Our Website Objectives

A few points of introduction:

The website is a work in progress and will be expanded in the coming months. This site has been constructed with several specific foci:

1. Confronting Ignorance – The pervasiveness, longevity, adaptability, and lethality of antisemitism is considered by many experts to be unmatched in the annals of human prejudice. But it is often poorly understood as a phenomenon. Although in some of its more overt and coarser expressions, antisemitism is more readily identifiable by many people, in many other respects as noted by scholar Daniel Goldhagen, antisemitism is an “exceedingly complex” prejudice, comprised of a multitude of antisemitic discourses of various theological, political, or racial orientations, which can make it difficult for the neutral observer or the uninitiated to identify. 

2. Accessibility of Information – There is an enormous body of invaluable expert research on this topic, but most policy makers let alone average readers will not be mining these voluminous publications for information in this field. This dearth of access to credible and actionable data is made more deleterious by the plethora of false assumptions regarding the nature, dimensions, and consequences of this particular mode of prejudice. This widespread lack of awareness and misinformation is critical to enabling antisemites and accelerating the spread of antisemitism by generating inaction or ineffective policies. 

3. Confronting the Machinations of Antisemites – Accurate information and deeper understanding of antisemitism as a phenomenon is also a key weapon in contending with antisemites who willfully and malevolently misconstrue, diminish, or reconfigure the ugly truths about antisemitism, to obfuscate and weaponize antisemitism against the Jews for their own antisemitic purposes.  Today we see antisemites of various stripes in a coordinated effort in public discourse to normalize the homogenization of antisemitism into the generalized rubric of xenophobia for the purposes of robbing Jew-hatred of its distinctive character; diluting the threat it poses; and making it all the more difficult to identify, confront and contain.

4. Understanding Some Key Elements of Antisemitic Ideation – This website has therefore attempted to distill our understanding of just a few of the key ideas defining and explaining antisemitism as a phenomenon, based on several works by some of the world’s leading experts in this field like Robert Wistrich, Daniel Goldhagen, David Patterson, Joshua Trachtenberg and others. We have summarized the materials in a format that we hope will provide the reader with a accessible framework and more precise language for understanding the unique dynamics of Jew-hatred. 

5. Understanding What makes Antisemitism Unique – Please note: The information provided by this website is not meant to be a comprehensive overview of the existing literature. It is intended only as a most basic introduction to the incontestable and extraordinary dimensions of 21^st century globalized antisemitism, and to foster a deeper appreciation of antisemitism as a unique phenomenon – a distinctive prejudice too often ignored, denied, diminished, or simply lost in the today’s raging discourses related to racism that are themselves often laced with antisemitic diatribes or innuendo on multiple levels. 

Our Thanks

This document summarizes materials from an unpublished paper written by the Canadian Security Research Group (CSRG). CMAA thanks CSRG for the use of these materials.