Antisemitism from the Right, Antisemitism from the Left

By Ori Swed, Texas Tech University

Published 11/21/24

This is an invitation to explore antisemitism trends in the U.S. as a social phenomenon, as well as their implications on criminality, social unrest, hate crime, and terrorism.

A march of masked men carrying neo-Nazi flags in the Short North neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio captures what we imagine when we think and talk about antisemitism in the U.S. Historically, antisemitism populated primarily fringe groups in the American extreme-right. The KKK terrorized the Jewish Mississippi community, and murdered two Jewish activists who worked on the 1964 “Freedom Summer” campaign to register black voters. In 1969, an anti-communist Minuteman planted a bomb at the rear wall of Congregation Shaare Tikvah, Temple Hills, Maryland. In 1977 in St. Louis, Missouri an extreme right bigot shot at a Jewish congregation celebrating a bar mitzvah. In Bloomington, Indiana in 1983, an Aryan Brotherhood-linked group (The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord) burned a synagogue. In 1994 and again in 2002, in Eugene, Oregon white supremacists associated with Volksfront shot at local synagogues. In 2018, a white supremacist invaded the Tree of Life- Or L’Simcha Congregation killing 11 people and injuring 7. A year prior, in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Unite the Right Rally included thousands of participants carrying neo-Nazi flags and symbols, chanting “Jews will not replace us,” in reference to a conspiracy of Jews scheme to replace the white U.S. population with non-white immigrants. This Rally epitomized our common understanding of what antisemitism is.

Yet, in the last year, we have witnessed a different string of antisemitism, one that is emerging from the American radical left. Sensitive to the Palestinian plea and cause, the October 7th attack on Israel invited leading voices on the American far left to support Hamas and other militant and terrorist organizations. Anti-Israel organizations and groups that also hold strong antisemitic ideologies. Professors in elite universities celebrated the death of Jews, calling the attacks “exhilarating,” or justifying violence against civilians. Those sentiments set the tone for the coming wave of protests. It is cardinal to stipulate that most of the protests and protesters focused on ceasefire, peace, and Palestinian rights and dignity, yet many included strong radical elements that echoed the antisemitic violent sentiments. Campus encampments that cosplay terrorists, waving flags of terrorist groups, and calling for the killing of Jews became commonplace, creating dozens of Charlottesville moments for the American left. Left-leaning leadership's inability to curb or restrain those calls emboldened the radicals and antisemites. A monumental event that captures that failure is the Congress hearing where the presidents of leading universities failed to answer if calling for the genocide of Jews violates their schools’ codes of conduct. The protests moved quickly from anti-Israel and critique of its war conduct to targeting American Jews on campuses, Jewish-owned small businesses, synagogues, and Jewish neighborhoods. These actions constitute clear antisemitism, conflating Israel with Jews. Correlated with those sentiments, cities witnessed the rise of antisemitic hate crime incidents. For example, New York City reported 275 antisemitic incidents in 2024, accounting for 55% of all hate crime incidents, dwarfing other types of hate crime, and representing an increase of 14% from 2023. The police reporting stated that those were linked to the wide radical-left protests in the city. Similar trends were exhibited nationally. Some of those incidents even resulted in deaths.

Analytically, the two trends feed out of different authorities and sources. For the far-right, it corresponds with racism and nativism. For the far-left is the radical interpretation of social justice and post-colonial ideology. The two outlooks illustrate one of the main features of antisemitism, its elasticity. It portrays the Jews as omni-powerful or subhuman, as the source of all evil, whether they are not white enough, too white, communist, capitalists, oppressors, victims, and many other contradictions.

We are today at the junction where antisemitism in America is populating both far-right and far-left spaces. It is here with us to stay for a while. An ADL report suggests that 24% of Americans harbor a level of antisemitic prejudice. As sociologists, it opens the door for inquiries about this phenomenon and the social problems it represents. It invites studies that examine the different interpretations of antisemitism among groups and individuals and how it feeds from different rational and ideological structures. It invites questions on the victims, exploring how antisemitic incidents and sentiments impact the victims’ life course, identity, educational experience, mental health, work, fear of crime, and many other social experiences. Broader societal questions can also explore the social, economic, and political implications of this phenomenon.

To follow this phenomenon, scholars can use the ADL Tracker data.

Ori Swed is an Assistant Professor at the Sociology Department at Texas Tech University. He is also the director of the Peace, War, & Social Conflict Laboratory. Dr. Swed research explores the organizational aspects of violent non-state actors and state actors in the context of peace, war, and security.