Since the Hamas invasion and killings in Israel, many people have noticed and deplored the antisemitism of the Hamas invasion and also in Australian society. They are right to have done so. In Western societies, antisemitism is particularly noxious. To be understood, however, it needs to be precisely defined and set in the in the broader context of antipathy on racial, religious and other grounds.
Prejudice and discrimination against Jews have been deeply rooted in Western cultures. Jews have been caricatured, resented, forced to live in ghettos and subject to mob violence and expulsion in many nations. This prejudice and the violence that it provokes have been stirred and fed by interpretations of the Christian scriptures that have also had a central place in Western culture. The appalling history of the attempted genocide of Jewish people under Hitler and its effect on people of Jewish descent in Australia, too make doubly abhorrent the manifestations of antisemitism in Australia.
Even after recognising these grounds for regarding antisemitism as uniquely vicious, however, we must also acknowledge what it has in common with other forms of prejudice. This involves defining closely what distinguishes racial and other prejudice from legitimate criticism of the attitudes or actions of particular representatives of racial or religious groups. We should treat with contempt the claim that Jews are greedy, for example, while judging embezzlement by a financier who happens to be Jewish by the same criteria we would use for any other financier. Similarly the actions of the Israeli forces in Gaza are open to judgment.
Antisemitism, anti-Muslimism and anti-Catholicism are pejorative terms because they involve an a priori negative judgment about persons who are Jewish, Muslim or Catholic. It is not antisemitic, however, to criticise the government of Israel, or anti-American to criticise the government of the United States, for actions they have taken on behalf of their nation, provided that such criticism is based on ethical judgment of the action and not on a pre-formed negative judgment of the people in the nation.
'Prejudice itself becomes one of the vices they attribute to their enemy and use as a weapon to stifle criticism of the actions of governments and their armed forces. This is understandable but it exacerbates the evil of war.'
This important distinction between people and the governments that represent them becomes eroded, even swamped, in times of war. The fear, anxiety, grief, hatred and disruption engendered by war encourage prejudice against people for their religion or race which is not based on reflection on their actions. It is not surprising that throughout the world since the Gaza war both antisemitic and anti-Muslim prejudice and its destructive acting-out have increased. People stand with one side or the other and demand that others also take their side. Prejudice itself becomes one of the vices they attribute to their enemy and use as a weapon to stifle criticism of the actions of governments and their armed forces. This is understandable but it exacerbates the evil of war.
Antisemitism and other forms of prejudice are also fed by hard times. People naturally look for someone or something to blame. Many place blame on minorities or impersonal forces. In times of economic hardship we can blame the hardship we suffer on banks, on government ministers, on immigrants, or on refugees. Politicians then deflect or fuel anger by vilifying small identifiable groups in society. When explaining the rise in antisemitism and other prejudices around the world today we therefore need to take account of economic pressures, particularly those borne unequally in society.
History offers many examples of the complex strands that are woven into antisemitism. In a fine personal tribute to Paul Kurz, an extraordinary Jewish man who escaped from Vienna to England and then to Australia, Tim McNamara outlines the ways in which economic, cultural and social change affected the place of Jews and public attitudes to them in Vienna.
In the second half of the nineteenth century a liberal Government of the Austro-Hungarian Empire granted civil rights to Jews and presided over industrialisation. The economic growth drew a huge number of immigrants from other parts of the Empire, including German-speaking Jews, to the city. Later Jews from Eastern Europe, distinctive by their traditional dress and customs, also came. Modernisation was also accompanied by shortage of housing, the concentration of immigrants into ghettos, high inflation, and rising social resentment. People whose traditional crafts and livelihood had been affected by economic change particularly blamed Jewish immigrants for their plight. The expansion of the right to vote also focused resentment against Jews for political gain. It was embodied in Karl Lueger the mayor of Vienna. He was a devout Catholic, an ally of Pope Leo XIII in his call for a more just society, counted many Jewish people friends, and was unbridled in his vituperative anti-Jewish rhetoric directed at winning the votes of small businesspeople.
This toxic mixture of hostility to Jews fuelled by religious and racial prejudice, economic inequality, social change and hardship, grew even more poisonous after the loss of the war, the effects of inflation, and the Depression. Antisemitism contributed largely to popular support for Hitler’s annexation of Austria. It was embodied in the crowds who gathered to jeer at truckloads of Jews, including relatives of Paul Kurz as they were taken away to the death camps.
This sketchy account of the growth of antisemitism in Vienna demonstrates how seriously we should take its appearance, and that of other forms of racial and religious prejudice, in our society. It also warns us of the potentially corrosive effects of gross economic inequality, rampant inflation, high immigration, unemployment and political dog whistling against minority groups. These factors contributed to the explosion of antisemitism and xenophobia in Vienna and Europe. Their presence in Australia is a warning.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.
Main image: Anti-Jewish graffiti in Clayton, Victoria, from November 2023. (Australian Jewish News)