Antisemitism is often more than prejudice. In many of its worst episodes, someone with power used it as a tool, a way to redirect public anger away from failures, scandals, or dissent. That doesn’t make the hatred any less real. It does mean that fighting it works best when paired with scrutiny of who is deploying it, and why.
The pattern, in order
Russia, 1881-82. After Alexander II’s assassination, pogroms spread across the empire. Historians dispute how much was centrally directed, but the state’s response is telling: rather than protecting Jews, it passed the restrictive May Laws of 1882, treating the victims as the problem during a period of political crisis.
France, 1894-1906. The army convicted Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer, of espionage actually committed by Major Esterhazy. When evidence emerged, officials chose to shield the institution, and a loud antisemitic press kept public attention on Dreyfus rather than on the cover-up.
Russia, 1903. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery tied to Russian political-police circles, was first published. It blamed a Jewish plot for modernity’s upheavals, giving anxious readers a single culprit. It has since been translated and reprinted worldwide, and it still circulates.
Germany, 1919-33. The “stab-in-the-back” myth blamed Jews for military defeat, and the Nazis later extended the same logic to economic collapse. Complex policy failures became the story of a hidden enemy, sparing elites and the movement from accountability.
United States, 1920-27. Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent spread Protocols-style conspiracy claims to a mass audience, offering a simple villain for postwar anxieties about banking, immigration, and labor.
Soviet Union, 1948-53. Stalin’s campaign against “rootless cosmopolitans” purged Jewish cultural figures, and the 1953 “Doctors’ Plot” accusations followed. Both came amid postwar hardship and tightening control, and both cast an internal enemy.
Egypt, 1956. After the Suez Crisis, the Nasser government expelled thousands of Jews, many of whom had lived there for generations, and seized their property. It cast them as a fifth column while consolidating power.
Soviet anti-Zionist campaign, post-1967. After the Six-Day War, Moscow broke relations with Israel and escalated a state-sponsored “anti-Zionist” propaganda campaign (including Yuri Ivanov’s Beware: Zionism!, 1969), which also cast Jews seeking to emigrate as agents of a foreign cause. The KGB’s role in such “active measures” is supported by the Mitrokhin Archive, while the specific “Operation SIG” account rests largely on defector Ion Mihai Pacepa and is disputed.
Poland, 1968. After student protests, party factions launched an “anti-Zionist” campaign. Roughly 13,000 Jews, in a country where few remained after the Holocaust, were pushed to emigrate, while the regime reframed dissent as foreign subversion.
Iraq, 1969. Soon after the Ba’ath seizure of power, the regime staged show trials of alleged “Israeli spies” and publicly hanged 14 men, 9 of them Jews. The spectacle served to cement control and project an internal enemy.
Iran, post-1979. Iran, which had quiet but substantial ties with Israel under the Shah, made hostility to Israel a pillar of the revolutionary state, institutionalized through Quds Day (1979) and the 2006 Tehran Holocaust conference. Critics argue this rhetoric helps the regime rally support and divert attention from domestic hardship, though Iran says its quarrel is with Zionism, not Jews.
Hamas, 1988. Its founding charter cited the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and framed the conflict as a Jewish world conspiracy. That recasts a national and territorial dispute as a cosmic one. Hamas dropped the language in its 2017 policy document, though critics doubt the shift.
Hungary, 2017. The government ran national billboards against George Soros while pursuing laws affecting his university and foreign-funded NGOs. Hungarian Jewish leaders and Israel’s ambassador objected that the campaign echoed classic antisemitic imagery while serving a domestic political aim.
October 7 and the “genocide” charge, 2023-present. Some commentators argue that after Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took roughly 250 hostages on October 7, a narrative took hold in which Israel, and by extension Jews, were cast as uniquely genocidal child-killers. This is a modern blood libel, one that shifts focus from the atrocities and from the Iranian-backed axi behind them, and has coincided with a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents worldwide. (Note: Criticism of Israel is not inherently antisemitic, but becomes so when it holds Jews collectively responsible, and when it is used to avoid examining and/or to justify Hamas’s and Iran’s roles.)
What the pattern teaches
- Prejudice is the fuel, and manipulators are the match. Every episode above worked because a reservoir of hostility already existed. Reducing it makes the tool less effective, which is why education, law, and institutional norms matter.
- Treating only the symptom leaves the incentive intact. If a government or movement gains from a scapegoat, removing one outlet won’t stop the next.
- Condemnation can be part of the script. Backlash lets manipulators claim persecution and prove the “enemy” is powerful.
- Coded language evades rules. Terms like “globalists” and “rootless elites” carry the same meaning with deniability.
What works better
- Ask what’s behind the story. When a scapegoat surges in the news, look at what else is happening: a scandal, a failing policy, a protest movement.
- Hold beneficiaries accountable. Name who gains, not just who speaks.
- Protect independent press and civil society. Every case above thrived where scrutiny was weak.
- Keep protecting people now. Security, enforcement, and education remain essential. Violence like the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue attack shows that much antisemitism is sincere, not cynical, and cannot wait for structural reform.
Conclusion
Fighting antisemitism alone, as a matter of speech and sentiment, leaves the machinery that weaponizes it untouched. The strongest defense pairs direct protection with a harder question: Who benefits when we’re looking at the Jews?
