antisemitism summary

antisemitism, Hostility toward or discrimination against Jews. The term antisemitism was coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr to designate the anti-Jewish campaigns underway in central Europe at that time. In antiquity, religious differences produced hostility to Jews, largely because Judaism is monotheistic, in contrast to the polytheistic religions that were dominant in the Greco-Roman world. Judaism and Christianity became rivals soon after the execution of Jesus of Nazareth by Roman authorities. By the 4th century, Christians tended to see Jews as an alien people whose repudiation of Christ had condemned them to perpetual migration. Jews were denied citizenship and civil rights in much of Europe during the Middle Ages (though some societies were more tolerant) or were forced to wear distinctive clothing, and there were forced expulsions of Jews from several regions. Unfounded accusations of ritual murder and the blood libel appeared in 12th-century Europe and persisted for centuries. The Enlightenment and the French Revolution brought a new religious freedom to Europe in the 18th century but did not reduce antisemitism, because Jews continued to be regarded as outsiders with few civil rights. In the 19th century violent discrimination intensified, and the emergence of nationalism as the defining factor in European society gave antisemitism a racial character: “scientific racism” justified hostility to Jews on the basis of pseudoscientific theories claiming that Jews were “inferior” to other supposed “races.” Some politicians exploited this form of hatred to win office. In the 20th century the economic and political dislocations caused by World War I intensified antisemitism, as did the role of Jewish leaders in the Russian Revolution of 1917. In Nazi Germany antisemitism reached an unprecedented racial dimension that led to the Holocaust, in which an estimated six million Jewish men, women, and children were killed because they were Jews. After the Nazi defeat in 1945, antisemitism lost favor in western Europe and the United States, as Jews became more integrated into postwar culture and society there, though antisemitic hate crimes persisted. The founders and leaders of the State of Israel expected its creation in 1948 to diminish antisemitism, though the opposite seemed to occur. In the Arab world, hostility to the State of Israel was primarily political and religious, and many anti-Jewish measures were adopted throughout the Muslim countries of the Middle East. In response, most of the Jewish residents of those countries immigrated to Israel in the decades after its founding. During the 2010s measurable increases in antisemitic rhetoric and attacks were recorded in Europe and North America.