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Contemporary Antisemitism in Three Dimensions: a New Framework for Analysis

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Contemporary Antisemitism in Three Dimensions: a New Framework for Analysis Contemporary Antisemitism in Three Dimensions: A New Framework for Analysis Johannes Due Enstad∗ Preprint (May 2021) Abstract What characterizes the global development of antisemitism in the 21st century, and why does it affect some countries more than others? Current frameworks are unable to provide comprehensive answers to this important question. Existing studies tend to operationalize antisemitism too narrowly, using a single indicator of the phenomenon. Moreover, their scope tends to be restricted to a specific national or ideological context. The resulting nearsightedness fails to capture the conceptual breadth of antisemitism and precludes discovery of cross-national patterns and trends over time, which in turn hinders development of testable hypotheses about why antisemitism varies across space and time. To advance the study of antisemitism empirically and theoretically, this article proposes a new analytical framework composed of three key indicators: antisemitic attitudes, incidents targeting Jews, and Jews’ exposure to antisemitism. Reviewing extant data on these indicators, the article finds that: (1) attitudes vary considerably by geographic and cultural region as well as among population sub-groups; (2) current incident data do not enable cross-national comparison, but global incident levels have fluctuated on a relatively high level after 2000; and (3) Jews’ exposure to antisemitism appears relatively high and stable over the past decade, with some notable temporal and spatial variation, and is not tied to levels of antisemitic attitudes in the way one might expect. Employing the three-dimensional framework enables the formation of a more accurate and nuanced picture of how antisemitism is developing, and helps identify unresolved questions and hypotheses to guide future research. A similar three-dimensional framework could be fruitfully applied in the study of other forms of racism and prejudice. ∗Norwegian Institute for Social Research / [email protected]. This research was supported by the Norwegian Research Council under Grant 302297. Thanks to my colleagues at the Norwegian Institute for Social Research and the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) for helpful comments. 1 Introduction The past 20 years have witnessed rising public concern over the rise of a revitalized antisemitism. Posing a threat to Jewish communities and a challenge to societies committed to protecting minority rights and curtailing prejudice, this development has raised serious questions about Western societies’ ability to provide a secure environment for their Jewish minorities (Goldberg 2015; Kotkin 2019; AFP 2020). A worryingly high number of Jews have expressed doubt about their future on the European continent, as evidenced by a 2018 survey covering 16,500 respondents in 12 EU countries—among them, 38 percent said they had considered emigrating because of safety concerns (FRA 2018). Given these circumstances, understanding the drivers behind the development of contemporary antisemitism is not just a meaningful academic pursuit, but also an important question for developers of policy and counteraction measures. What characterizes the development of antisemitism globally in the 21st century, and why does it manifest differently over time and across countries? While there is a growing body of research on contemporary antisemitism, this fundamental question has yet to receive satisfactory answers. Providing such answers requires a perspective that takes into account several dimensions of antisemitism simultaneously and looks beyond particular national or ideological contexts. Such perspectives are lacking in the current literature because scholars and monitoring agencies tend to operationalize antisemitism narrowly, using a single indicator, and because they tend to focus on a single country or a single type of ideology. In this article, I advance a more comprehensive analytical framework for studying contemporary antisemitism. At the heart of this framework are three key indicators: antisemitic attitudes, incidents targeting Jews, and Jews’ objective and subjective exposure to antisemitism. While the first two indicators are familiar and much used by scholars and monitoring agencies, the important concept of exposure has received relatively little attention. In order to test the utility of this three-dimensional framework, I review several publicly available datasets in order to present key patterns and trends across coun- tries and over time for each indicator. Specifically, I draw on survey data from Pew, the World/European Values Survey, the Anti-Defamation League, and the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency, as well as incident data from the Stephen Roth Institute/Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. Based on the 2 resulting observations, I suggest several hypotheses and unresolved questions worth pursuing in future empirical research and theory-building efforts. The article proceeds as follows. First, I briefly define antisemitism, review previous research, and argue for the empirical and theoretical utility of a three-dimensional framework. Next, I flesh out such a framework composed of three different indicators, showing how these indicators are measurable by way of publicly available data while noting some methodological hurdles to keep in mind. I then apply this framework in a review of extant data on contemporary antisemitism. Based on the findings of this review, I move on to suggest a number of hypotheses and open questions worth pursuing in future research. Finally, I discuss some overall implications and limitations of the proposed framework both for antisemitism research in particular and the study of prejudice in general. Definition, past research, and the utility of a three- dimensional framework According to Helen Fein’s influential definition, antisemitism is “a persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs toward Jews as a collectivity” expressed through individual attitudes, hostile actions, and cultural imagery (Fein 1987, 67). Such beliefs typically portray Jews as greedy, powerful, maliciously manipulating on a global scale, and cunningly intelligent. This definition does not touch upon the relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, which remains a controversial issue. While there is no space to treat this ongoing debate here, I believe a helpful approach is to think of antisemitism and anti-Zionism as two distinct sets of beliefs that may, but do not necessarily, overlap. Recent decades have witnessed a growing body of research on contemporary anti- semitism, with sociologists, historians, political scientists and psychologists enhancing our knowledge about many aspects of the phenomenon. Within this literature, five main strands of inquiry can be identified. First, a number of studies analyze the histories and dynamics of antisemitism in particular countries (E.g., Wieviorka 2007; Kovács 2010; Kurthen, Bergmann, and Erb 1997; Kushner 2013; Yukhneva 1993; Bachner 2004; Marrus, Penslar, and Gross Stein 2005; Verkhovsky 2004). A second set of studies focuses on particular ideological or religious contexts, including right- wing, left-wing, and Islamic variants of antisemitism (Kahmann 2017; Wodak 2018; Herf 2007; Hirsh 2018; Jikeli 2015a; Wetzel 2013; Webman 2010). A third strand 3 of research has analyzed the prevalence and determinants of antisemitic attitudes (Beattie 2017; Bilewicz et al. 2013; F. Cohen et al. 2009; Kaplan and Small 2006; Staetsky 2017, 2019b; Brym 2019), while a fourth line on inquiry has sought to explain variation in the occurrence of antisemitic incidents (Smith 2008; Jacobs et al. 2011; Feinberg 2020). Finally, a fifth strand investigates Jews’ perceptions and experiences of antisemitism (J. E. Cohen 2018b; DellaPergola 2020). The many branches of contemporary antisemitism research share a common fea- ture in that they tend to employ particularistic frameworks. By this I mean that antisemitism is either operationalized narrowly, using a single indicator (such as attitudes or incidents), or else studied within a specific country or a particular ideological or religious context. While such accounts are valuable in their own right and necessary elements of knowledge building, their particularism entails two limita- tions. First, narrow operationalization fails to capture the breadth of antisemitism as a multifaceted concept involving a cognitive dimension (attitudes and beliefs), a behavioural dimension (hostile actions), and a “receiving-end” dimension (how Jews perceive and experience antisemitism). Understanding the relationship between these dimensions is an important task, but this is hard to achieve when studying each in isolation. Herein lies the need to integrate all three dimensions within a single framework. The second limitation is that while we have many accounts of particular national, ideological, or religious contexts, there is a distinct lack of studies focusing on cross-national variation over time. The three-dimensional framework proposed here offers a way to move beyond par- ticularism in order to study contemporary antisemitism as a complex and global phenomenon with impacts that differ significantly depending on place and time. Using a more comprehensive operationalization and widening the scope to encompass multiple countries has its drawbacks: this approach sacrifices depth and fine-grained contextual detail. Yet the gains are potentially valuable: broader coverage, detection of overarching patterns and relationships overlooked in current frameworks,
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