Antisemitism (also spelled anti-Semitism or anti-semitism) is hostility to, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is generally considered to be a form of racism.

Quotes

  • The Jews' political ignorance, which fitted them so well for their special role and for taking root in the state's sphere of business, and their prejudices against the people and in favor of authority, which blinded them to the political dangers of antisemitism, caused them to be oversensitive toward all forms of social discrimination. It was difficult to see the decisive difference between political argument and mere antipathy when the two developed side by side. The point, however, is that they grew out of exactly opposite aspects of emancipation: political antisemitism developed because the Jews were a separate body, while social discrimination arose because of the growing equality of Jews with all other groups.
  • I know you hesitate to appoint the man I recommended because he is a Jew. Who do you think you are, Harvard?
    • Harvard Professor G. D. Birkhoff from "A Century of mathematics in America", Volume 1, By Peter L. Duren, Richard Askey, Uta C. Merzbach pg 235.
  • "Dozens of Judensaus... intersect with the portrayal of the Jew as a Christ killer. Various illustrations of the murder of Simon of Trent blended images of Judensau, the devil, the murder of little Simon himself, and the Crucifixion. In the seventeenth-century engraving from Frankfurt … a well-dressed, very contemporary-looking Jew has mounted the sow backward and holds her tail, while a second Jew sucks at her milk and a third eats her feces. The horned devil, himself wearing a Jewish badge, looks on and the butchered Simon, splayed as if on a cross, appears on a panel above."
    • Jeremy Cohen (2007) quoted in Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen, Oxford University Press, p. 208, ISBN 0195178416
  • Without anti-Semitism, Nazism would have been inconceivable, both as an ideology and as a catalyst of the emotions. As for German society only two of its many sub-groups, the cultivated liberal minority among the bourgeoisie, and the politically educated segment of the working class, were relatively immune to anti-Semitism.
    • Richard Grunberger, "The 12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933-1945", New York: NY, Holt, Rinehart and Winston (1971) p. 466
  • Thus we can see the two great differences between races: Aryanism means ethical perception of work and that which we today so often hear – socialism, community spirit, common good before own good. Jewry means egoistic attitude to work and thereby mammonism and materialism, the opposite of socialism.
    • Adolf Hitler "Why We Are Anti-Semites", August 15, 1920 speech in Munich at the Hofbräuhaus. Hitler gave this speech a number of times in August of 1920 to members of the National Socialist German Workers Party. Speech is also known as "Why Are We Anti-Semites?" Translated from Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 16. Jahrg., 4. H. (Oct., 1968), pp. 390-420. Edited by Carolyn Yeager.
  • There comes a time when it will be obvious that socialism can only be carried out accompanied by nationalism and antisemitism.
    • Adolf Hitler "Why We Are Anti-Semites", August 15, 1920 speech in Munich at the Hofbräuhaus. Hitler gave this speech a number of times in August of 1920 to members of the National Socialist German Workers Party. Speech is also known as "Why Are We Anti-Semites?" Translated from Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 16. Jahrg., 4. H. (Oct., 1968), pp. 390-420. Edited by Carolyn Yeager.
  • If we are socialists, then we must definitely be anti-semites—and the opposite, in that case, is Materialism and Mammonism, which we seek to oppose… How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-semite?
    • Adolf Hitler, quoted in Hitler: Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905–1924, Eberhard Jäckel, Axel Kuhn, editors, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980, pp. 200-1. A collection of primary documents of Hitler speeches and writings. Hitler’s speech to NSDAP members in Munich in August 1920, titled "Why We Are Anti-Semites"
  • For if the Jew has a racial determination, so have we, and we are also obliged to act accordingly. Because it seems inseparable from the social idea and we do not believe that there could ever exist a state with lasting inner health if it is not built on internal social justice, and so we have joined forces with this knowledge.
    • Adolf Hitler "Why We Are Anti-Semite", August 15, 1920 speech in Munich at the Hofbräuhaus. Hitler gave this speech a number of times in August of 1920 to members of the National Socialist German Workers Party. Speech is also known as "Why Are We Anti-Semites?" Translated from Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 16. Jahrg., 4. H. (Oct., 1968), pp. 390-420. Edited by Carolyn Yeager.
  • The struggle between the people and the hatred amongst them is being nurtured by very specific interested parties. It is a small, rootless, international clique that is turning the people against each other, that does not want them to have peace. It is the people who are at home both nowhere and everywhere, who do not have anywhere a soil on which they have grown up, but who live in Berlin today, in Brussels tomorrow, Paris the day after that, and then again in Prague or Vienna or London, and who feel at home everywhere. [Man in audience shouts 'Jews!'] They are the only ones who can be addressed as international elements, because they conduct their business everywhere, but the people cannot follow them. The people are bounded to their soil, bounded to its fatherland, bounded to the possibilities of life that the state, the nation, offers.
  • We want to build up a new state! That is why the others hate us so much today…. They are, after all, plutocracies in which a tiny clique of capitalists dominate the masses, and this, naturally, in close cooperation with international Jews and Freemasons.
  • There is, then, no danger in the circumstances that anti-semitism will disappear, for it is the Jews themselves who add fuel to its flames and see that it is kept well stoked. Before the opposition to it can disappear, the malady itself must disappear. And from that point of view, you can rely on the Jews: as long as they survive, anti-semitism will never fade.
    • The Testament of Adolf Hitler, 13 February 1945.
  • [A]nti-Semitism was rife in almost all varieties of socialism.
    • Sidney Hook, “Home Truths About Marx,” Commentary (September 1978), reprinted in Marxism and Beyond, Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield (1983) p. 117.
  • In Western Europe, anti-Semitism directed against Arabs has largely replaced anti-Semitism against Jews
  • South African Nationalism is riddled with anti-semitism, but Jews are entirely free to practise their religion and study their sacred books; in the Soviet Union anti-semitism is directed and encouraged by the state, and Jews can be, and are, imprisoned for teaching Hebrew scripture.
  • Anti-Semitism is a Socialist movement, only nobler and purer in form than Social Democracy.
    • Wilhelm Marr , as quoted in The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria, Peter Pulzer, revised edition, Harvard University Press, 1988, p. 45.
  • Bourgeois society continuously brings forth the Jew from its own entrails.
    • Karl Marx as quoted in Nationalism and Socialism: Marxist and Labor Theories of Nationalism to 1917, Horace B. Davis, New York: NY, Monthly Review Press (2009) p. 72. Original: Marx, “Zur Judenfrange” in "Werke", I, (1843) pp. 374-376.
  • Anti-Semitism is a kind of social mark of Cain that indicates a society or culture that is not ready for prime time and which will fail the tests of modern life; when anti-Semitism gains a foothold, the canary in your coal mine has just keeled over and died.
  • But overall, the political Right tended to oppose Jewish equality, and to eschew cooperation with Jews. This exclusion meant that politically active European Jews often had few political choices other than the political Left.
    • Philip Mendes, Jews and the Left: The Rise and Fall of a Political Alliance (2014) Springer, pg. 11
  • On any given day one can find some eminent European – a university professor, high-ranking churchman, a parliamentarian – gravely explaining to reporters that harsh and disproportionate criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic. And their protestations sound plausible. After all, this is not your grandfather’s anti-Semitism.…At least that is what I assumed until someone did the study. Two Connecticut professors got curious about the constant denials that extremely harsh critics of Israel were anti-Semitic. Edward H. Kaplan, the William N. and Marie A. Beach Professor of Management Sciences at Yale, and Charles A. Small, Director of Urban Studies, w:Southern Connecticut State University, decided to examine the issue in formal way.…Kaplan and Small ask whether individuals expressing strong anti-Israel sentiments, such as the statement by Ted Honderich, Emeritus Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London, that “those Palestinians who have resorted to necessary killing have been right to try to free their people, and those who have killed themselves in the cause of their people have indeed sanctified themselves,” are more likely than the general population to also support in such old-style anti-Semitic slurs as “Jews have too much power in our country today.” The correlation was almost perfect. In a survey of 5,000 Europeans in ten countries, people who believed that the Israeli soldiers “intentionally target Palestinian civilians,” and that “Palestinian suicide bombers who target Israeli civilians” are justified, also believed that “Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind,” “Jews have a lot of irritating faults,” and “Jews are more willing than others to use shady practices to get what they want.” The study’s other interesting finding was that only a small fraction of Europeans believe any of these things. Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism flourish among the few, but those few are over-represented in Europe’s newspapers, its universities, and its left-wing political parties.
  • You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana are Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists.
  • Many Jews in the Communist conspiracy. Chambers and Hiss were the only non-Jews. Many thought that Hiss was. He could have been a half. Every other one was a Jew—and it raised hell for us. But in this case, I hope to God he's not a Jew.
    • Nixon, Haldeman, and Ronald Ziegler, 2:42-3:33 P.M. Oval Office Conversation #524-7; cassette #775 (June 17, 1971)
  • I didn’t notice many Jewish names coming back from Vietnam on any of those lists; I don’t know how the hell they avoid it. If you look at the Canadian-Swedish contingent, they were very disproportionately Jewish. The deserters.
  • Marx and the early French socialist, developed antisemitism ideals that have characterized much of the Left to this day.
  • Die Deutschen werden den Juden Auschwitz nie verzeihen.
    • Translation: "The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz."
    • Zvi Rex, as quoted in Der Ewige Antisemit by Henryk Broder, 1986, ISBN 3596238064
  • It would be futile to deny that the Nazis built a vast mass of evil on a vast mass of prejudice. It would be equally futile to deny that strong prejudices against the Jews existed among Christians during the centuries before the Shoah. Since, moreover, the childhood of the European nations was passed under the tutelage of the clergy, we should not be surprised that these prejudices were, in part, ecclesiastically inculcated.
  • The Holocaust was the product not of Christendom, but of Christendom's collapse. The destruction of Christendom effected (1) the rejection of Catholic natural law and (2) the rise of the absolute nation-state, previously impossible because popes could depose and counterbalance kings. Hitler, to be sure, contributed a neo-paganism and anti-Semitism all his own. But in mobilizing opinion and wielding power, he was helped more by these two innovations than by any Catholic doctrines.
  • We have to be clear that while antisemitism is a threat to Jews everywhere, it is also a threat to democratic governance itself. The antisemites who marched in Charlottesville don’t just hate Jews. They hate the idea of multiracial democracy. They hate the idea of political equality. They hate immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ people, women, and anyone else who stands in the way of a whites-only America. They accuse Jews of coordinating a massive attack on white people worldwide, using people of color and other marginalized groups to do their dirty work.
  • The forces fomenting antisemitism are the forces arrayed against oppressed people around the world, including Palestinians; the struggle against antisemitism is also the struggle for Palestinian freedom. I stand in solidarity with my friends in Israel, in Palestine, and around the world who are trying to resolve conflict, diminish hatred, and promote dialogue, cooperation, and understanding.
  • The anti‐Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith; at the outset he has chosen to devaluate words and reasons. How entirely at ease he feels as a result. How futile and frivolous discussions about the rights of the Jew appear to him. He has placed himself on other ground from the beginning. If out of courtesy he consents for a moment to defend his point of view, he lends himself but does not give himself. He tries simply to project his intuitive certainty onto the plane of discourse. I mentioned awhile back some remarks by anti‐Semites, all of them absurd: "I hate Jews because they make servants insubordinate, because a Jewish furrier robbed me, etc." Never believe that anti‐ Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.
  • The anti‐Semite understands nothing about modern society. He would be incapable of conceiving of a constructive plan; his action cannot reach the level of the methodical; it remains on the ground of passion. To a long‐term enterprise he prefers an explosion of rage analogous to the running amuck of the Malays. His intellectual activity is confined to interpretation; he seeks in historical events the signs of the presence of an evil power. Out of this spring those childish and elaborate fabrications which give him his resemblance to the extreme paranoiacs. In addition, anti‐Semitism channels evolutionary drives toward the destruction of certain men, not of institutions. An anti‐Semitic mob will consider it has done enough when it has massacred some Jews and burned a few synagogues. It represents, therefore, a safety valve for the owning classes, who encourage it and thus substitute for a dangerous hate against their regime a beneficent hate against particular people. Above all this naive dualism is eminently reassuring to he anti‐Semite himself. If all he has to do is to remove Evil, that means that the Good is already given. He has no need to seek it in anguish, to invent it, to scrutinize it patiently when he has found it, to prove it in action, to verify it by its consequences, or, finally, to shoulder he responsibilities of the moral choice be has made. It is not by chance that the great outbursts of anti‐Semitic rage conceal a basic optimism. The anti‐Semite as cast his lot for Evil so as not to have to cast his lot for Good. The more one is absorbed in fighting Evil, he less one is tempted to place the Good in question. One does not need to talk about it, yet it is always understood in the discourse of the anti‐Semite and it remains understood in his thought. When he has fulfilled his mission as holy destroyer, the Lost Paradise will reconstitute itself. For the moment so many tasks confront the anti‐Semite that he does not have time to think about it. He is in the breach, fighting, and each of his outbursts of rage is a pretext to avoid the anguished search for the Good.
  • National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-Semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism. Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-Semitism is dangerous for the toilers, for it is a false track which diverts them from the proper road and leads them into the jungle. Hence, Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable and bitter enemies of anti-Semitism. In the U.S.S.R., anti-Semitism is strictly prosecuted as a phenomenon hostile to the Soviet system. According to the laws of the U.S.S.R. active anti-Semites are punished with death.
    • Joseph Stalin as quoted in "Anti-Semitism: Reply to an inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States" (12 January 1931)
  • Anti-Zionism is all but indistinguishable from anti-Semitism in practice and often in intent, however much progressives try to deny this.
    • Bret L. Stephens, A Despicable Cartoon in The Times, 28 April 2019, The New York Times
  • Whenever a Jew is killed, it is for the benefit of Islam.
    • Ahmad Sirhindi, quoted from Bostom, A. G. (2015). Sharia versus freedom: The legacy of Islamic totalitarianism.
  • Jews in Medina are singled out as "men whose malice and enmity was aimed at the Apostle of God". The Yahūd in this literature appear not only as malicious, but also deceitful, cowardly and totally lacking resolve. However, they have none of the demonic qualities attributed to them in mediaeval Christian literature, neither is there anything comparable to the overwhelming preoccupation with Jews and Judaism (except perhaps in the narratives on Muhammad’s encounters with Medinan Jewry) in Muslim traditional literature. Except for a few notable exceptions... the Jews in the Sira and the Maghazi are even heroic villains. Their ignominy stands in marked contrast to Muslim heroism, and in general, conforms to the Qura'nic image of "wretchedness and baseness stamped upon them."

Dialogue

Soloviev: Now, Golovinski, to begin with…I hate jews. They are a sly race whop will creep in and destroy the purity of our Russian culture!
So, I want you to write me a piece on this subject…and make sure it makes a clear case!
Golivinski: Excuse me sir!
Soloviev: Back so soon? What is it Golovinski?
Golovinski: Here is the article you asked for.
Soloviev: In only one hour? Let em read it.
Where did you get these official statistics?
Golivinski: Oh, I made them up! No one would dare to challenge them.
Soloviev: Good work! From here on you will write for our regular campaign against the new modernization!
Golvinski: Why that?
Soloviev: All liberal, capitalistic, socialistic movements are directed by jews. We must expose them.
They are the anti-christ!
Golivinski: But sir, shouldn’t we keep this political?
Soloviev: In Russia religion and politics are the same!
Our people will believe anything negative about the Jews! Go ahead boy!
  • Will Eisner, The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, (10/2/2005), pp. 45-48.

See also

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