The New Global Antisemitism: Implications from the Recent ADL-100 Data (original) (raw)

Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Fall 2014)

27 Pages Posted: 16 Jan 2015

Arno Tausch

University of the Free State, Department of Political Studies and Governance; University of Innsbruck - Department of Political Science

Date Written: January 14, 2015

Abstract

At just the right moment in global history, the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai Brith organization has released new data on antisemitism in over 100 countries. This data is based on solid opinion surveys and for the first time includes large parts of the Muslim world, not only Western countries. This article presents these data with rankings and maps and then examines some of the most important implications of these data, including possible drivers of contemporary antisemitism, in understandable, everyday language. The goal of this statistical analysis was to ascertain whether antisemitic attitudes indeed coincide with structural characteristics or policies of nations around the globe or opinion structures on other issues.

Our results seem to indicate that the future trajectory of antisemitism will inexorably shift further towards the axis of the current Middle East conflict and the dual hatred of the State of Israel and of Jews. They also indicate that future waves of the WVS project would do well to include items from the ADL-100 survey into their own analyses.

These results also underscore several alarming conclusions about the alarming rates of global antisemitism revealed by the recent ADL-100 study. Although the lower development levels of many Muslim and Arab countries might be mentioned to excuse the fact that there is so much antisemitism in that part of the world, membership in the Arab League and Muslim population shares wield significant influence on the level of antisemitism in a country. Our results also highlight the alarming connection that immigration and the economic crisis in the EU can also be considered one of the main drivers of contemporary antisemitism.

In particular, certain EU members/candidates Greece, Turkey, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria need special attention due to their exceptionally high antisemitism levels, considering the determinants mentioned in Table 1. On the positive side, the Netherlands, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Finland, the UK and Portugal, with their relatively low levels of antisemitism, along with the BRICS countries Brazil, China and India are noteworthy cases for their low levels of antisemitism.

Keywords: Index Numbers and Aggregation, Economic Integration, International Relations and International Political Economy, Religion

JEL Classification: C43, F15, F5, Z12

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation