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Who coined the term antisemitism in 1879?
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antisemitism
Demonstrators protesting antisemitism during a silent march in Paris. The march commemorated Mireille Knoll, a Jewish woman who had survived the Holocaust and was murdered in her home on March 23, 2018, in what authorities called a hate crime.
The term antisemitism was coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr. He used the term to designate the anti-Jewish campaigns that were underway in central Europe at that time.1
It is important to note that while the term was historically spelled with a hyphen (anti-Semitism), many organizations and publications—including Encyclopædia Britannica—now use the spelling antisemitism. This modern usage avoids the misleading implication that there is a distinct "Semitic" race, a notion rooted in 19th-century pseudoscientific theories that has been proven false.1