitism of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Europe which laid the groundwork for racial antisemitism
Racial antisemitism that arose in the 19th century and culminated in Nazism in the 20th century
Contemporary antisemitism which has been labeled by some as the New Antisemitism
Chanes suggests that these six stages could be merged into three categories: "ancient antisemitism, which was primarily ethnic in nature; Christian antisemitism, which was religious; and the racial antisemitism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." |
Antisemitism | Ancient world | Ancient world
The first clear examples of anti-Jewish sentiment can be traced to the 3rd century BCE to Alexandria, the home to the largest Jewish diaspora community in the world at the time and where the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, was produced. Manetho, an Egyptian priest and historian of that era, wrote scathingly of the Jews. His themes are repeated in the works of Chaeremon, Lysimachus, Poseidonius, Apollonius Molon, and in Apion and Tacitus. Agatharchides of Cnidus ridiculed the practices of the Jews and the "absurdity of their Law", making a mocking reference to how Ptolemy Lagus was able to invade Jerusalem in 320 BCE because its inhabitants were observing the Shabbat. One of the earliest anti-Jewish edicts, promulgated by Antiochus IV Epiphanes in about 170–167 BCE, sparked a revolt of the Maccabees in Judea.
In view of Manetho's anti-Jewish writings, antisemitism may have originated in Egypt and been spread by "the Greek retelling of Ancient Egyptian prejudices".Schäfer, Peter. Judeophobia, Harvard University Press, 1997, p. 208.Peter Schäfer The ancient Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria describes an attack on Jews in Alexandria in 38 CE in which thousands of Jews died. The violence in Alexandria may have been caused by the Jews being portrayed as misanthropes. Tcherikover argues that the reason for hatred of Jews in the Hellenistic period was their separateness in the Greek cities, the poleis. Bohak has argued, however, that early animosity against the Jews cannot be regarded as being anti-Judaic or antisemitic unless it arose from attitudes that were held against the Jews alone, and that many Greeks showed animosity toward any group they regarded as barbarians.
Statements exhibiting prejudice against Jews and their religion can be found in the works of many pagan Greek and Roman writers. Edward Flannery writes that it was the Jews' refusal to accept Greek religious and social standards that marked them out. Hecataetus of Abdera, a Greek historian of the early third century BCE, wrote that Moses "in remembrance of the exile of his people, instituted for them a misanthropic and inhospitable way of life." Manetho wrote that the Jews were expelled Egyptian lepers who had been taught by Moses "not to adore the gods." Edward Flannery describes antisemitism in ancient times as essentially "cultural, taking the shape of a national xenophobia played out in political settings."
There are examples of Hellenistic rulers desecrating the Temple and banning Jewish religious practices, such as circumcision, Shabbat observance, the study of Jewish religious books, etc. Examples may also be found in anti-Jewish riots in Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE.
The Jewish diaspora on the Nile island Elephantine, which was founded by mercenaries, experienced the destruction of its temple in 410 BCE.
Relationships between the Jewish people and the occupying Roman Empire were at times antagonistic and resulted in several rebellions. According to Suetonius, the emperor Tiberius expelled from Rome Jews who had gone to live there. The 18th-century English historian Edward Gibbon identified a more tolerant period in Roman–Jewish relations beginning in about 160 CE. However, when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, the state's attitude towards the Jews gradually worsened.
James Carroll asserted: "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors such as pogroms and conversions had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million." |
Antisemitism | Persecutions during the Middle Ages | Persecutions during the Middle Ages
thumb|The massacre of the Banu Qurayza, a Jewish tribe in Medina, 627
In the late 6th century CE, the newly Catholicised Visigothic kingdom in Hispania issued a series of anti-Jewish edicts which forbade Jews from marrying Christians, practicing circumcision, and observing Jewish holy days. Continuing throughout the 7th century, both Visigothic kings and the Church were active in creating social aggression and towards Jews with "civic and ecclesiastic punishments", ranging between forced conversion, slavery, exile and death.
From the 9th century, the medieval Islamic world classified Jews and Christians as dhimmis and allowed Jews to practice their religion more freely than they could do in medieval Christian Europe. Under Islamic rule, there was a Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain that lasted until at least the 11th century. It ended when several Muslim pogroms against Jews took place on the Iberian Peninsula, including those that occurred in Córdoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066. Several decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were also enacted in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Yemen from the 11th century. In addition, Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face death in some parts of Yemen, Morocco and Baghdad several times between the 12th and 18th centuries.
The Almohads, who had taken control of the Almoravids' Maghribi and Andalusian territories by 1147, were far more fundamentalist in outlook compared to their predecessors, and they treated the dhimmis harshly. Faced with the choice of either death or conversion, many Jews and Christians emigrated.. The Forgotten Refugees Some, such as the family of Maimonides, fled east to more tolerant Muslim lands, while some others went northward to settle in the growing Christian kingdoms.
thumb|upright=1.25|right|Expulsions of Jews in Europe from 1100 to 1600
In medieval Europe, Jews were persecuted with blood libels, expulsions, forced conversions and massacres. These persecutions were often justified on religious grounds and reached a first peak during the Crusades. In 1096, hundreds or thousands of Jews were killed during the First Crusade. This was the first major outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in Christian Europe outside Spain and was cited by Zionists in the 19th century as indicating the need for a state of Israel.
In 1147, there were several massacres of Jews during the Second Crusade. The Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320 both involved attacks, as did the Rintfleisch massacres in 1298. Expulsions followed, such as the 1290 banishment of Jews from England, the expulsion of 100,000 Jews from France in 1394,History of the reign of Charles VI, titled , encompasses the king's full reign in six volumes. Originally written in Latin, the work was translated to French in six volumes by L. Bellaguet between 1839 and 1852. and the 1421 expulsion of thousands of Jews from Austria. Many of the expelled Jews fled to Poland.
In medieval and Renaissance Europe, a major contributor to the deepening of antisemitic sentiment and legal action among the Christian populations was the popular preaching of the zealous reform religious orders, the Franciscans (especially Bernardino of Feltre) and Dominicans (especially Vincent Ferrer), who combed Europe and promoted antisemitism through their often fiery, emotional appeals.
As the Black Death epidemics devastated Europe in the mid-14th century, causing the death of a large part of the population, Jews were used as scapegoats. Rumors spread that they caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells. Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed in numerous persecutions. Although Pope Clement VI tried to protect them by issuing two papal bulls in 1348, the first on 6 July and an additional one several months later, 900 Jews were burned alive in Strasbourg, where the plague had not yet affected the city. |
Antisemitism | Reformation | Reformation
Martin Luther, an ecclesiastical reformer whose teachings inspired the Reformation, wrote antagonistically about Jews in his pamphlet On the Jews and their Lies, written in 1543. He portrays the Jews in extremely harsh terms, excoriates them and provides detailed recommendations for a pogrom against them, calling for their permanent oppression and expulsion. At one point he writes: "...we are at fault in not slaying them...", a passage that, according to historian Paul Johnson, "may be termed the first work of modern antisemitism, and a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust." |
Antisemitism | 17th century | 17th century
thumb|Etching of the expulsion of the Jews from Frankfurt in 1614
During the mid-to-late 17th century the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was devastated by several conflicts, in which the Commonwealth lost over a third of its population (over 3 million people), and Jewish losses were counted in the hundreds of thousands. The first of these conflicts was the Khmelnytsky Uprising, when Bohdan Khmelnytsky's supporters massacred tens of thousands of Jews in the eastern and southern areas he controlled (today's Ukraine). The precise number of dead may never be known, but the decrease of the Jewish population during that period is estimated at 100,000 to 200,000, which also includes emigration, deaths from diseases, and captivity in the Ottoman Empire, called jasyr.
European immigrants to the United States brought antisemitism to the country as early as the 17th century. Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor of New Amsterdam, implemented plans to prevent Jews from settling in the city. During the Colonial Era, the American government limited the political and economic rights of Jews. It was not until the American Revolutionary War that Jews gained legal rights, including the right to vote. However, even at their peak, the restrictions on Jews in the United States were never as stringent as they had been in Europe.
In the Zaydi imamate of Yemen, Jews were also singled out for discrimination in the 17th century, which culminated in the general expulsion of all Jews from places in Yemen to the arid coastal plain of Tihamah and which became known as the Mawza Exile.Yosef Qafiḥ, Ketavim (Collected Papers), Vol. 2, Jerusalem 1989, pp. 714–716 (Hebrew) |
Antisemitism | Enlightenment | Enlightenment
In 1744, Archduchess of Austria Maria Theresa ordered Jews out of Bohemia but soon reversed her position, on the condition that Jews pay for their readmission every ten years. This extortion was known among the Jews as ("queen's money" in Yiddish). In 1752, she introduced the law limiting each Jewish family to one son.
In 1782, Joseph II abolished most of these persecution practices in his , on the condition that Yiddish and Hebrew were eliminated from public records and that judicial autonomy was annulled. Moses Mendelssohn wrote that "Such a tolerance... is even more dangerous play in tolerance than open persecution." |
Antisemitism | Voltaire | Voltaire
According to Arnold Ages, Voltaire's "Lettres philosophiques, Dictionnaire philosophique, and Candide, to name but a few of his better known works, are saturated with comments on Jews and Judaism and the vast majority are negative".Ages Arnold. "Tainted Greatness: The Case of Voltaire's Anti-Semitism: The Testimony of the Correspondence." Neohelicon 21.2 (Sept. 1994): 361. Paul H. Meyer adds: "There is no question but that Voltaire, particularly in his latter years, nursed a violent hatred of the Jews and it is equally certain that his animosity...did have a considerable impact on public opinion in France."Meyer, Paul H. "The Attitude of the Enlightenment Toward the Jew." Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 26 (1963): 1177. Thirty of the 118 articles in Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique concerned Jews and described them in consistently negative ways.Poliakov, L. The History of Anti-Semitism: From Voltaire to Wagner. Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1975 (translated). page 88-89. |
Antisemitism | Louis de Bonald and the Catholic Counter-Revolution | Louis de Bonald and the Catholic Counter-Revolution
The counter-revolutionary Catholic royalist Louis de Bonald stands out among the earliest figures to explicitly call for the reversal of Jewish emancipation in the wake of the French Revolution. Bonald's attacks on the Jews are likely to have influenced Napoleon's decision to limit the civil rights of Alsatian Jews.{{bulleted list|
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}} Bonald's article (1806) was one of the most venomous screeds of its era and furnished a paradigm which combined anti-liberalism, a defense of a rural society, traditional Christian antisemitism, and the identification of Jews with bankers and finance capital, which would in turn influence many subsequent right-wing reactionaries such as Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux, Charles Maurras, and Édouard Drumont, nationalists such as Maurice Barrès and Paolo Orano, and antisemitic socialists such as Alphonse Toussenel. Bonald furthermore declared that the Jews were an "alien" people, a "state within a state", and should be forced to wear a distinctive mark to more easily identify and discriminate against them.
Under the French Second Empire, the popular counter-revolutionary Catholic journalist Louis Veuillot propagated Bonald's arguments against the Jewish "financial aristocracy" along with vicious attacks against the Talmud and the Jews as a "deicidal people" driven by hatred to "enslave" Christians. Between 1882 and 1886 alone, French priests published twenty antisemitic books blaming France's ills on the Jews and urging the government to consign them back to the ghettos, expel them, or hang them from the gallows. Gougenot des Mousseaux's (1869) has been called a "Bible of modern antisemitism" and was translated into German by Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg. |
Antisemitism | Imperial Russia | Imperial Russia
thumb|upright=1.3|The victims of a 1905 pogrom in Yekaterinoslav, Russian Empire (modern-day Ukraine)
Thousands of Jews were slaughtered by Cossack Haidamaks in the 1768 massacre of Uman in the Kingdom of Poland. In 1772, the empress of Russia Catherine II forced the Jews into the Pale of Settlement – which was located primarily in present-day Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus – and to stay in their shtetls and forbade them from returning to the towns that they occupied before the partition of Poland. From 1804, Jews were banned from their villages and began to stream into the towns. A decree by emperor Nicholas I of Russia in 1827 conscripted Jews under 18 years of age into the cantonist schools for a 25-year military service in order to promote baptism.
Policy towards Jews was liberalised somewhat under Czar Alexander II (). However, his assassination in 1881 served as a pretext for further repression such as the May Laws of 1882. Konstantin Pobedonostsev, nicknamed the "black czar" and tutor to the czarevitch, later crowned Czar Nicholas II, declared that "One-third of the Jews must die, one-third must emigrate, and one third be converted to Christianity". |
Antisemitism | Islamic antisemitism in the 19th century | Islamic antisemitism in the 19th century
Historian Martin Gilbert writes that it was in the 19th century that the position of Jews worsened in Muslim countries. Benny Morris writes that one symbol of Jewish degradation was the phenomenon of stone-throwing at Jews by Muslim children. Morris quotes a 19th-century traveler: "I have seen a little fellow of six years old, with a troop of fat toddlers of only three and four, teaching [them] to throw stones at a Jew, and one little urchin would, with the greatest coolness, waddle up to the man and literally spit upon his Jewish gaberdine. To all this the Jew is obliged to submit; it would be more than his life was worth to offer to strike a Mahommedan."
In the middle of the 19th century, J. J. Benjamin wrote about the life of Persian Jews, describing conditions and beliefs that went back to the 16th century: "…they are obliged to live in a separate part of town… Under the pretext of their being unclean, they are treated with the greatest severity and should they enter a street, inhabited by Mussulmans, they are pelted by the boys and mobs with stones and dirt…."
In Jerusalem at least, conditions for some Jews improved. Moses Montefiore, on his seventh visit in 1875, noted that fine new buildings had sprung up and, "surely we're approaching the time to witness God's hallowed promise unto Zion." Muslim and Christian Arabs participated in Purim and Passover; Arabs called the Sephardis 'Jews, sons of Arabs'; the Ulema and the Rabbis offered joint prayers for rain in time of drought.
At the time of the Dreyfus trial in France, "Muslim comments usually favoured the persecuted Jew against his Christian persecutors". |
Antisemitism | Secular or racial antisemitism | Secular or racial antisemitism
thumb|Title page of the second edition of Das Judenthum in der Musik, published in 1869
thumb|Antisemitic agitators in Paris burn an effigy of Mathieu Dreyfus during the Dreyfus affair
In 1850, the German composer Richard Wagner – who has been called "the inventor of modern antisemitism" – published (roughly "Jewishness in Music") under a pseudonym in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. The essay began as an attack on Jewish composers, particularly Wagner's contemporaries, and rivals, Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer, but expanded to accuse Jews of being a harmful and alien element in German culture, who corrupted morals and were, in fact, parasites incapable of creating truly "German" art. The crux was the manipulation and control by the Jews of the money economy:
Although originally published anonymously, when the essay was republished 19 years later, in 1869, the concept of the corrupting Jew had become so widely held that Wagner's name was affixed to it.
Antisemitism can also be found in many of the Grimms' Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, published from 1812 to 1857. It is mainly characterized by Jews being the villain of a story, such as in "The Good Bargain" ("") and "The Jew Among Thorns" ("").
The middle 19th century saw continued official harassment of the Jews, especially in Eastern Europe under Czarist influence. For example, in 1846, 80 Jews approached the governor in Warsaw to retain the right to wear their traditional dress but were immediately rebuffed by having their hair and beards forcefully cut, at their own expense.
Even such influential figures as Walt Whitman tolerated bigotry toward the Jews in America. During his time as editor of the Brooklyn Eagle (1846–1848), the newspaper published historical sketches casting Jews in a bad light.
The Dreyfus Affair was an infamous antisemitic event of the late 19th century and early 20th century. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery captain in the French Army, was accused in 1894 of passing secrets to the Germans. As a result of these charges, Dreyfus was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. The actual spy, Marie Charles Esterhazy, was acquitted. The event caused great uproar among the French, with the public choosing sides on the issue of whether Dreyfus was actually guilty or not. Émile Zola accused the army of corrupting the French justice system. However, general consensus held that Dreyfus was guilty: 80% of the press in France condemned him. This attitude among the majority of the French population reveals the underlying antisemitism of the time period.Rapport, Michael. (2005) Nineteenth Century Europe. New York: Palgrave MacMillan .
Adolf Stoecker (1835–1909), the Lutheran court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm I, founded in 1878 an antisemitic, anti-liberal political party called the Christian Social Party. This party always remained small, and its support dwindled after Stoecker's death, with most of its members eventually joining larger conservative groups such as the German National People's Party.
Some scholars view Karl Marx's essay "On The Jewish Question" as antisemitic, and argue that he often used antisemitic epithets in his published and private writings. These scholars argue that Marx equated Judaism with capitalism in his essay, helping to spread that idea. Some further argue that the essay influenced National Socialist, as well as Soviet and Arab antisemites.According to Joshua Muravchik Marx's aspiration for "the emancipation of society from Judaism" because "the practical Jewish spirit" of "huckstering" had taken over the Christian nations is not that far from the Nazi program's twenty-four-point: "combat[ing] the Jewish-materialist spirit within us and without us" in order "that our nation can […] achieve permanent health." See Marx himself had Jewish ancestry, and Albert Lindemann and Hyam Maccoby have suggested that he was embarrassed by it.
Others argue that Marx consistently supported Prussian Jewish communities' struggles to achieve equal political rights. These scholars argue that "On the Jewish Question" is a critique of Bruno Bauer's arguments that Jews must convert to Christianity before being emancipated, and is more generally a critique of liberal rights discourses and capitalism. Iain Hampsher-Monk wrote that "This work [On The Jewish Question] has been cited as evidence for Marx's supposed anti-Semitism, but only the most superficial reading of it could sustain such an interpretation."
David McLellan and Francis Wheen argue that readers should interpret On the Jewish Question in the deeper context of Marx's debates with Bruno Bauer, author of The Jewish Question, about Jewish emancipation in Germany. Wheen says that "Those critics, who see this as a foretaste of 'Mein Kampf', overlook one, essential point: in spite of the clumsy phraseology and crude stereotyping, the essay was actually written as a defense of the Jews. It was a retort to Bruno Bauer, who had argued that Jews should not be granted full civic rights and freedoms unless they were baptised as Christians". According to McLellan, Marx used the word colloquially, as meaning commerce, arguing that Germans must be emancipated from the capitalist mode of production not Judaism or Jews in particular. McLellan concludes that readers should interpret the essay's second half as "an extended pun at Bauer's expense". |
Antisemitism | 20th century | 20th century
thumb|upright=1.25|Public reading of the antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer, Worms, Germany, 1935
Between 1900 and 1924, approximately 1.75 million Jews migrated to America, the bulk from Eastern Europe escaping the pogroms. This increase, combined with the upward social mobility of some Jews, contributed to a resurgence of antisemitism. In the first half of the 20th century, in the US, Jews were discriminated against in employment, access to residential and resort areas, membership in clubs and organizations, and in tightened quotas on Jewish enrolment and teaching positions in colleges and universities. The lynching of Leo Frank by a mob of prominent citizens in Marietta, Georgia, in 1915 turned the spotlight on antisemitism in the United States. The case was also used to build support for the renewal of the Ku Klux Klan which had been inactive since 1870.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Beilis Trial in Russia represented modern incidents of blood-libels in Europe. During the Russian Civil War, close to 50,000 Jews were killed in pogroms.
Antisemitism in America reached its peak during the interwar period. The pioneer automobile manufacturer Henry Ford propagated antisemitic ideas in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent (published by Ford from 1919 to 1927). The radio speeches of Father Coughlin in the late 1930s attacked Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and promoted the notion of a Jewish financial conspiracy. Some prominent politicians shared such views: Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the United States House Committee on Banking and Currency, blamed Jews for Roosevelt's decision to abandon the gold standard, and claimed that "in the United States today, the Gentiles have the slips of paper while the Jews have the lawful money".
thumb|upright=1.25|A wagon piled high with corpses outside the crematorium at the recently liberated Buchenwald concentration camp, 1945
In Germany, shortly after Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, the government instituted repressive legislation which denied Jews basic civil rights.see also Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (7 April 1933)
In September 1935, the Nuremberg Laws prohibited sexual relations and marriages between "Aryans" and Jews as ("race disgrace") and stripped all German Jews, even quarter- and half-Jews, of their citizenship (their official title became "subjects of the state"). It instituted a pogrom on the night of 9–10 November 1938, dubbed Kristallnacht, in which Jews were killed, their property destroyed and their synagogues torched. Antisemitic laws, agitation and propaganda were extended to German-occupied Europe in the wake of conquest, often building on local antisemitic traditions.
In 1940, the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh and many prominent Americans led the America First Committee in opposing any involvement in a European war. Lindbergh alleged that Jews were pushing America to go to war against Germany. Lindbergh adamantly denied being antisemitic, and yet he refers numerous times in his private writings – his letters and diary – to Jewish control of the media being used to pressure the U.S. to get involved in the European war. In one diary entry in November 1938, he responded to by writing "I do not understand these riots on the part of the Germans. ... They have undoubtedly had a difficult Jewish problem, but why is it necessary to handle it so unreasonably?", acknowledgement on Lindbergh's part that he agreed with the Nazis that Germany had a "Jewish problem". An article by Jonathan Marwil in Antisemitism, A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution claims that "no one who ever knew Lindbergh thought him antisemitic" and that claims of his antisemitism were solely tied to the remarks he made in that one speech.Levy, Richard S. "Lindbergh, Charles (1902–1974)" in
In the east the Third Reich forced Jews into ghettos in Warsaw, in Kraków, in Lvov, in Lublin and in Radom.Martin Kitchen (2007) The Third Reich: A Concise History. Tempus.
After the beginning of the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1941, a campaign of mass murder, conducted by the Einsatzgruppen, culminated from 1942 to 1945 in systematic genocide: the Holocaust.Saul Friedländer (2008): The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews. London, Phoenix Eleven million Jews were targeted for extermination by the Nazis, and some six million were eventually killed. |
Antisemitism | Contemporary antisemitism | Contemporary antisemitism |
Antisemitism | Holocaust denial | Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial, the claim that the Nazi genocide of European Jews during the Second World War either never happened or is substantially exaggerated by historical accounts, is a form of antisemitism and conspiracy theory. Political movements seeking to revive the ideologies of the Nazis and other states that participated in the Holocaust, like neo-Nazism and neofascism, practice Holocaust denial.
There is significant debate about whether analogies between Israel's treatment of Palestinians and the Nazis' treatment of Jews are antisemitic. Those who say they are antisemitic have termed such analogies "Holocaust inversion"—a form of Holocaust trivialisation, in which the Holocaust is compared with other events in a way that downplays its severity. Deborah Lipstadt describes Holocaust inversion as a type of Holocaust denial. |
Antisemitism | Soviet antisemitism | Soviet antisemitism
There have continued to be antisemitic incidents since WWII, some of which had been state-sponsored. In the Soviet Union, antisemitism was even used as an instrument for settling personal conflicts, starting with the conflict between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky and continuing through numerous conspiracy theories spread by official propaganda. Antisemitism in the USSR reached new heights after 1948 during the campaign against the "rootless cosmopolitan" (euphemism for "Jew") in which numerous Yiddish-language poets, writers, painters, and sculptors were killed or arrested. This culminated in the antisemitic conspiracy theory of the 'Doctors' Plot' in 1952.
In the 20th century, Soviet and Russian antisemitism underwent significant transformations, shaped by political, social, and ideological shifts. During the early Soviet period, the Bolsheviks initially condemned antisemitism, seeing it as incompatible with Marxist ideology. However, under Joseph Stalin's regime, antisemitism reemerged, often cloaked in 'anti-Zionist' rhetoric. As early as 1943, Stalin and his propagandists intensified attacks against Jews as "rootless cosmopolitans". The Party issued confidential directives to fire Jews from positions of power, but state-controlled media did not openly attack Jews until the late 1940s. The Doctors' plot of 1952, a fabricated conspiracy accusing predominantly Jewish doctors of attempting to assassinate Soviet leaders, exemplified this resurgence. This campaign fostered widespread antisemitic sentiments and resulted in the arrest and execution of numerous Jewish professionals.
In that same year, the antisemitic Slánský show trial alleged the existence of an 'international Zionist conspiracy' to destroy Socialism. Izabella Tabarovsky, a scholar of the history of antisemitism, argues that, "Manufactured by the Soviet secret services, the trial tied together Zionism, Israel, Jewish leaders, and American imperialism, turning 'Zionism' and 'Zionist' into dangerous labels that could be used against one's political enemies." In the post-Stalin era, state-sanctioned antisemitism persisted and intensified. In February 1953, the Soviet Union severed diplomatic relations with the State of Israel and "soon the state media was saturated with anti-Zionist propaganda, depicting bloated, hook-nosed Jewish bankers and all-consuming serpents embossed with the Star of David." The 1963 publication of the antisemitic book Judaism Without Embellishment, written under orders from the central Soviet government, echoed Nazi propaganda, alleging a global Jewish conspiracy to subvert the Soviet Union. It was the beginning of a new wave of government-sponsored anti-Semitism.
The Six-Day War in 1967 led to an intensification in Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda as the Soviets had backed the defeated Arab states. This propaganda often blurred the lines with antisemitism, leading to discriminatory policies against Jews and restricting their emigration. By the end of the war, "the "corporate Jew", whether "cosmopolitan" or "Zionist", became identified as the enemy. Popular anti-Semitic stereotyping had been absorbed into official channels, generated by chauvinist needs and totalitarian requirements." The Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public shut down and expropriated synagogues, yeshivas, and Jewish civil organisations and prohibited the learning of Hebrew. It also engaged in a wide-scale propaganda campaign between 1967 and 1988 overseen by the KGB and published pamphlets featuring antisemitic conspiracy theories, for example falsely claiming that Zionist Jews collaborated with the Nazi regime in the Holocaust and of inflating the significance and scale of anti-Jewish persecution.
Their propaganda frequently borrowed directly from the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion and sometimes relied upon Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf as a source of information about Zionism. Antizionism helped Moscow "bond both with its Arab allies and the Western hard left of all shades. Having appointed Zionism as a scapegoat for humanity's greatest evils, Soviet propaganda could score points by equating it with racism in African radio broadcasts and with Ukrainian nationalism on Kyiv TV." The still-extant Novosti Press Agency, a key element in the Soviet propaganda machine, also participated in the spreading of antisemitic anti-Zionism. Its chairman, Ivan Udaltsov, published a memorandum on 27 January 1971, to the CPSU in which he claimed that "Zionists, by provoking antisemitism, recruit volunteers for the Israeli army", blaming Jews for antisemitism, and falsely alleged that Zionists were responsible for "subversive activities" during the 1968 Prague Spring. According to historian William Korey, "Judaism was singled out for condemnation as prescribing 'racial exclusivism' and as justifying 'crimes against 'Gentiles.'"
Similar antisemitic propaganda in Poland resulted in the flight of Polish Jewish survivors from the country. After the war, the Kielce pogrom and the "March 1968 events" in communist Poland represented further incidents of antisemitism in Europe. The anti-Jewish violence in postwar Poland had a common theme of blood libel rumours. |
Antisemitism | 21st-century European antisemitism | 21st-century European antisemitism
Physical assaults against Jews in Europe have included beatings, stabbings, and other violence, which increased markedly, sometimes resulting in serious injury and death. A 2015 report by the US State Department on religious freedom declared that "European anti-Israel sentiment crossed the line into anti-Semitism."
This rise in antisemitic attacks is associated with both Muslim antisemitism and the rise of far-right political parties as a result of the economic crisis of 2008. This rise in the support for far-right ideas in western and eastern Europe has resulted in the increase of antisemitic acts, mostly attacks on Jewish memorials, synagogues and cemeteries but also a number of physical attacks against Jews.
In Eastern Europe the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the instability of the new states brought the rise of nationalist movements and the accusation against Jews for the economic crisis, taking over the local economy and bribing the government, along with traditional and religious motives for antisemitism such as blood libels. Writing on the rhetoric surrounding the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Jason Stanley relates these perceptions to broader historical narratives: "the dominant version of antisemitism alive in parts of eastern Europe today is that Jews employ the Holocaust to seize the victimhood narrative from the 'real' victims of the Nazis, who are Russian Christians (or other non-Jewish eastern Europeans)". He calls out the "myths of contemporary eastern European antisemitism – that a global cabal of Jews were (and are) the real agents of violence against Russian Christians and the real victims of the Nazis were not the Jews, but rather this group."
Most of the antisemitic incidents in Eastern Europe are against Jewish cemeteries and buildings (community centers and synagogues). Nevertheless, there were several violent attacks against Jews in Moscow in 2006 when a neo-Nazi stabbed 9 people at the Bolshaya Bronnaya Synagogue, the failed bomb attack on the same synagogue in 1999, the threats against Jewish pilgrims in Uman, Ukraine and the attack against a menorah by extremist Christian organization in Moldova in 2009.
According to Paul Johnson, antisemitic policies are a sign of a state which is poorly governed. While no European state currently has such policies, the Economist Intelligence Unit notes the rise in political uncertainty, notably populism and nationalism, as something that is particularly alarming for Jews. |
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