# Antisemitism Antisemitism is hostility, prejudice, discrimination, or violence directed at Jewish people as Jews. Following the convention adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), most scholars and major institutions now spell the term as one word — *antisemitism* rather than *anti-Semitism* — both for orthographic clarity and to reject the implicit premise of the hyphenated form, which suggested opposition to a real "Semitic" racial category (a 19th-century racial-pseudoscientific construct that conflated Jewish identity with imagined biological-racial difference). Antisemitism is among the oldest and most institutionally durable forms of prejudice in Western history, predating modern racial categories by more than 1,500 years and operating across religious, racial, economic, political, and conspiratorial registers — often simultaneously, often through the same actors who would dispute the connection between their separate registers of belief. It is also a *structural* feature of the contemporary American right-wing political-cultural complex, present across the dispensational evangelical Christian-Zionist coalition (where it operates in altered form), the [[Cultural Marxism]] conspiratorial frame, the [[Great Replacement Theory]] discourse, the [[QAnon]] ecosystem, the [[Dark Enlightenment]] / NRx milieu, and the open neo-Nazi / [[Cultural Marxism]]-coded political ecosystem that runs from [[Andrew Torba]]'s Gab through Nick Fuentes's Groypers through the broader white-nationalist movement. Antisemitism matters for the KB on three registers: (1) it is the *load-bearing conspiratorial substrate* of much of the contemporary right's broader conspiracy ecosystem — many of the named "elite cabals" that QAnon, Cultural Marxism, Great Replacement Theory, and adjacent frames operationalize are coded references to Jewish people (sometimes explicitly, often through "globalist" / "Soros" / "the bankers" euphemism); (2) it is the *historical-political throughline* that connects the Klan, the America First isolationists, the John Birch Society, and contemporary white-nationalist organizing as a continuous American ideological tradition rather than a series of unrelated movements; (3) it is the *contemporary policy frontier* on which competing definitions — IHRA's working definition, the Jerusalem Declaration, the Nexus Document, and the contested boundary between *criticism of Israeli state policy* and *antisemitism* — are actively litigated through campus speech codes, anti-BDS legislation, and the broader culture-war discourse. The KB tracks antisemitism as substrate, throughline, and contested contemporary category. ## Working Definitions Three principal contemporary definitions compete for institutional adoption: **IHRA Working Definition (2016).** "Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities." Accompanied by 11 contemporary examples, several of which involve criticism of Israel. The IHRA definition has been adopted by the U.S. State Department, the European Union, dozens of nation-states, and most major universities. Its critics (including some Jewish scholars and civil-liberties groups) argue that several of the Israel-related examples conflate criticism of Israeli state policy with antisemitism in ways that chill legitimate political speech. **Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (2021).** A scholar-led counter-proposal, signed by ~200 academics of Jewish studies, Holocaust studies, and Israel/Palestine studies. Preserves the core IHRA definition but specifies that "supporting the Palestinian demand for justice and the full grant of their political, national, civil and human rights" is *not* antisemitic, that "evidence-based criticism of Israel as a state" is *not* antisemitic, and that BDS is *not* inherently antisemitic. **Nexus Document (2021).** A third proposal aimed at clarifying the relationship between antisemitism and Israel. More restrictive than the Jerusalem Declaration on what constitutes criticism vs. antisemitism but more permissive than IHRA's examples. The KB treats these as live competing standards rather than endorsing one as canonical. ## Forms / Registers Antisemitism operates across several distinguishable registers that interlock: **Religious antisemitism.** Christian theological hostility, ranging from the deicide charge (Jews collectively responsible for Christ's death — formally rejected by Vatican II in *Nostra Aetate* (1965) but persistent in conservative Christian discourse), through supersessionism (Christianity has superseded Judaism as God's chosen relationship), to the [[Cultural Marxism]] cultural-substrate that recurs across evangelical, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox traditions. Christian Zionism — the dispensational evangelical posture that supports the State of Israel because Jewish return to the Land is preconditional for the Second Coming and the conversion or destruction of Jews — is a *conditional* philo-Semitism whose eschatology requires the end of Jewish people as Jews and is treated by most Jewish scholars as antisemitism in altered form. **Racial antisemitism.** The 19th-century racial-pseudoscientific construct that classified Jewish people as a biological "race" distinct from European Christians. The Nazi project was the apex application; its persistence in [[Cultural Marxism]] is documentary. The "JQ" (Jewish Question) framing on the contemporary far right — [[Andrew Anglin]]'s *[[Daily Stormer]]*, Nick Fuentes's Groypers, [[Andrew Torba]] Gab — is direct lineage. **Conspiratorial antisemitism.** The structural pattern in which world events — financial crises, wars, revolutions, cultural changes, immigration patterns — are attributed to coordinated Jewish action. *[[The Protocols of the Elders of Zion]]* (early-20th-century Russian-imperial fabrication) is the canonical text; [[The International Jew]] (1920s) was the American mass-market equivalent. The contemporary descendants are visible in [[Cultural Marxism]] (a coded reference to the predominantly-Jewish [[Frankfurt School]] theorists), [[Global Cabal]] framing in far-right Russian and Western discourse, the [[George Soros Conspiracy]] conspiratorial frame, the [[Great Replacement Theory]]'s named-Jewish-elite formulations, and [[QAnon]]'s blood-libel-derivative adrenochrome narratives. **Economic antisemitism.** The historical pattern of attributing financial-economic dysfunction to Jewish actors specifically. Visible in medieval usury law, in 19th-century populism's anti-banker discourse, in [[Father Coughlin]]'s 1930s broadcasts, in [[Henry Ford]] *The International Jew*, in modern "globalist banker" / "the Rothschilds" / "the Federal Reserve is a Jewish conspiracy" discourse. **Political antisemitism.** The contemporary form most visible in the post-2018 American right's discourse. [[Tucker Carlson]]'s repeated invocation of Great Replacement Theory on Fox primetime (2018–2021), Steve King's overtly antisemitic statements that produced his eventual congressional discipline, Marjorie Taylor Greene's "Jewish space lasers" (2018) and Soros-funded-everything discourse, and the broader Trump-era pattern of "good people on both sides" framings — these constitute documentary record. ## Why It Matters for the KB **Substrate of broader conspiracy ecosystem.** Most of the conspiracy frames the KB tracks ([[QAnon]], [[Cultural Marxism]], [[Great Replacement Theory]], [[Global Cabal]], the [[New World Order]]) operate through antisemitic structures — sometimes explicit, often coded through "globalist" / "elite" / "banker" / "Soros" euphemism. Tracking antisemitism as substrate is essential to understanding what these frames *are*. **Historical-political throughline.** The American antisemitic tradition runs continuously through the 1920s revival of the Klan (anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish in addition to anti-Black), through Coughlin's radio broadcasts, through [[The International Jew]], through the [[America First Movement]]'s [[Charles Lindbergh]]-led isolationist wing (Lindbergh's 1941 Des Moines speech named Jews as one of three groups pushing the U.S. toward war), through the John Birch Society, through the 1990s patriot movement, through the contemporary post-2016 movement. Treating it as one tradition rather than separate phenomena is the documentary register the KB operates in. **Christian Zionism / philo-Semitism interface.** The contemporary Republican-evangelical alliance with the State of Israel — Jerusalem embassy move, Abraham Accords, Pence/Pompeo Israel diplomacy — sits in *visible tension* with the antisemitic structures elsewhere in the same coalition. The tension is resolvable through the [[Dispensationalism]] theology that frames support for Israel as instrumental to the End Times, but the *operational* result is a Republican coalition that simultaneously houses pro-Israel-state-policy advocacy and antisemitic conspiratorial discourse aimed at American Jews. The structural tension is itself worth tracking. **Post-October-7 inflection.** The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack and the subsequent Israeli campaign in Gaza have produced a substantial intensification of antisemitic discourse and incidents in the United States (ADL records the largest year-over-year increase in 2023–2024 in the organization's history), alongside ongoing contestation of where the line between criticism of Israeli state policy and antisemitism should be drawn. The contemporary discourse remains live. ## See Also - [[Global Cabal]] — principal contemporary euphemistic structure - [[Cultural Marxism]] — the academic-conspiracy variant - [[Great Replacement Theory]] — the demographic-conspiracy variant - [[George Soros Conspiracy]] — the named-individual frame - [[QAnon]] — the adrenochrome / blood-libel-derivative framework - [[The International Jew]] — Henry Ford's foundational American-antisemitic text - [[America First Movement]] — the historical and contemporary political tradition - [[Christian Zionism]] — the structural-coalition partner that produces the philo-Semitism / antisemitism tension - [[Dispensationalism]] — the theological framework underlying Christian Zionism - [[White Nationalist Radicalization Pipeline]] — adjacent radicalization machinery - Blood Libel *(future Conspiracy Theory entry)* — foundational antisemitic frame; predecessor to QAnon adrenochrome - [[White Nationalism]] *(this batch)* — the umbrella concept under which much American antisemitism operates - [[Andrew Torba]] — Gab founder; explicit Christian-nationalist antisemitic discourse