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Is Anti-Semitism Unique?: Review of Clemens Heni, Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon (Berlin: Edition Critic, 2013)

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  • The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law

Abstract

Is Anti-Semitism a discrete, specific and unique phenomenon or merely a particular instance of a broader social pathology such as xenophobia or racism? This question has proven surprisingly controversial among scholars of contemporary anti-Semitism. The latest intervention in this debate has been German political scientist Clemens Heni's massive volume, Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon (Berlin: Edition Critic 2013). This review essay places Heni's work in a historical and theoretical perspective, explaining the context, politics and stakes involved in this debate. The essay is part of the author's broader research project on "The Definition of Anti-Semitism," which will culminate in a book-length analysis in 2014.
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Is Anti-Semitism Unique?
The Brandeis Brief (March 2013)
Kenneth L. Marcus
Review of Clemens Heni, Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon (Berlin: Edition Critic,
2013)
Among anti-Semitism scholars, nothing clears a room faster than the question of
whether Jew-hatred is unique. One school of thought says that it is uniquely evil,
qualitatively distinct in both severity and character. Let us call all them the
Exceptionalists, because they argue that anti-Semitism is a singular phenomenon. The
second school says that Jews should get over themselves: anti-Semitism is bad, but it is
not entirely different from other aversions, such as racism, sexism, homophobia or
heterosexism. Let us call them the Genericists, since they consider Jew-hatred to be
nothing more than a particular instance of a broader phenomenon, such as xenophobia or
group-based animus. For all their mutual commitment to the same ostensible goal of
combating anti-Semitism, Genericists and Exceptionalists are embroiled in civil war.
The battle was joined rather dramatically during the Journal for the Study of
Antisemitism’s December anti-Semitism conference in London when some speakers
forcefully denounced the rise of Muslim anti-Semitism. Members of the Genericist
school rose in protest, marching out to express their view that anti-Semitism and anti-
Muslim discrimination must be equally denounced as kindred forms of racism. Shortly
afterwards, one Genericist made a point of praising the late Edward Said, the leading
figure of the post-colonialist school, in a gesture of catholicity. Thereupon two
Exceptionalists returned the favor by walking-out in their own protest over the mention
of a scholar who is known for outspoken anti-Zionism. It would be a mistake to imagine
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that the dispute concerned only attitudes towards, say, Muslim anti-Semitism, Jewish
anti-Islamism, or Saidian post-Colonialism. Rather, the over-arching question is whether
anti-Semitism is merely a particular form of racism or whether it is a unique social evil.
This debate may be particularly acute today, but it is by no means new. The
Genericist view rose in influence within the Jewish communal world immediately after
World War II as Jewish Americans sought to assimilate into the broader American
culture. In fact, the adoption by major of Jewish organizations of this “theory of the
unitary character of prejudice” has been described as one of the hallmarks of the
evolution of Jewish communal organizations.1 The Genericist theory is that prejudice
divides the world into in-groups and out-groups, directing a generally negative mindset
towards out-groups. It is based on the observation that people who are prejudiced against
members of one group tend to be prejudiced against other groups as well.
By the late 1940’s, this Genericism was hardening into an orthodoxy within the
Jewish communal world. For example, Stephen S. Wise, as President of the American
Jewish Congress, told Congress in 1947 that, “We regard ethnic discrimination, whether
directed against Jews, Negroes, Chinese, Mexicans, or any other group, as a single and
indivisible problem and as one of the most urgent problems of democratic society.”2 In
the same year, the American Jewish Committee adopted a resolution resolving “that there
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1 Stuart Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1997), quoting John Hingham, Send These to Me: Immigrants in Urban
America, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1984) (rev. ed.) p. 155.
2 Stephen S. Wise, statement before Senate Sub-Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, hearings on
federal fair employment practices bill (S. 984), June 12, 1947.
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is the closest relation between the protection of the civil rights of all citizens and the
protection of the civil rights of the members of particular groups…”3
The unitary theory became similarly dominant in academia during this period.
This is not entirely coincidental, as the Jewish communal world, and especially the
American Jewish Committee, funded influential research that articulated this Jewish
communal orthodoxy. In particular this took the form of the American Jewish
Committee’s five-volume series of Studies in Prejudice. This series was anchored by
Horkheimer and Adorno’s landmark treatise on The Authoritarian Personality, which
was announced that anti-Semitism “probably is not a specific or isolated phenomenon but
a part of a broader ideological framework.”4
Such Genericism treats anti-Semitism as distinguishable only in its objects from
other forms of discrimination such as anti-black racism or anti-Hispanic ethnocentricity,
rather than identifying a peculiar characteristic of the hatred of Jews. Conceptually, such
work reveals the common underlying anxieties that arise from the stranger, in the sense
that any other being of human life is foreign and dangerous. This often stirs antipathy,
which may provoke aggressiveness or defensiveness. By focusing on anti-Semitism’s
common aspects, Genericists are able to perceive not only Judeophobia’s continuities
with other animus but also the ways in which distrust of otherness can engender negative
attitudes towards Jews.
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3 Quoted in Stuart Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 21.
4 T.W. Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality (1950) at 3.
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Genericism also squares well with grand theories or ideologies, such as Marxism.
Such theories are typically founded on the conviction that one cannot resolve any
particular social conflict without resolving all of them; that is to say, without resolving
the fundamental antagonisms which lie at their base. Thus, for example, Marxists may
argue that the rights of women, the condition of the environment, the health of
democracy, and the establishment of peace all ultimately require a global resolution
without which their underlying conflicts cannot be resolved.5 Alternatively, some other
movement may play the role of paradigmatic case, such as radical feminism, radical
environmentalism, or even some forms of psychoanalysis. In any of these grand theories,
anti-Semitism is merely a generic manifestation of a broader phenomenon that is best
understood in terms provided by a seemingly unrelated ideological movement or theory.
The tendency to blur the lines among forms of prejudice also has certain practical
advantages and functional usefulness. Analytically, it facilitated research, particularly in
the period immediately following World War II, which demonstrated similarities among
the divergent forms of hatred directed at different groups.6 Politically, it provides a basis
for coalition-building activities by various minority groups. Legally, it supports the
development of parallel regulatory regimes to protect persons who face discrimination
under different suspect classifications. In Europe, where Jews are the paradigmatic case
of a persecuted minority, other historical out-groups may seek legal protections by
comparing their lot to the Jewish condition. In the United States, however, where
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5 Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989), p. xxvi.
6 Clark Freshman, Whatever Happened to Anti-Semitism? How Social Science Theories Identify
Discrimination and Promote Coalitions Between "Different" Minorities, 85 CORNELL L. REV. 313, 317-
319 (2000).
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African Americans are the paradigmatic case, other groups tend to achieve protection by
comparing their status to that of American blacks.
In the end, however, these definitions served not so much to broaden academic
focus on anti-Semitism, as to eliminate it altogether. One impact of this thinking was the
virtual disappearance of anti-Semitism studies after the first golden age of research in the
1940’s and 1950’s – and until the renewed attention that the field has found in the wake
of a global resurgence of Jew-hatred since the turn of the twenty-first century. In the
interim, anti-Semitism studies were largely replaced by studies of “generalized
prejudice.” Commenting on the impact of such studies, one law professor penned a law
review article entitled, Wharever Happened to Anti-Semitism?7 That article observes that
“anti-Semitism has faded from our consciousness, in part because theorists began to view
anti-Semitism as part of a larger phenomenon of prejudice.”8 Interestingly, the study of
other forms of prejudice did not disappear during this entire period: whole literatures
emerged to study discrimination against women, blacks and other groups. In these
literatures, the distinctive forms of each prejudice emerge.
The most obvious problem with such general definitions, however, is that they
suggest that anti-Semitism may be different from other forms of ethnocentrism or
xenophobia only in the choice of persecuted out-group, rather than in the nature or
intensity of hatred. To this extent, they fail to account for anti-Semitism’s distinctive
features, including its exceptional virulence. Historian Ben-Zion Netanyahu recognized
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7 Clark Freshman, Whatever Happened to Anti-Semitism? How Social Science Theories Identify
Discrimination and Promote Coalitions Between ‘Different’ Minorities, 85 Cornell L. Rev. 313 (Jan.
2000).
8 Ibid.
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the difference in intensity when he defined anti-Semitism as an animus which combines
“hatred of the other, hatred of the alien and hatred of the weak” but “in a more forceful
and consistent form than in any other form of hatred of minorities.”9
Beyond the question of intensity, moreover, anti-Semitism differs from other
animus in ubiquity, depth, complexity and persistence. For this reason, some scholars
insist that anti-Semitism “is much more than mere prejudice about or discrimination
against Jews.”10 Leon Poliakov, in his magisterial multi-volume history, stresses this
uniqueness in his definition of “anti-Semitism” as “an effective sui generis attitude of the
gentiles towards the Jews…”11 Gavin Langmuir expressed this insight when he
admonished that the kind of hatred symbolized by Auschwitz must be distinguished in
more than intensity from the hostility represented by a swastika on the Eiffel Tower.12
Langmuir’s comment reflects a recurring theme among those who have struggled
to craft a proper definition of this elusive term. To wit: there is an intuition, shared by
many engaged in this effort, that any proper definition of anti-Semitism – and certainly
any workable explanatory theory – must account for anti-Semitism’s exceptionality. That
is to say, many scholars of anti-Semitism insist that a basic characteristic of anti-
Semitism is the extent to which it is fundamentally different in character than other forms
of hate or bigotry. Langmuir’s notion is that we cannot properly understand anti-
Semitism – indeed we cannot even name it – without conveying something of what has
made it capable of such extraordinary evil.
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9 Ben-Zion Netanyahu, “Antisemitism,” in The Hebrew Encyclopedia (Jerusalem/Tel Aviv, 1959; in
Hebrew), Vol IV, pp. 493508, quoted, pp. 4967, quoted in Porat, “Historical Perspective.”
10 Robert Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York:
Random House 2010), p. 8.
11 Leon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism, Volume 1: From the Time of Christ to the Court Jews
(Richard Howard, trans.) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), p. 4.
12 Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism, p. 317.
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!The contemporary intellectual heirs of Poliakov and Langmuir include such
luminaries of anti-Semitism scholarship as Robert Wistrich and Alvin Rosenfeld. But it
has fallen to a younger German scholar, Clemens Heni, to devote an entire, massive new
volume to articulating the Exceptionalist argument. In Antisemitism: a Specific
Phenomenon, Heni reveals his wide and deep immersion in the English-language and
Germanic scholarship of anti-Semitism and prejudice, as well as his courage, energy and
passion. To be sure, Heni’s book also reflects the rancorousness of the contemporary
debate, and it is as pugnacious as it is learned. Some will no doubt find some of Heni’s
judgments to be unfair, mean-spirited, or even brutal. But that is not to say that he is
wrong, at least in his major thesis on anti-Semitism’s singular character.
Heni argues that anti-Semitism is exceptional not only because of its severity but
also because of its very nature. “No single group of people, except for the Jews,” Heni
argues, “has been singled out and blamed simultaneously for mutually exclusive
developments like capitalism, communism or liberalism and humanism.”13 Heni
observes that some Genericists appear to believe that their position has the virtue of
neutrality.!!!Heni!dispatches!this!view!sharply:!!“Ignoring!the!Iranian!threat!is!taking!a!
position,!not!remaining!neutral.!!Remaining!silent!on!Islamist!antiDSemitism!is!not!being!
neutral!either.”!!As!Heni’s!Antisemitism!nicely!demonstrates,!the!debate!over!antiD
Semitism’s!singular!character!parallels!a!similar!debate!over!the!uniqueness!of!the!
Holocaust.!!In!both!cases,!the!debate!among!scholars!reflects!a!broader!political!contest!over!
the!meaning!of!major!events!in!modern!history.!!
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13 Heni, Antisemitism, p. 186.
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!At!the!end!of!the!day,!Heni’s!new!volume!will!not!end!the!current!disagreement!over!
antiDSemitism’s!putatively!exceptional!or!generic!character.!!It!is!instead!a!stick!of!dynamite!
ignited!in!the!midst!of!the!debate.!!More!analysis!would!be!helpful!on!the!relationship!
between!antiDSemitism!and!the!related!ideologies!in!which!it!is!often!enmeshed.!!As!Heni!
observes,!antiDSemitism!nowadays!is!often!connected!in!disturbing!ways!with!antiD
Westernism,!antiDAmericanism,!and!antiDIsraelism.!!A!Genericist!who!shared!this!view!could!
explain!the!interDconnectedness!by!identifying!the!broader!animus!which!all!of!these!
aversions!exemplify.!!For!obvious!reasons,!that!method!is!unavailable!to!Heni!or!to!any!
Exceptionalist.!!!The!challenge!for!Exceptionalism!is!to!explain!both!antiDSemitism’s!
singularity!and!its!interconnectness.!!This!would!require!a!theory!of!how!antiDSemitism!
functions!as!an!ideology.!!But!this!must!await!another!day.
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ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
Antisemitism Historical Perspective
  • Ben-Zion Netanyahu
Ben-Zion Netanyahu, " Antisemitism, " in The Hebrew Encyclopedia (Jerusalem/Tel Aviv, 1959; in Hebrew), Vol IV, pp. 493–508, quoted, pp. 496–7, quoted in Porat, " Historical Perspective. " 10
A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad
  • Robert Wistrich
Robert Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Random House 2010), p. 8.
The History of Anti-Semitism From the Time of Christ to the Court Jews
  • Leon Poliakov
Leon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism, Volume 1: From the Time of Christ to the Court Jews (Richard Howard, trans.) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), p. 4. 12 Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism, p. 317.
Historical Perspective
  • Ben-Zion
  • Netanyahu
Ben-Zion Netanyahu, "Antisemitism," in The Hebrew Encyclopedia (Jerusalem/Tel Aviv, 1959; in Hebrew), Vol IV, pp. 493-508, quoted, pp. 496-7, quoted in Porat, "Historical Perspective."