- Jews are just 0.2% of the global population.
With so many problems to address in the world,
does anti-Jewish prejudice really deserve
so much of our attention?
It's true that antisemitism seems to impact Jews alone
but in reality, it's quite dangerous for everyone else,
here's why.
Most of the time,
prejudice hurts those it targets
and empowers those who spread it,
much like slavery and segregation
enriched America's white majority
at the expense of its black minority.
But antisemitism is a unique case
and uniquely corrosive to those societies that embrace it.
That's because it often takes the form
of a conspiracy theory about how the world works.
Conjuring sinister string-pulling Jewish puppet masters
who are said to be behind the world's economic,
political, and social problems.
And here's the thing.
By blaming real problems on imagined Jewish culprits,
antisemitism prevents people
from rationally solving those problems.
This creates a self-sabotaging dynamic
in which people become obsessed with scapegoating Jews
and can't overcome their society's real challenges.
A famous example of this
involves the scientists of Nazi Germany.
Even as they raced against the allied powers
for scientific and military advantage,
the Third Reich shunned Albert Einstein's advances
as subpar "Jüdische Physik," Jewish Physics,
as opposed to their own superior
"Deutsche Physik," German Physics.
The antisemitism that permeated their society
also blinded them to reality
and fortunately led to their downfall.
This phenomenon of anti-Jewish bigotry
undermining the bigots is an old one.
Economist Luigi Pascali of the University of Warwick
has found that a portion of the economic gap
between Northern and Southern Italy
can be traced to declines in areas that expelled their Jews
during the 1500s,
who were essential to the country's banking
and financial success.
By blaming Jews for their society's problems,
the country's antisemites actually made them worse
for generations to come.
Similarly, a 2017 National Bureau of Economic Research study
found that families living in historically
antisemitic German areas
were less likely to invest in the stock market
due to inherited anti-Jewish attitudes.
Antisemites associate Jews with money
and economic domination.
As a result, they needlessly shun the stock market
and failed to use it to their advantage.
So you see,
antisemitism doesn't just impoverish Jewish people,
it impoverishes anti-Jewish people.
Historian Walter Russell Mead
once pointed to exactly this phenomenon
to explain why he writes so much
about anti-Jewish prejudice.
"Societies that tolerate antisemitism
take a fateful step toward the loss
of both freedom and prosperity...
People who think 'the Jews' run the banks
lose the ability to understand,
much less to operate financial systems...
People who think 'the Jews' dominate politics
lose their ability to interpret political events...
to diagnose social evils
and to organize effectively for positive change...
People who think 'the Jews' run the media
and control the news
lose the ability to grasp what is happening around them."
- What happens is, is that conspiracies
divert people from actually solving real issues
by distracting them with fantasies.
And the most exciting fantasy
is one where people get to hate on Jews.
Antisemitism has real impact beyond just its crimes.
It distorts our understanding
of how the actual world works.
It isolates us, it alienates us from our communities,
from our neighbors, and from participating in governance.
It kills, but it also kills our society.
- In other words, antisemitism is the rare hatred
that really destroys the hater.
Rooting out antisemitic assumptions then
is not simply necessary for the sake of the Jews
but for the sake of society itself.