3:44pm July 15, 2015

On the Word Antisemitism

Many people seem to think that antisemitism can refer to all Semitic [speaking] people, but that is not the case. The word antisemitism only refers to the hatred of Jews because it was created to only refer to the hatred of Jews.
The word antisemitism has less to do with one’s “Semitic-ness” and more to do with the fact that German racial scientists literally never had any idea what they were talking about. I’ve seen many people argue that Jews are not “real” Semites because they do not live in the Middle East or have any ties to the Middle East. This is untrue for a few different reasons:
There are actually Jews who live in the Middle East or have heritage from the Middle East.
All Jews have ancestry that can be traced back to the Middle East.
The Semitic languages are not restricted to solely the Middle East, but also North Africa and the Horn of Africa.
Not to mention, Hebrew is a Semitic language; plus there are Jews who speak Arabic or other Semitic languages.
Wilhelm Marr popularized the term antisemitism in the 1800s as a more scientific-sounding way to refer to Judenhass (Jew-hatred). He and many others believed there were corresponding racial groups to the “Aryan” languages and Semitic languages; thus, Jews were referred to as Semites. Marr thought the word Judenhass had a religious connotation, and he wanted something that would carry a racial connotation.
For this reason, antisemitism is more than just a religious hatred; it is also an ethnic or racial hatred (although today less people view Jews as a race). It was especially a racial hatred in Nazi Germany; for if a Jew converted out of Judaism, there wouldn’t be any reason to hate them. There needed to be some sort of racial inferiority, a racial difference, to perpetuate hatred and violence against Jews.
The term antisemitism was never created to refer to anyone other than Jews. This is not the fault of Jews. It is the fault of German racial scientists who created and popularized the word. It is the fault of racial scientists who were looking for any and every reason to hate Jews. In fact, Wilhelm Marr dedicated a lot of his time to perpetuating oppression against Jews; he founded the League of Antisemites in 1879, an organization which aimed to combat the “Jewish threat” to Germany.
This is why Jews get so upset when non-Jews try to change the meaning of the word antisemitism. This word, the main word that has been used to describe our oppression for the past few centuries, carries a long and tragic history with it. You can never divorce Jewish oppression from antisemitism; you can never attach non-Jewish oppression to antisemitism.
The moment you change the meaning of the word antisemitism is the moment you erase and ignore our history, our struggle, and our marginalization in a world that has hated Jews for a very long time.

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