Dr. Alon Milwicki is a senior research analyst in the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: As you reminded me and then taught me a bit further, antisemitism is not static. It’s problematic to make it a single definition. When we’re trying to create a culture in which it is discussed so that people’s experiences and how it manifests are considered more live, what are effective ways to do that in small communities?
Dr. Alon Milwicki: History is always a great place to look. The way antisemitism presents itself in different periods of history is astronomically different because it’s about who’s the dominant group using it and what’s the dominant trope. For example, if you go back to the resource we put out, those four examples we chose were the most prominent tropes or prominent manifestations, the way antisemitism manifested within other and more dominant narratives.
One of the things that I would update is to talk about the utilitarianism of the Jew. That is one of the dominant tropes that is being used right now. Now, a lot of people, especially those who think that waving an Israeli flag or Christian nationalists like Sean Feucht or whatever, saying they support Israel full-throated, they’re supporting Israel and what theybelieve is Jewish people, not because they support Jewish people. They support Jewish people’s role for them. So that’s a changing aspect. I would have said, “No,” if you had asked me last year if that was a dominant trope. But post-October 7th, that’s become a dominant trope. And being able to recognize that antisemitism presents itself in different ways, in more dominant ways at different periods, is extremely important. Because 20 years ago, 30 years ago, no one talked about the Great Replacement Theory.
No one was talking about it. Or if they were, it was in smaller niches. Whereas now, in the last how many years, we have had at least one or two shootings that have been based on the Great Replacement Theory. Nobody 40 years ago or 30 years ago would have been talking about transgender people and how Jewish people are behind all transgenderism or the demonization of the LGBT community. No one would have been talking about that. So, nobody would have associated attacking the LGBT community with being something traceable to antisemitism. But now, it’s pretty freaking obvious. So, to say, antisemitism is the demonization of Jews or the attack on Jewish people or something blanket like that. That’s true enough. But that doesn’t help us understand how it’s presented at the time.
To say that antisemitism is about hating Jews, no doubt. Forgive my 1980s colloquialisms, so it’s important for us. It’s incumbent on us as “experts” to illustrate how antisemitism keeps changing, how it keeps representing itself, and how it keeps evolving. Again, manifestations in 2024 are not the same as those in 1924. There are similarities, mind you, don’t get me wrong. That’s what makes antisemitism constant. Some tropes go back millennia. We know that. But the Ku Klux Klan utilizing the Jewish trope of money in the 1920s isn’t the same way as the Goyim Defense League in 2024. The commonality is Jews and money, but how and why is what makes it different, right?
It’s like when I was a history professor. I would tell students to point blank that the purpose of studying history is not the who, what, when, and where. Because you don’t need me for that, knowing that Germany invaded Poland in September of 1939 was awesome. You can answer a Jeopardy question. Score for you. That’s not studying history. Why was that considered the start of World War II? Why wasn’t it when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia? How did people respond to it at the time? How come Winston Churchill drew that line? Why didn’t Neville Chamberlain draw an earlier line? It’s the how and the why questions that make up why history matters. Why studying history is important, okay?
What antisemitism is, this rush to define it finitely. I understand its utility. But it also can prove to be a fool’s errand because knowing that antisemitism is an attack on Jewish people doesn’t get us closer. I won’t say to eradicate it because it’s been five millennia, so good luck with that. But approaching it better in our time means understanding how and why it presents itself. How and why did it shift in the 1980s? Why did it shift to this? What caused it? How did the founding of the Aryan Nations in the late 1970s shift the focus on antisemitism?
How did that affect the militia movements or the resurgence of Christian identity in the 1980s and 90s? That’s how we get at it. And I’m sorry for getting preachy. That’s sort of a non-answer to your question. Because it’s the very point we highlight in this thing, this resource is just that. You’re not going to get a finite definition. Even though the IHRA definition has all these examples, some are flawed. But this rush to accept the IRA definition, is it a genuine attempt to combat antisemitism? Or is it placatory? Because saying you accept IHRA or saying you pass a Holocaust mandate is great, so what?
Christian nationalists are in favour of Holocaust mandates. Shouldn’t that give you pause? Most Holocaust mandates don’t have any funding for education or training. You can’t just tell a U.S. history teacher in high school who doesn’t have any understanding of what the Holocaust is to be like, “You have to teach the Holocaust.” Especially since now, they’re letting, at least, a pilot program in Texas that says the top five education students in their senior year can teach K-3 in Texas. Or at least in, I want to say, Dallas County. Again, that’s not high. This is something I’m passionate about. But does that make sense? (1, 2, 3)
Because it’s almost a non-issue, like, so great, you can define antisemitism. Big fucking deal. Why does it matter? What are they doing with accepting IHRAs? Or passing all these antisemitism initiatives–great. Or colleges openly condemning antisemitism–great. But what are you doing about it? It’s much top-level shit. That’s usually very placatory. It’s not the first time this stuff has been done. I can’t remember. I always get Title IV or Title VI confused. But one of them, the one that is about the racist complaints on college campuses, includes antisemitism. So creating an antisemitism initiative on top of a Title IV or VI, whichever one it is, on antisemitism, gives off two impressions. One is that students don’t know about Title IV or VI, which is problematic. Or two, the reason for asserting a national antisemitism initiative, right when you already have something in place, has another reason why. The odds are that’s for publicity. I’m not going to get into ranting territory.
Jacobsen: When it comes to common threads you find in each of these instances, whether back to Mein Kampf, the National Socialists in Germany, to some of the white nationalists or neo-Nazis you’re seeing in the United States and Canada now, what is their uniting stereotype map? What are the common threads for their mental stereotype map?
Miwlicki: Jews can’t be trusted, Jews control money, Jews control media, Jewish disloyalty, Communism, Capitalism, all of the standard tropes. The stuff that Hitler wrote about is what Henry Ford wrote about, the stuff that the Protocols wrote about. And unfortunately, those are still widely read. Those are still very popular. And those are seen as top-level. And I’m sure the Turner Diaries are up there, too. But those are the common threads. It’s like the oldies but goodies that never go away: The power, the greed, the media.
This would be more for the American side of it because, to be fair, Hitler didn’t stop talking about God until 1938. So he might have put out a blood libel: Jews killed Jesus. That’s always an oldie but goodie. Those would be the common threads that would go across. You can’t trust Jews. Something that you would probably hear somebody saying in 1930 and anti-Semites saying today is you can’t trust Jews, and then whatever follows from that could be anything. But I would argue it’s that shadow government idea, that shadow control, that unites it all, whether it’s power or greed.
I’m going to have to agree with my sociology colleague again. It comes down to power. Power is money. Power is force. Power is influence. Power is the control of information. There is this common belief that whether it’s in Mein Kampf or in whatever bullshit the GDL is flying about today, right, that would be the common thread is probably fear of Jewish power. Or hate something like that.
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