Econ_May_05

The Economist

May 5th 2018

For daily analysis and debate on Europe, visit

Economist.com/europe

NGANGSTArap, cartoonish threats of vi-

olence are routine. So fans oftheGerman

rappers Kollegah and Farid Bang were

hardly shocked that, on their latest album,

they bragged that their torsos were “better

defined than an Auschwitz inmate’s” and

vowed to “make another Holocaust”

(against whomwas unclear—possibly rival

hip-hop artists). But when, on April 12th,

the duowonGermanmusic’s highest hon-

our, the

ECHO

prize, other musicians and

critics were outraged. German music pub-

lishers decided to stop awarding the prize

in order to prevent future controversies.

It was part of a busy month for Euro-

pean anti-Semitism. On April 8th Viktor

Orban, primeminister ofHungary, won re-

election after a campaign in which he de-

monised George Soros, a Jewish financier

and philanthropist, as a shadowy billion-

aire secretly controlling the opposition for

nefarious purposes. In Berlin on April 17th,

a young Israeli was assaulted while wear-

ing a

kippah

, or Jewish skullcap; the al-

leged attacker was a Syrian refugee. (Ironi-

cally, the victim was an Israeli Arab who

was trying to prove to a friend thatwearing

kippah

was not dangerous.) The assault

underscored fears of anti-Semitismwithin

the 1.2m Muslim refugees who have ar-

rived inGermany since 2015.

In Poland onApril17thRuchNarodowy,

a far-right party, filed a complaint against

Reuven Rivlin, the president of Israel, for

allegedly violating a new law against say-

ing that the Polish nation bears any guilt

incidents, from punching Jewish school-

children to egging pedestrians, were re-

corded last year, a 34% increase over 2016.

In France therewere 92, a rise of 26%.

Yet other countries experienced no

such increase. And until last year attacks in

France had been declining; in most coun-

tries the figures tend to bounce around.

Statistics can sometimes be misleading. In

the Netherlands a startling 41% of all crimi-

nal incidents ofdiscrimination last year in-

volved anti-Semitism, but of those three-

quarters were related to football. The Am-

sterdam team, Ajax, is nicknamed “the

Jews”, so the chants of opposing fans are

sometimes hateful, which can be a crime

in the Netherlands.

Measures of underlying anti-Semitic

prejudice are also equivocal. Surveys by

the Pew Global Attitudes project and by

the Anti-Defamation League, an American

Jewishwatchdog, find that in Europe nega-

tive feelings towards Jews have mostly de-

clined over the past 15 years. Lars Rens-

mann, who studies anti-Semitism and

populism at the University of Groningen,

thinks anti-Jewish hatred has not prolifer-

ated so much as grown more visible with

the rise of social media. He adds that the

rise of fake news and conspiracy theories

about globalisation feed anti-Semitism,

“the quintessential conspiracymyth”.

Antagonism towards Israel often spills

over into anti-Semitism, particularly on

the political left. And European Muslims

are much more likely to have anti-Semitic

beliefs than non-Muslims. But it is debata-

ble whether this “new anti-Semitism” has

supplanted the traditional variety. A study

by London’s Pears Institute for the Study of

Anti-Semitism found that because Eu-

rope’s Muslim minorities remain small,

most anti-Jewish prejudice is still of the

old-fashioned nationalist kind.

To judge by the ceremonies on April

19th commemorating the 75th anniversary

for theHolocaust. The following Sunday in

France,

Le Parisien

, anewspaper, published

an open letter from 250 bigwigs denounc-

ing a “new anti-Semitism” among Mus-

lims. Noting the murder in March of an el-

derly Holocaust survivor, the letter

demanded that religious authorities re-

nounce anti-Jewish verses in the Koran.

Meanwhile in Britain, the Labour Party

continued a long-running row over anti-

Semitism in its ranks.

Many people worry that anti-Semitism

is growing in Europe. Since the early

2000s, murders motivated by hatred of

Jews have occurredwith dismal regularity;

the terrorist attacks on the Jewishmuseum

in Brussels in 2014 and a kosher supermar-

ket in Paris in 2015 were only the most

deadly. In Britain 145 violent anti-Semitic

Anti-Semitism in Europe

Haters gonna hate

AMSTERDAM, KIEV AND WARSAW

Today’s anti-Semitism is linked to angry identitypolitics on the right and left

Europe

Also in this section

50 People power in Armenia

51 Trying Romania’s ex-president

51 France’s striking students

52 Greenland’s independence dreams

52 Georgian anti-fashion

53 Charlemagne: The EU budget

Contrary to reports

Source: Pew Global Attitudes Project

Unfavourable opinions of Jews, % polled

2004 06 08 10 12 14 16

France

Germany

Britain

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