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An Integrated Perspective on Contemporary Antisemitism: Reviewing Cross-National Data on Attitudes, Incidents, and Exposure

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An Integrated Perspective on Contemporary Antisemitism: Reviewing Cross-National Data on Attitudes, Incidents, and Exposure An Integrated Perspective on Contemporary Antisemitism: Reviewing Cross-National Data on Attitudes, Incidents, and Exposure Johannes Due Enstad∗ Preprint (April 2021) Abstract Research on contemporary antisemitism is fragmented. Existing empirical studies tend to focus on a single dimension of the phenomenon or a specific national or ideological context. This article advances an integrated perspective on contemporary antisemitism by pulling together and descriptively reviewing several sets of cross-national data shedding light on patterns and trends within three key dimensions: antisemitic attitudes, incidents targeting Jews, and Jews’ exposure to antisemitism. It is found that (1) attitudes vary considerably, being low in Western countries (yet high for some sub-groups), less low in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe, and high in Middle Eastern, North African, and other Muslim-majority countries; (2) global incident rates 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. To account for trends and variations observed in the data, the article proposes several hypotheses that may guide future research and serve as building blocks for middle-range theorizing about contemporary antisemitism. ∗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 Seventy-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz, Nazi Germany’s attempt to destroy the European Jews stands as a dark reminder of the importance of protecting minority rights and curtailing prejudice. Nevertheless, antisemitism remains an ongoing societal challenge, with serious questions being raised about Western societies’ ability to provide a secure environment for their Jewish minorities (e.g., Goldberg 2015; Kotkin 2019; AFP 2020). Many Jews worry 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 development of contemporary anti- semitism is not just a meaningful academic pursuit, but also indispensable from a policy and counteraction perspective. For policy to be informed by research and evidence, we first need to know what characterizes the global development of anti- semitism in the 21st century: what are the key patterns and trends across countries and over time, and how can they be explained? Answering such questions requires a perspective that looks beyond particular national or ideological contexts and takes into account several dimensions of this complex phenomenon simultaneously. The problem with our current picture of 21st century antisemitism is fragmentation: scholars and monitoring agencies tend to focus on one dimension, one country, or one ideology. The key contribution of this article is to advance an integrated perspective by reviewing several publicly available cross-national datasets in order to extract patterns and trends for three key dimensions: antisemitic attitudes, incidents target- ing Jews, and Jews’ exposure to antisemitism. 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 observations from these data, I suggest several hypotheses worth pursuing in future empirical research and theory-building efforts. The article proceeds as follows. First, I provide a brief definition and review previous research on contemporary antisemitism, suggesting the need for middle-range theories to build a more consolidated understanding of this phenomenon. Next, I describe the sources from which the data reviewed here were extracted—i.e., attitude surveys, incident counts, and surveys of Jewish populations—noting some methodological hurdles along the way. I then present main patterns and trends observed in the data. Finally, I propose explanatory contenders for some of the observed variations. 2 Definition, past research, and the need for middle- range theory Before moving on, a brief conceptual clarification is in order. 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. The relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism remains a controversial issue. While there is no space to treat this ongoing debate extensively here, I believe the most 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., Bachner 2004; Kovács 2010; Kurthen, Bergmann, and Erb 1997; Kushner 2013; Wieviorka 2007; Yukhneva 2010). A second set of studies focuses on particular ideological or reli- gious contexts, including right-wing, left-wing, and Islamic variants of antisemitism (Herf 2007; Hirsh 2018; Jikeli 2015a; Wistrich 2012; Wodak 2018). A third strand 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), 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). Most of this research, however, is particularistic in scope, dealing with one country, one ideological context, or one dimension of antisemitism. While particularistic accounts are certainly valuable in their own right and necessary elements of knowledge-building, their high specificity tends to produce a field characterized by “a bewildering plethora” of theses and explanations (Nonn 2008, 16). There is a distinct lack, then, of integrative accounts and efforts to develop theory on a more general level. Against this background, I propose that research on contemporary antisemitism would benefit from development of middle-range theory. Conceived by Robert K. Merton, middle-range theory aims to develop explanatory frameworks that are neither too abstract and universalist (as in “grand theory”) nor too concrete and 3 particularistic, but rather deal with a limited range of phenomena appearing across multiple contexts within a given timeframe (Merton 1968, 39–72). A key purpose of middle-range theorizing, as Merton put it, is to pull together disparate avenues of inquiry, to “consolidate otherwise segregated hypotheses and empirical uniformities” (Merton 1968, 334). My call for middle-range theorizing about contemporary antisemitism is motivated by many of the same concerns that led sociologist Stephen Castles, in an influential article in this journal, to call for middle-range theories of migration—i.e., preventing fragmentation and integrating insights from various sub-fields and disciplines (Castles 2010). I suggest a roadmap for such theory development by proposing a number of hypotheses for further exploration based on notable patterns and trends in the data reviewed and informed by findings from extant research. In doing so I rely on Pawson(2000)’s model of middle-range hypothesis generation, according to which explanations should focus on outcomes (“interesting, puzzling, socially significant outcome patterns”), suggest underlying mechanisms generating these outcomes, and recognize the contextual contingency of such mechanisms (Pawson 2000, 293–98). Data and measures In the following I describe the sources from which the data reviewed in this study were extracted and note some methodological problems involved in the different ways of measuring antisemitism. I draw on several publicly available datasets, including three different attitude surveys, one incident database, and two surveys that asked European Jews about their perceptions and experiences of antisemitism. Attitude surveys To provide a picture of the development of antisemitic attitudes over time and across countries, I draw on three sets of cross-national surveys, each with a different measure of antisemitic attitudes: the Pew Global Attitudes surveys, the World/European Values Survey, and the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Global 100 Index. The Pew Global Attitudes surveys are a useful and hitherto largely untapped source for studying the development of antisemitic attitudes over time and across a global range of countries. In nationally representative samples covering the years 1991–2019 and 24 countries, the Pew surveys
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