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Secondary antisemitism

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Secondary antisemitism is a special form of antisemitism that emerged after the Holocaust ended.[1]

Origin

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Max Horkheimer (1895 ‒ 1973).
Theodor W. Adorno (1903 ‒ 1969).

Peter Schönbach ‒ a Frankfurt School co-worker of the German Jewish philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno ‒ came up with the concept based on the critical theory (CT).[2]

Early research

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They drew their inspiration from a qualitative analysis of group interviews in the late 1940s,[3] where they observed that the interviewed Germans still hated Jews, denied their guilt for the Nazi war crimes and saw themselves as the "double victims" of Nazi and Soviet terror.[3] The interviewed Germans held Jews accountable for their hardship under Allied occupation due to the false belief that Jews (1) "applied illegitimate pressure on the Allies" to punish Germany (2) "controlled the black market".[3]

Concept

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Henryk M. Broder (1946 – ) discussed a commonly quoted description of the concept in his 1986 book Der Ewige Antisemit ("The Eternal Antisemite"), which is reportedly made by the Israeli psychiatrist Zvi Rex [he]:[3]

The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.

Horkheimer and Adorno spoke of "guilt-defensive anti-Semitism" motivated by a deflection of guilt.[3][4] As per Adorno, some Germans never admitted their role in the Holocaust. Instead, the Germans projected it onto the Jews by blaming them for their own genocide.[3][4]

They further hypothesized that secondary antisemitism came from "latent" guilt and "blind" identification with their nation,[3][4] which is classifiable by a mix of individual "guilt complex", sociological "group defense reflex" and nationalism.[3][4] The three elements altogether made them deny the Holocaust.[3][4]

Situation

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Further information: Antisemitism in Europe

Since the end of the Holocaust, Holocaust distortion[5][6] associated with secondary antisemitism has increased in a number of Eastern European countries, including Romania and Poland.[7][8]

Romania

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Communist age (1947 – 1989)

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Further information: Iași pogrom and Odessa massacre (1941)
A photo of the Romanian communist tyrant[9][10] Nicolae Ceaușescu.

Under Nicolae Ceaușescu's communist rule,[9][10] Romania's role in the Holocaust, including the Iași pogrom and Odessa massacre,[11][12] was officially denied. It was blamed entirely on the German and Hungarian fascists.[13] Romanians were taught about the "heroic anti-fascist resistance", emphasizing the anti-Nazi battles following Romania's defection to the Allies. Many former subordinates of Ion Antonescu served in the secret police of Nicolae Ceaușescu[13] and to help him oppress Romanians.[9][10]

Meanwhile, Nicolae Ceaușescu reportedly believed lies about Jews, including The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and defined Jew as a "money-changer" and an "extortionist" in an official English–Romanian dictionary.[14]

Post-communist age (1989 – )

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Since the fall of Ceaușescu's communist regime,[9][10] a systematic effort to whitewash the war criminals, especially Ion Antonescu, has been observed by scholars. Antonescu is praised by some so-called historians as a hero who waged a "holy war against Bolshevism".[13]

Acts of Holocaust denial[5] by politicians occurred from time to time, notable of whom include Ion Iliescu, the former President of Romania (2000 – 2004). He made similar claims to those of Ceaușescu that there was "no Holocaust within Romania" and that the Poles, Jews and communists "were treated equally", while denying the Romanian role in the Holocaust and the verified Romanian Jewish death toll.[13]

An international inquiry, led by Romanian-American Jewish writer Elie Wiesel, identified all the evidence of Romania's role in the Holocaust. The Elie Wiesel National Institute for Studying the Holocaust in Romania (Romanian: Institutul Național pentru Studierea Holocaustului din România „Elie Wiesel”, INSHR), a state-funded Holocaust research center, was also founded in 2005.[15]

In November 2021, the Romanian parliament passed a law, by a large majority, to require the teaching of the Holocaust and Jewish history from 2023. The only group opposing it was the nationalist party Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR). The AUR was condemned by the INSHR.[16] Since September 2023, the Holocaust and Jewish history have become part of the high school curriculum in Romania.[17][18]

Poland

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Further information: Racism in Poland § Jews

In the 2010s, Poland passed laws that have been seen as suppressing academic discussions about WWII Polish collaboration with Nazi occupiers,[7][8] while violence towards relevant researchers[19] and the Polish Jewish community have reportedly increased.[7][20] Writing for The Times of Israel, Jewish historian Dr. Alexandria Fanjoy Silver believed that the normalization of Holocaust distortion[5][6] and violence towards the said groups in Poland was caused by secondary antisemitism.[21]

Academic views

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Antisemitic poster spotted at an anti-war rally in San Francisco on February 16, 2003, which incorporated both the motifs of "happy merchant Jews" and "Zio-Nazis". The slur ZIONIST PIGS[22]was also used.
Antisemitic graffiti in Madrid, 2003, equating the Star of David with the dollar and Nazi swastika.

Werner Bergmann

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In 2007, German sociologist Werner Bergmann wrote an article about the "semantics" (study of meaning) of secondary antisemitism,[23] where he summarized the features as follows:

Alexandria Fanjoy Silver

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Dr. Alexandria Fanjoy Silver,[21] sharing similar concerns to Prof. Jan Grabowski,[7] postulated that secondary antisemitism was "rooted in the psychological process of guilt-deflection",[21] involving a "negation of personal responsibility".[21] Dr. Silver added that Holocaust inversion,[29] and the gaslighting of Jews who faced antisemitic abuses,[21] showed secondary antisemitism to be a systemic issue in Western society,[21] making it hard for Jews to discuss their lived experiences.[21]

For instance, many Jews faced allegations of "talking too much about the Holocaust", being "anti-Palestinian" or "ignoring Islamophobia" for raising awareness about Hamas' atrocities on October 7, 2023,[21] despite Jews having suffered 68% of religion-based hate crimes in the United States (US) in 2023 as per FBI data,[30] while 46% of the world's adult population (around 2,200,000,000 people) were found to hold deeply entrenched antisemitic views as of January 2025.[31]

Dr. Silver considered those accusing Jews of being "genocidal" as being motivated by secondary antisemitism given that the accusers were "so uncomfortable in its immorality" that they had to "twist it into an expression of morality."[21] She also highlighted that secondary antisemitism was statistically the highest in Europe as of 2022 in relation to Holocaust memory, education and commemoration.[21][32]

Clemens Heni

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Political scientist Dr. Clemens Heni maintained that secondary antisemitism often involved Holocaust inversion, in whose relevant propaganda tends to single out Israeli Jews for perceived wrongdoings.[33] Dr. Heni found that those propaganda usually exaggerated Germans' suffering from Allied bombing operations (e.g. the Dresden bombing in February 1945) and false accusing Israeli Jews of "weaponizing" the Holocaust to "extort" from present Germans,[33] which he classified as "soft-core Holocaust denial"[33] – a synonym for Holocaust distortion.[5][6]

Those who distributed such propaganda include German author Jörg Friedrich, Martin Walser and sociologist Wolfgang Sofsky,[33] whose ideas contributed to a false claim made by far-right National Democratic Party's parliamentarians at a Saxon State Parliament (Landtag) session that "the British committed a bombing Holocaust against the Germans in Dresden".[33] The post-war expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe was also phrased by the "soft-core" deniers as an expulsion Holocaust,[33] some of whom are academic leftists, such as Ward Churchill, Robert Kurz, Noam Chomsky and John Mearsheimer.[33]

Such academic leftists are said to have a history of accusing Jews of "controlling" America's government to support Israel[33] – with tropes like "US-Jewish leaders" and "Israel lobby"[29][33] – and "American capitalism" of having "caused the Holocaust" based on the unfounded claim that the Auschwitz was "the utmost consequence of Fordism".[33]

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References

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  1. ↑ EUMC, Antisemitism. Summary overview of the situation in the European Union 2001-2005 (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-03-05, retrieved 2007-06-23
  2. ↑ Schönbach 1961, p. 80.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8
    • Theodor W. Adorno, « Schuld und Abwehr. Eine qualitative Analyse zum Gruppenexperiment » (1955), in Theodor W. Adorno, Soziologische Schriften II.2, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 2017, p. 121-324.
    • (1909 Vienna - 1981 Rehovot) (צבי רקס). As Zvi Rix he published an essay "The Great Terror" in the first issue (April 1975) of Immanuel Velikovsky's Kronos: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Synthesis. Cf. Rix-Velikovsky Correspondence April 1962 – Jan 1977 at varchive.org. Gunnar Heinsohn mentions Zvi Rix in his books Was ist Antisemitismus (1988) and Söhne und Weltmacht (2003).
    • Weinthal, Ben (2007-06-06). "The Raging Bronx Bull of German Journalism". Forward. Retrieved 2012-01-13.
    • Bruno, Quélennec (November 10, 2021). ""Secondary" or "Auschwitz-related" antisemitism". K. Les Juifs, l’Europe, le XXIe siècle. Retrieved February 8, 2025.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Andrei S. Markovits (Spring 2006). "A New (or Perhaps Revived) "Uninhibitedness" toward Jews in Germany". Jewish Political Studies Review 18:1-2. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Archived from the original on 2007-09-29. Retrieved 2007-06-24.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 "Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion". International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Retrieved October 17, 2024. Distortion of the Holocaust refers, inter alia, to:
    • Intentional efforts to excuse or minimize the the Holocaust or its principal elements, including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany
    • Gross minimization of the number of the victims of the Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources
    • Attempts to blame the Jews for causing their own genocide
    • Statements that cast the Holocaust as a positive historical event. Those statements are not Holocaust denial but are closely connected to it as a radical form of antisemitism. They may suggest that the Holocaust did not go far enough in accomplishing its goal of "the Final Solution of the Jewish Question"
    • Attempts to blur the responsibility for the establishment of concentration and death camps devised and operated by Nazi Germany by putting blame on other nations or ethnic groups
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3
  11. ↑
    • International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania. Final Report. President of the commission: Elie Wiesel. Edited by Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid, and Mihail E. Ionescu. Iași: Polirom, 2004.
    • Ioanid, Radu. The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Roma under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944. Second edition. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022.
    • Kruglov, Aleksander, and Kiril Feferman. “Bloody Snow: The Mass Slaughter of Odessa Jews in Berezovka Uezd in the First Half of 1941.” Yad Vashem Studies 47, no. 2 (2019): 15.
    • Solonari, Vladimir. A Satellite Empire: Romanian Rule in Southwestern Ukraine, 1941–1944. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019.
    • Zipperstein, Steven J. The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History, 1794–1881. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985.
  12. ↑
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 Weinbaum, Laurence (June 1, 2006). "The Banality of History and Memory: Romanian Society and the Holocaust". Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA) (45). Israel Council of Foreign Relations. Retrieved November 2, 2024.
  14. ↑ Mack, Eitay (December 3, 2019). "Israel embraced Romanian dictator's support — knowing he was anti-Semitic". +972 Magazine. Retrieved November 3, 2024.
  15. ↑ "INSHR – Institutul Național pentru Studierea Holocaustului din România "Elie Wiesel"". Elie Wiesel National Institute for Studying the Holocaust in Romania. Retrieved November 3, 2024.
  16. ↑ "Romanian Nationalist Party Opposes Holocaust Education in Schools". Balkan Insight. January 4, 2022. Retrieved November 3, 2024.
  17. ↑ "Romania marks decision to teach Jewish history, Holocaust in schools". Reuters. October 3, 2023. Retrieved November 3, 2024.
  18. ↑ Coakley, Amanda (August 1, 2024). "In Romania, Students See Parallels Between Today and the Pre-Holocaust Era". New Line Magazine. Retrieved November 3, 2024.
  19. ↑
  20. ↑
  21. ↑ 21.00 21.01 21.02 21.03 21.04 21.05 21.06 21.07 21.08 21.09 "The Curious Phenomenon of Secondary Antisemitism". The Times of Israel. August 2, 2024. Retrieved February 8, 2025.
  22. ↑ A modified variant of the medieval European antisemitic slur Jewish pigs, later popularized by Martin Luther in the 16th century.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 23.3 23.4 23.5 Werner Bergmann, « ‘Störenfriede der Erinnerung’ », art. cit.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 "Working Definition Of Antisemitism". World Jewish Congress. Retrieved October 22, 2024.
    IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism :
  25. ↑
  26. ↑
  27. ↑
  28. ↑
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1
  30. ↑
  31. ↑
  32. ↑
  33. ↑ 33.00 33.01 33.02 33.03 33.04 33.05 33.06 33.07 33.08 33.09 Heni, Clemens (November 2, 2008). "Secondary Anti-Semitism: From Hard-Core to Soft-Core Denial of the Shoah". Jewish Political Studies Review. Retrieved February 8, 2025.
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