Promoting antisemitism in the contemporary period (original) (raw)
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STUDIA IUDAICA ARADENSIS, 2017
Paideia -The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden Problema antisemitismului în România nu este una endemică secolului al XX-lea. Termenul "problema evreiască" a fost utilizat şi reinterpretat de partizanii fascismului şi antisemitismului pentru a-i putea include într-o categorie specială pe membrii comunităţii evreieşti din România, făcând mai uşoară ostracizarea acestora. Această tendinţă de stigmatizare a evreilor a fost răspândită în Europa de Est şi a presupus clasificarea politică şi socială a evreilor ca duşmani ai naţiunii, prin crearea şi propagrea miturilor de sorginte naţionalistă. Acest articol creează o legatură de natură istorică între antisemitismul de secol al XIX-lea din Vechiul Regat şi noile forme de antisemitism prevalente în ultimul secol. Cuvinte cheie: antisemitism, istorie politica, fascism, nationalism, mituri istorice. "Antisemitism, a secular nineteenth-century ideologywhich in name, though not in argument, was unknown before the 1870'sand religious Jew-hatred, inspired by the mutually hostile antagonism of two conflicting creeds, are obviously not the same; and even the extent to which the former derives its arguments and emotional appeal from the latter is open to question." (Hannah Arendt 1 )
18th Annual World Association for the Study of Nations Convention, April 18-20, 2013, Columbia University, NY, USA
Anti-Semitism is defined at the psychological level as a cognitive and social emotional normative structure which facilitates aggressive behaviors by providing a justification for them and by providing a social context, connecting the individual to a cultural/religious value system. One of the main functions of anti-Semitism is to mitigate the cognitive dissonance created by the animosity toward Jews, the chosen people. In some ways anti-Semitism acquires the characteristics of a defense mechanism: it functions reflexively, mostly outside awareness, but unlike a defense mechanism it instigates action and justifies it. Anti-Semitic beliefs are energized by moral anger, which, in turn, activates the Contempt-Anger-Disgust set of moral beliefs. From a social point of view, anti-Semitism is seen as a self- referential and self- justifying group of axioms supported by memes, the transmission and propagation of which is facilitated by moral ambiguity relative to the Jews .Examples of possible anti-Semitic memes are provided. The paper links the resurgence and persistence of anti-Semitic beliefs in Romania to the special role played by anti-Semitism in the formation of Romanian national identity and to the consequences of being unable to acknowledge and publicly discuss during the Communist dictatorship Romania’s participation in the Holocaust, and anti-Semitism in general. The factors shaping the public sphere and the public dialogue are analyzed from a social, psychological and cultural/historical perspective. The main social factors are positive vs. negative liberty, open vs. closed morality, and fragmentation vs. integration. The main psychological factors are the sharing of the symbolic universe, obedience to authority, psychic doubling and numbing, self-deception and the emergence of a false self. The role played by the characteristics of the post- communist Romanian society in the resurgence and maintenance and propagation of anti-Semitic beliefs is analyzed as well, with emphasis on the impact of the adaptive strategies of different groups (active and passive opponents and supporters of the extinct totalitarian regime.) Key words: public sphere, public dialogue, positive liberty, negative liberty, symbolic universe, doubling, self-deception, self-censorship, memes, national identity, anti-Semitism
Both Form and Substance: Romanians and Political Antisemitism in a European Context
Holocaust. Studii şi cercetări. vol. XIII, issue 1(14), 2021, 2021
nineteenth-and twentieth-century romanian public discourse was obsessed with the question of romania's place in Europe. Whereas some elements of romanian culture might have reflected European forms without their substance (forme fără fond), between roughly 1880 and 1944, political antisemitism had both form and substance. romanian anti semites were at the forefront of developments within European antisemitism and saw it as a way of demonstrating their Europeanness. anti-Jewish rhetoric, laws, and violence during this period should thus be discussed as part of a broad transnational story of political antisemitism and not in terms of romanian exceptionalism. This article situates the origins of antisemitic political organising in romania alongside similar developments in austria, Germany, and France, showing that the romanian antisemites were well connected with prominent antisemites abroad. Just as antisemitism entered urban politics during this period, it also shaped rural violence, which was provoked by the sort of propaganda and rumour-mongering seen in the russian pogroms of 1881 and the kishinev pogrom of 1903. In 1922, romanian students protested to limit the number of Jews enrolled at universities, as did nationalist students in austria, czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, latvia, Poland, and elsewhere. romanians corresponded with antisemitic students abroad and employed the same language, repertoires, and frames that were popular elsewhere in Europe.
Tradition, Nationalism and Holocaust Memory: Reassessing Antisemitism in Post-Communist Romania
Plural. History, Culture, Society, 2022
This article is a re-evaluation of the Holocaust memory in the contemporary Romanian society. It shows that from its inception Romania's nation-building process went hand in hand with antisemitism. Furthermore, it points out that after 1989 the country's sense of frustration at its communist past managed to obscure the memory of the Holocaust. Despite Romania's government recognition of the country's involvement in the Holocaust (2004), a wholehearted acknowledgement of the issue remains improbable at the general level of Romania's society. A new law meant to counteract Holocaust denial was adopted in Romania in 2015. However, the country has proved ever since that it has barely come to terms with its historical legacy. *
East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures , 2021
This article addresses the persistence of anti-Semitism in Romania, placed in the context of some recent debates concerning the memory of the Holocaust in the country, as well as in the area of Central and Eastern Europe more broadly. It argues that, despite significant improvements in terms of legislation, the memory of the Holocaust remains a highly contested issue in contemporary Romania, torn between the attempts to join in the European memory of the Holocaust and local legacies that on the one hand focus primarily on the suffering of Romanians under the communist regime, and on the other perform a symbolic denationalisation of the Jewish minority in the country, whose own suffering is thus excised from national memory. It does so by focusing in particular on the debates surrounding the adoption of Law 217/2015, meant to clarify earlier legislation on Holocaust denial, and comparing them with those prompted by the Ukrainian memory laws passed in the same year. Taking into account both the national and international reactions to these very different pieces of legislation, the article shows the still-persisting discrepancy between a (mostly Western) European memory of the legacy of the twentieth century and local memory topoi characteristic of the countries that were part of the former socialist bloc.
Path to the Holocaust: Fascism and Anti-Semitism in Interwar Romania
S:I.M.O.N. (Shoah: Intervention, Methods, Documentation), 2014
This article outlines the principal directions of my research: It focuses on the interplay of antisemitism and fascism in the ideology of the legionary movement in interwar Romania as well as on the virtual consensus on antisemitism that was established in the 1930s as a result of the support for the movement received from most of the representatives of the ‘new generation’ of Romanian intellectuals. This consensus was pivotal in desensitising the general population towards the plight of Romanian Jews and making it possible for the discriminatory measures to gradually escalate into outright policies of extermination. Thus my research demonstrates the responsibility held by the legionary movement even though they were not directly involved in the Romanian wartime Holocaust perpetrated by the Antonescu regime: The legionary movement nevertheless promoted an antisemitic discourse that was much more extreme than that of all its predecessors and contemporaries, advocating a radical exclusion with genocidal overtones. Moreover, while being as ideological and abstract as its Nazi counterpart, legionary antisemitism posited religion rather than race as the basis for the exclusion of the Jews in line with the ideology of a movement that presented itself as ‘spiritual’ and ‘Christian’. The legionary exclusion based on religion proved as violent and murderous as the one based on race, both before and during the movement‘s time in power. As such, the evidence from the Romanian case study can serve to nuance and even challenge existing interpretations that identify only racist antisemitism as genocidal.
Anti-Semitism in Romania: Historical Legacies, Contemporary Challenges
ECMI Working Paper 81, 2014
The present article offers a brief survey of the modes of manifestation of anti-Semitism in Romania, from the time of the establishment of the state in the 19th century and until present day. While aware of the inherent limitations of attempting to carry out such an endeavour in the space of a short article, we believe that adopting such a broad historical perspective allows for observing patterns of continuity and change that could help explain some of the peculiarities of the Romanian varieties of anti-Semitism, as well as draw attention to the importance of a phenomenon that was central (albeit to varying degrees in different historical periods) to Romania’s modern history, and that is still visible in the country today. In doing so, the author aims both to provide a survey of the existing literature on the subject for the English-speaking audience, as well as to point out some of the gaps in the literature which call for further research on the subject. Finally, while the article will be limited to the case-study of Romania, some of the patterns of prejudice explored in its pages display clear parallels with the situation in other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, while others point to context-specific particularities that render the Romanian case distinct from other countries in the region.
East Central Europe
At the beginning of the third Millennium, research on the history of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in East-Central Europe has registered noticeable progress. Manifold reasons of political and scholarly nature have stimulated the emergence of new perspectives and avenues of investigation in this fijield. First, and most importantly, the fall of communist regimes allowed historians and the general public to ask questions about the Holocaust which were previously considered political taboos. Second, better access to historical archives in the ex-communist bloc made available crucial new sources to researchers. Third, the new approaches developed on the history of the Holocaust in the 1990s-focusing on the role played by "ordinary men" in the implementation
Antisemitism Contested. The Emergence, Meanings and Uses of a Hungarian Key Concept
Antisemitism has emerged as a key concept of the Hungarian sociopolitical vocabulary during the last decades when it has been chiefly employed by its critics. The paper lists four main reasons that are in turn historical, transnational, intellectual and political behind the much increased importance of this concept. Through the methods of conceptual history, it subsequently aims to show that the meaning of antisemitism has undergone significant changes since the fall of the communist regime. The three most important semantic shifts identified are its moralization, extension and politicization. While moralization is meant to indicate the complete unacceptability of antisemitism, its extended conception tends to depict it as a most complex and dangerous form of prejudice. Both the moralized and extended conception of antisemitism was also politically employed by Hungarian left liberals to contest the legitimacy of the conservative rightist forces. The latter have in turn aimed to redefine antisemitism as a political as much as a social or cultural issue, thereby contributing to its further politicization. More recent years have also brought about the visible revival of antisemitism -in spite of the concept having been recurrently and critically used in public discussions of recent decades.