Named a Best Book of 2025 by The New Yorker “Excellent and timely.” — The New Yorker
“Informative insightful and provocative On Antisemitism couldn’t be more timely.” — The
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “An immense contribution. . . . In tracing the evolving meaning of
‘antisemitism ’ [Mazower] demonstrates persuasively how we might turn it from a weapon back
into a word. . . . Rigorous and lucid.” — The New Republic From one of our most eminent
historians a penetrating and timely examination of how the meaning of antisemitism has mutated
with unexpected and troubling consequences What are we talking about when we talk about
antisemitism? For most of its history it was understood to be a menace from the political Right
the province of ethno-nativists who built on Christendom’s long-standing suspicion of its tiny
Jewish population and infused it with racist pseudoscience. When the twentieth century began
the vast majority of the world’s Jews lived in Europe. For them there was no confusion about
where the threat of antisemitic politics lay a threat that culminated in the nightmare of Nazi
Germany and the Holocaust. Now in a piercingly brilliant book that ranges from the term’s
invention in the late nineteenth century to the present Mark Mazower argues the landscape is
very different. More than four-fifths of the world’s Jews live in two countries Israel and the
United States and the former’s military dominance of its region is guaranteed by the latter.
Before the Second World War Jews were a minority apart and drawn by opposition to Fascism into
an alliance with other oppressed peoples. Today in contrast Jews are considered “white ” and
for today’s anti-colonialists Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians has become a critical
issue. The old Left solidarity is a thing of the past indeed the loudest voices decrying
antisemitism see it coming from the Left not the Right. Mazower clearly and carefully shows
us how we got here navigating this minefield through a history that seeks to illuminate rather
than to blame demonstrating how the rise of a pessimistic post-Holocaust sensibility along
with growing international criticism of Israel produced a gradual conflation of the interests
of Jews and the Jewish state. Half a century ago few people believed that antisemitism had
anything to do with hostility to Israel today mainstream Jewish voices often equate the two.
The word remains the same but its meaning has changed. The tragedy Mazower argues is that
antisemitism persists. If it can be found on the far Left it still is a much graver danger
from those forces on the Right chanting “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville and their
ilk. If we allow the charge to be applied too loosely and widely to shut down legitimate
argument we are only delegitimizing the term and threatening to break something essential in
how democracies function. On Antisemitism is a vitally important attempt to draw that necessary
line.
