Anti-Semitism in the USA
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Antisemitism in the United States has existed for centuries. In the United States, most Jewish community relations agencies draw distinctions between
antisemitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...
, which is measured in terms of attitudes and behaviors, and the security and status of
American Jews American Jews or Jewish Americans are American citizens who are Jewish, whether by religion, ethnicity, culture, or nationality. Today the Jewish community in the United States consists primarily of Ashkenazi Jews, who descend from diaspora J ...
, which are both measured by the occurrence of specific incidents. FBI data shows that in every year since 1991, Jews were the most frequent victims of religiously motivated
hate crime A hate crime (also known as a bias-motivated crime or bias crime) is a prejudice-motivated crime which occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of their membership (or perceived membership) of a certain social group or racial demograph ...
s, according to a report which was published by the
Anti-Defamation League The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
in 2019. Evidence suggests that the true number of hate crimes against Jews is underreported, as is the case for many other targeted groups. Public opinion surveys paint a mixed picture. According to a survey which was conducted by the Anti-Defamation League in 2019, antisemitism is rejected by a majority of Americans, with 79% of them lauding Jews' cultural contributions to the nation, however, the same poll found that 19% of Americans adhered to the longstanding
antisemitic canard Antisemitic tropes, canards, or myths are " sensational reports, misrepresentations, or fabrications" that are defamatory towards Judaism as a religion or defamatory towards Jews as an ethnic or religious group. Since the Middle Ages, such repo ...
that Jews co-control
Wall Street Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...
, and 31% agreed with the statement "Jewish employers go out of their way to hire other Jews".


American viewpoints on Jews and antisemitism


Roots of American attitudes towards Jews and Jewish history in America

Krefetz (1985) asserts that antisemitism in the 1980s seems "rooted less in religion or contempt and more rooted in envy, jealousy and fear" of Jewish affluence, and the hidden power of " Jewish money". Historically, antisemitic attitudes and rhetoric have tended to increase whenever the United States has faced a serious economic crisis, as well as during moments of political and social uncertainty and fear, such as with the rise of nativist anti-immigration organizing in the early twentieth century, the emergence of the Nazi-affiliated German-American Bund in the 1930s, and the
anti-Communist Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, w ...
political movement during the
Red Scare A Red Scare is the promotion of a widespread fear of a potential rise of communism, anarchism or other leftist ideologies by a society or state. The term is most often used to refer to two periods in the history of the United States which ar ...
. Academic David Greenberg has written in ''
Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
'', "Extreme anti-communism always contained an antisemitic component: Radical, alien Jews, in their demonology, orchestrated the Communist conspiracy." He also has argued that, in the years which followed World War II, some groups on " the American right remained closely tied to the unvarnished antisemites of the '30s who railed against the 'Jew Deal'", a bigoted term which was used against the
New Deal The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
measures of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. American antisemites have viewed the fraudulent text '' The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' as a real reference to a supposed Jewish cabal which was out to subvert and ultimately destroy the U.S. Both the association of Jews with Communism and the fixation on a Jewish cabal purported in ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' are conspiracies transplanted to the American context from European modernity: in a moment of economic revolution and socialist politics rising in contexts across Europe, conservative leaders from Christian Russia to interwar Great Britain manipulated a public fear of Jewish Bolshevism to scapegoat Jewish populations for strategic political gain. The " Great Replacement" theme was stressed by people who highlighted the supposed threat of Jews and other immigrants replacing Americans who were born in the country. In the 1920s and 1930s, antisemitic activists were led by Henry Ford and other figures like Charles Lindbergh,
William Dudley Pelley William Dudley Pelley (March 12, 1890 – June 30, 1965) was an American fascist leader, occultist, spiritualist and writer. Pelley came to prominence as a writer, winning two O. Henry Awards and penning screenplays for Hollywood films. His ...
, Charles Coughlin and
Gerald L. K. Smith Gerald Lyman Kenneth Smith (February 27, 1898 – April 15, 1976) was an American clergyman, politician and organizer known for his populist and far-right demagoguery. A leader of the populist Share Our Wealth movement during the Great Depressio ...
, and some of them were also members of organizations like the America First Committee, the
Christian Nationalist Crusade Christian Nationalist Crusade was an American antisemitic organization which operated from St. Louis, Missouri. Its founder was Gerald L. K. Smith. It sold and distributed, ''inter alia'', '' The International Jew'', and subscribed to the antise ...
, the
German American Bund The German American Bund, or the German American Federation (german: Amerikadeutscher Bund; Amerikadeutscher Volksbund, AV), was a German-American Nazi organization which was established in 1936 as a successor to the Friends of New Germany (FoN ...
, the
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...
and the Silver Legion of America. They promulgated canards and various interrelated conspiracy theories that widely spread the fear that, through an evil transnational network, Jews were working for the destruction or replacement of white Americans along with the fear that Jews were working for the destruction or replacement of Christianity in the United States.


Stereotypes

The most persistent form of antisemitism has been a series of widely circulating stereotypes that portray Jews as being socially, religiously, and economically unacceptable to American life, because of their inferiority to white Christian society or because of conspiratorial thinking in which Jews are accused of plotting to undermine the racial and economic hierarchies which make up the historical fabric of American society. As a whole, the Jewish people were looked down upon. They were made to feel unwanted, they were marginalized by American society and they were considered a menace to the United States. Martin Marger wrote, "A set of distinct and consistent negative stereotypes, some of which can be traced as far back as the Middle Ages in Europe, has been applied to Jews." David Schneder wrote, "Three large clusters of traits are part of the Jewish stereotype (Wuthnow, 1982). First,
merican ''Merican'' is an EP by the American punk rock band the Descendents, released February 10, 2004. It was the band's first release for Fat Wreck Chords and served as a pre-release to their sixth studio album ''Cool to Be You'', released the follow ...
Jews are seen as being powerful and manipulative. Second, they are accused of dividing their loyalties between the United States and Israel. A third set of traits concerns Jewish materialistic values, aggressiveness, clannishness." Stereotypes of Jewish people share some of the same content as stereotypes of Asians: perceived disloyalty, power, intelligence, and dishonesty overlap. The similarity between the content of stereotypes of Jews and the content of stereotypes of Asians may stem from the fact that many immigrant Jews and many immigrant Asians both developed a merchant role, a role which was also historically held by many Indians in East Africa, where the content of stereotypes of them resembles the content of stereotypes of Asians and Jews in the United States. Some of the
antisemitic canard Antisemitic tropes, canards, or myths are " sensational reports, misrepresentations, or fabrications" that are defamatory towards Judaism as a religion or defamatory towards Jews as an ethnic or religious group. Since the Middle Ages, such repo ...
s which have been cited by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL) in its studies of U.S. social trends include the claims that "Jews have too much power in the business world," "Jews are more willing to use shady practices to get what they want," and "Jews always like to be at the head of things." Another issue that garners attention is the assertion that Jews have an excessive amount of influence on American cinema and news media. Put together, these lines of thinking about Jews demonstrate a common trend in the history of both American and global antisemitism—the inflation of stereotypes of Jews into a theory about how power (politics, economics, media, etc.) functions in society, an irrational theory that deflects responsibility for social ills away from actual authorities and leaders and onto minority Jewish communities. In contemporary
alt-right The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a far-right, white nationalist movement. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late 2000s before increasing in popularity during the mid-2 ...
and right-wing circles, these tropes of power-hungry Jews sometimes manifest through coded references to "globalists," accusations that liberal agendas are the sole product of prominent Jews, and conspiracy theories (such as QAnon) that can be linked to the medieval
blood libel Blood libel or ritual murder libel (also blood accusation) is an antisemitic canardTurvey, Brent E. ''Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis'', Academic Press, 2008, p. 3. "Blood libel: An accusation of ritual mur ...
against Jews.


Statistics of American viewpoints and analysis

Polls and studies point to a steady decrease in antisemitic attitudes, beliefs, and manifestations among the American public. A 1992 survey by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL) showed that about 20% of Americans—between 30 and 40 million adults—held antisemitic views, a considerable decline from the total of 29% found in 1964. However, another survey by the same organization concerning antisemitic incidents showed that the curve has risen without interruption since 1986.


2005 survey

The number of Americans holding antisemitic views declined markedly six years later when another ADL study classified only 12 percent of the population—between 20 and 25 million adults, as "most antisemitic." Confirming the findings of previous surveys, both studies also found that African Americans were significantly more likely than whites to hold antisemitic views, with 34 percent of blacks classified as "most antisemitic," compared to 9 percent of whites in 1998. The 2005 Survey of American Attitudes Towards Jews in America, a national poll of 1,600 American adults conducted in March 2005, found that 14% of Americans—or nearly 35 million adults—hold views about Jews that are "unquestionably antisemitic," compared to 17% in 2002, In 1998, the number of Americans with hardcore antisemitic beliefs had dropped to 12% from 20% in 1992. The 2005 survey found "35 percent of foreign-born
Hispanics The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad. The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to viceroyalties former ...
(down from 44%
n 2002 N, or n, is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''. History ...
" and 36 percent of African-Americans hold strong antisemitic beliefs, four times more than the 9 percent for whites." The 2005 Anti-Defamation League survey includes data on Hispanic attitudes, with 29% being most antisemitic (as opposed as 9% for whites and 36% for blacks), being born in the United States helped alleviate that attitude: 35% of foreign-born Hispanics and only 19% of those born in the US. The survey findings come at a time of increased antisemitic activity in America. The 2004 ADL Audit of Antisemitic Incidents reported that antisemitic incidents reached their highest level in nine years. A total of 1,821 antisemitic incidents were reported in 2004, an increase of 17% over the 1,557 incidents reported during 2003. "What concerns us is that many of the gains we had seen in building a more tolerant and accepting America seem not to have taken hold as firmly as we had hoped," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "While there are many factors at play, the findings suggest that antisemitic beliefs endure and resonate with a substantial segment of the population, nearly 35 million people."


After 2005

In 2007 an ABC News report recounted that past ABC polls across several years have tended to find that about 6% of Americans self-report prejudice against Jews as compared to about 25% being against Arab Americans and about 10% against Hispanic Americans. The report also remarked that a full 34% of Americans reported having "some racist feelings" in general as a self-description. A 2009 study which was titled "Modern Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israeli Attitudes", published in the ''
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology The ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Psychological Association that was established in 1965. It covers the fields of social and personality psychology. The edi ...
'' in 2009, tested a new theoretical model of antisemitism among Americans in the Greater New York area with three experiments. The research team's theoretical model proposed that mortality salience (reminding people that they will someday die) increases antisemitism and that antisemitism is often expressed as anti-Israel attitudes. The first experiment showed that mortality salience led to higher levels of antisemitism and lower levels of support for Israel. The study's methodology was designed to tease out antisemitic attitudes that are concealed by polite people. The second experiment showed that mortality salience caused people to perceive Israel as very important, but did not cause them to perceive any other country this way. The third experiment showed that mortality salience led to a desire to punish Israel for human rights violations but not to a desire to punish Russia or India for identical human rights violations. According to the researchers, their results "suggest that Jews constitute a unique cultural threat to many people's worldviews, that antisemitism causes hostility to Israel, and that hostility to Israel may feed back to increase antisemitism." Furthermore, "those claiming that there is no connection between antisemitism and hostility toward Israel are wrong." The 2011 ''Survey of American Attitudes Toward Jews in America'' released by the ADL found that the recent world economic recession increased some antisemitic viewpoints among Americans.
Abraham H. Foxman Abraham Henry Foxman (born May 1, 1940) is an American lawyer and activist. He served as the national director of the Anti-Defamation League from 1987 to 2015, and is currently the League's national director emeritus. From 2016 to 2021 he served a ...
, the organization's national director, argued, "It is disturbing that with all of the strides we have made in becoming a more tolerant society, antisemitic beliefs continue to hold a vice-grip on a small but not insubstantial segment of the American public." Specifically, the polling found that 19% of Americans answered "probably true" to the assertion that "Jews have too much control/influence on Wall Street" while 15% concurred with the related statement that Jews seem "more willing to use shady practices" in business. Nonetheless, the survey generally reported positive attitudes for most Americans, the majority of those who were surveyed expressed
philo-Semitic Philosemitism is a notable interest in, respect for, and appreciation of the Jewish people, their history, and the influence of Judaism, particularly on the part of a non-Jew. In the aftermath of World War II, the phenomenon of philosemitism sa ...
sentiments such as 64% agreeing that Jews have contributed much to U.S. social culture. A 2019 survey by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that 73% of American Jews feel less secure since the
election of Donald Trump The 2016 United States presidential election was the 58th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. The Republican ticket of businessman Donald Trump and Indiana governor Mike Pence defeated the Democratic ticket ...
to the presidency. Since 2016, antisemitic attacks against synagogues have contributed to this fear. The survey found that combatting antisemitism is a priority issue in domestic politics among American Jews, including
millennials Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Gen Y, are the Western demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000 ...
.


Antisemitism within the African-American community

Surveys which were conducted by the ADL in 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2013 all found that the large majority of African-Americans who were questioned rejected antisemitism and expressed the same kinds of generally tolerant viewpoints as other Americans who were also surveyed. For example, their 2009 study reported that 28% of African-Americans surveyed displayed antisemitic views while a 72% majority did not. However, those three surveys all found that negative attitudes towards Jews were stronger among African-Americans than among the general population at large. According to earlier ADL research, dating back to 1964, the trend that African-Americans are significantly more likely than white Americans to hold antisemitic beliefs across all education levels has remained unchanged over the years. Nonetheless, the percentage of the population which holds a negative opinion of Jews has also waned considerably in the black community during this period. In 1967, ''
New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...
'' published the article " Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White" in which the African-American author
James Baldwin James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'', was published in 1953; de ...
sought to explain the prevalence of black antisemitism. An ADL poll from 1992 stated that 37% of African-Americans surveyed displayed antisemitism; in contrast, a poll from 2011 found that only 29% did so. Personal backgrounds play a huge role in the lives of people who hold prejudiced versus tolerant views. Among black Americans with no college education, 43% of them fell into the most antisemitic group (versus 18% of the general population) compared to only 27% among blacks with some college education and just 18% among blacks with a four-year college degree (versus 5% of people in the general population with a four-year college degree). The data from the ADL's 1998 polling research showed a clear pattern. Although the 1998 ADL survey found a strong correlation between education level and antisemitism among African Americans, blacks at all educational levels were still more likely than whites to accept anti-Jewish stereotypes. However, many prominent members of the African-American community have spoken out against antisemitism, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Zach Banner. Prominent African American figures such as Louis Farrakhan and Kanye West have been accused of anti-semitism.


Holocaust denial

Austin App Austin Joseph App (24 May 1902 – 4 May 1984) was an American professor of medieval English literature who taught at the University of Scranton and La Salle University. App defended Nazi Germany during World War II. He is known for his work den ...
, a German-American
La Salle University La Salle University () is a private, Catholic university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The university was founded in 1863 by the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools and named for St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle. History La ...
professor of medieval English literature, is considered the first major American Holocaust denier. App wrote extensively in newspapers and periodicals, and he also wrote a couple of books which detailed his defense of Nazi Germany and Holocaust denial. App's work inspired the
Institute for Historical Review The Institute for Historical Review (IHR) is a United States-based nonprofit organization which promotes Holocaust denial. It is considered by many scholars to be central to the international Holocaust denial movement. Self-described as a "hist ...
, a California center which was founded in 1978 with the sole purpose of denying the Holocaust. One of the newer forms of antisemitism is the denial of the Holocaust by revisionist historians and neo-Nazis. A survey conducted in 2020 found that close to two-thirds of Millennials and Gen Z adults were not aware that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. 24% agreed that the Holocaust might be a myth or that accounts of it had been exaggerated.


Antisemitic organizations


White supremacists

There are a number of antisemitic organizations in the United States, some of them violent, which espouse
religious antisemitism Religious antisemitism is aversion to or discrimination against Jews as a whole, based on religious doctrines of supersession that expect or demand the disappearance of Judaism and the conversion of Jews, and which figure their political ene ...
, racial antisemitism and white supremacy. They include Christian Identity Churches, White Aryan Resistance, the
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...
, the American Nazi Party, and many other organizations. Several fundamentalist churches, such as the Westboro Baptist Church and the Faithful Word Baptist Church, also preach antisemitic messages. The largest neo-Nazi organizations in the United States are the National Nazi Party and the
National Socialist Movement National Socialist Movement may refer to: * Nazi Party, a political movement in Germany * National Socialist Movement (UK, 1962), a British neo-Nazi group * National Socialist Movement (United Kingdom), a British neo-Nazi group active during the lat ...
. Adopting the look and emblems of white power skinheads, many members of these antisemitic groups shave their heads and tattoo themselves with Nazi symbols such as
swastika The swastika (卐 or 卍) is an ancient religious and cultural symbol, predominantly in various Eurasian, as well as some African and American cultures, now also widely recognized for its appropriation by the Nazi Party and by neo-Nazis. It ...
s, SS
insignias An insignia () is a sign or mark distinguishing a group, grade, rank, or function. It can be a symbol of personal power or that of an official group or governing body. On its own, an insignia is a sign of a specific or general authority and is ...
, and " Heil Hitler". Additionally, antisemitic groups march and preach antisemitic messages throughout America.


Nation of Islam

A number of Jewish organizations, Christian organizations, Muslim organizations, and academics consider the
Nation of Islam The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious and political organization founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. A black nationalist organization, the NOI focuses its attention on the African diaspora, especially on African ...
antisemitic. Specifically, they claim that the Nation of Islam has engaged in revisionist and antisemitic interpretations of the Holocaust and exaggerates the role of Jews in the
Atlantic slave trade The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
. In December 2012, the Simon Wiesenthal Center put the NOI's leader Louis Farrakhan on its list of the ten most prominent antisemites in the world. He was the only American to make it onto the list. The organization cited statements that he had made in October of that year in which he claimed that "Jews control the media" and "Jews are the most violent of people". Farrakhan has denied charges of antisemitism, but in his denial, he included a reference to " Satanic Jews." After he was banned from Facebook, he stated that those who consider him a hater don't know him personally. However, he admitted that Facebook's designation of him as a "dangerous individual" was correct.


New antisemitism


Antisemitism on college campuses

Many Jewish intellectuals who fled from Nazi Germany after Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s arrived in the United States. There, they hoped to continue their academic careers, but barring a scant few, they found little acceptance in elite institutions in Depression-era America with its undercurrent of antisemitism. Instead, they found work in historically black colleges and universities in the
American South The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...
. On April 3, 2006, the
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (CCR) is a bipartisan, independent commission of the United States federal government, created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 during the Eisenhower administration, that is charged with the responsibility fo ...
announced its finding that incidents of antisemitism are a "serious problem" on college campuses throughout the United States. The Commission recommended for the U.S. Department of Education's
Office for Civil Rights The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is a sub-agency of the U.S. Department of Education that is primarily focused on enforcing civil rights laws prohibiting schools from engaging in discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex ...
to protect college students from antisemitism by vigorous enforcement of Title VI of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...
. It further recommended for the U.S. Congress to clarify that Title VI applies to discrimination against Jewish students. In February 2015, the
Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights under Law The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law (LDB) is a nonprofit organization founded by Kenneth L. Marcus in 2012 to advance the civil and human rights of the Jewish people and promote justice for all. LDB is active on American campus ...
and
Trinity College Trinity College may refer to: Australia * Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales * Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...
presented the results of a national survey of American Jewish college students. The survey had a 10-12% response rate and did not claim to be representative. The report showed that 54% of the 1,157 self-identified Jewish students at 55 campuses nationwide who took part in the online survey reported having experienced or witnessed antisemitism on their campuses during the Spring semester of the last academic year. A 2017 report by Brandeis University's Steinhardt Social Research Institute indicated that most Jewish students never experience anti-Jewish remarks or physical attacks. The study, "Limits to Hostility," notes that even though it is often reported in the news, actual antisemitic hostility remains rare on most campuses and is seldom encountered by Jewish students. The study attempted to document the student experience at the campus level, adding detail to previous national-level surveys. The report summary highlights the finding that antisemitism exists on campus, but "Jewish students do not think their campus is hostile to Jews." The National Demographic Survey of American Jewish College Students provided a snapshot of the type, context, and location of antisemitism as it was experienced by a large national sample of Jewish students on university and four-year college campuses. Inside Higher Ed focused on the more surprising findings of the report, like the fact that high rates of antisemitism were also reported at institutions regardless of their location or type, and the data collected after the survey suggests that discrimination occurs during low-level, everyday interpersonal activities, and Jewish students feel that their reports of antisemitism are largely ignored by the administration. However, not all of the reception was positive, and The Forward argued that the study documented only a snapshot in time, rather than a trend; it did not survey a representative sample of Jewish college students; and it was flawed by allowing students to define antisemitism and thus the term open to interpretation. In September 2021, in collaboration with the
Cohen Group Cohen may refer to: Places *Cohen-kuhi Tau/4, a star 420 light-years away from Earth in the Taurus Constellation *The Cohen Building of ''The Judd School'' in Tonbridge, England People * Cohen (surname), a common Jewish surname Arts, entertainm ...
, the Brandeis Center conducted a poll of American Jewish fraternity and sorority members. The survey found that more than 65% of the respondents had experienced or were familiar with an antisemitic attack in the previous 120 days. Nearly half of the respondents felt the need to hide their Jewish identity out of fear. Additionally, the Anti-Defamation League reported that they found 244 antisemitic incidents on college campuses in the 2020-2021 school year, despite the fact that many college campuses were closed during the year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. They estimate that about one-third of all Jewish students experienced antisemitism on college campuses, and 79% of those students reported that happening to them more than once in the academic year. Based on their survey, they found that a significant amount of these antisemitic experiences on campus had to do with Israel, such as assuming that they held a particular viewpoint on Israel because they are Jewish or blaming them for the actions of the Israeli government because they are Jewish, in conjunction with growing anti-Israel and anti-Zionist movements on college campuses. Sara Fredman Aeder, director of development at NYU Bronfman Center, studied antisemitism on US campuses for her PhD study. She found that most Jewish students had never experienced antisemitism on campus or personally knew of such occurrences. Rather, their fears were informed by what they read online and in social media.


Hate crimes


Overview

In April 2019, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that antisemitism in the U.S. was at "near-historic levels," with 1,879 attacks recorded against individuals and institutions during 2018, "the third-highest year on record since the ADL started tracking such data in the 1970s." This followed data from earlier in the decade which showed a multi-year slide in antisemitism, including a 19% decline in 2013. The
Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
(FBI) organizes Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) which are designed to collect and evaluate statistics of offenses which are committed in the U.S. In 2014, 1,140 victims of anti-religious
hate crimes A hate crime (also known as a bias-motivated crime or bias crime) is a prejudice-motivated crime which occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of their membership (or perceived membership) of a certain social group or racial demograph ...
were listed, of which 56.8% were motivated by offenders' anti-Jewish biases. 15,494 law enforcement agencies contributed to the UCR analysis. According to the American Enterprise Institute, Jews were the most likely of any group, religious or otherwise, to be targeted for hate crimes in the U.S. in 2018, 2016, and 2015. '' The New York Times'' reported that Jews were the most targeted in proportion to their population size in 2005, and they were the second-most targeted individuals after LGBT individuals in 2014. The NYPD reported a 75% increase in the amount of
swastika The swastika (卐 or 卍) is an ancient religious and cultural symbol, predominantly in various Eurasian, as well as some African and American cultures, now also widely recognized for its appropriation by the Nazi Party and by neo-Nazis. It ...
graffiti between 2016 and 2018, with an uptick observed after the Pittsburgh shooting. Out of 189 hate crimes in New York City in 2018, 150 featured swastikas. On February 1, 2019, graffiti which read "fucking Jews" was found on the wall of a
synagogue A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worshi ...
in LA. During Hanukkah festivities in December 2019, a number of attacks committed in New York were possibly motivated by antisemitism, including a mass stabbing in Monsey. In May 2021, there was an upsurge of violent assaults on Jews in the United States at the same time as the Gaza conflict, according to the Secure Community Network and Network Contagion Research Institute.


2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting

The
Pittsburgh synagogue shooting The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was an antisemitic terrorist attack which took place at the Tree of Life – Or L'Simcha Congregation synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The congregation, alo ...
was an
antisemitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...
terrorist attack in the form of a mass shooting, which took place at the Tree of Life – Or L'Simcha Congregation
synagogue A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worshi ...
in the
Squirrel Hill Squirrel Hill is a residential neighborhood in the East End of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The city officially divides it into two neighborhoods, Squirrel Hill North and Squirrel Hill South, but it is almost universally treated a ...
neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The congregation, along with New Light Congregation and Congregation Dor Hadash, which also worshipped in the building, was attacked during
Shabbat Shabbat (, , or ; he, שַׁבָּת, Šabbāṯ, , ) or the Sabbath (), also called Shabbos (, ) by Ashkenazim, is Judaism's day of rest on the seventh day of the week—i.e., Saturday. On this day, religious Jews remember the biblical storie ...
morning services on October 27, 2018. The perpetrator killed eleven people and wounded six, including several Holocaust survivors. It was the deadliest attack ever on the Jewish community in the United States. A lone suspect, identified as 46-year-old Robert Gregory Bowers, was shot multiple times by police and arrested at the scene. Bowers had earlier posted antisemitic comments against HIAS (formerly, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) on the online alt-tech social network Gab.
Dor Hadash DOR, Dor, or DoR may refer to: Computer games and characters * '' Advance Wars: Days of Ruin'', a turn-based tactics video game for the Nintendo DS * Dor, a magician in the fictional Xanth universe; see Magicians of Xanth * ''WWE Day of Reckoning ...
had participated in HIAS's National Refugee Shabbat the previous week. Referring to
Central American migrant caravans Central American migrant caravans, also known as the ("Migrant's Way of the Cross"), are migrant caravans that travel from Central America to the Mexico–United States border. The largest and best known of these were organized by (A People Wi ...
and immigrants, Bowers posted a message on Gab in which he wrote that "HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in."Why the Pittsburgh shooter is not being prosecuted for terrorism
, ''Times of Israel''
He has been charged with 63 federal crimes, some of which are
capital crimes Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
. He has pleaded not guilty.Torsten Ove
Robert Bowers, accused in Tree of Life synagogue shootings, arraigned
, ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'' (February 11, 2019).
He separately faces 36 charges in Pennsylvania state court.


2019 Poway synagogue shooting


2019 Jersey City shooting


2022 Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis


See also

* Geography of antisemitism#United States * History of antisemitism#United States * History of antisemitism in the United States * History of the Jews in the United States *
List of antisemitic incidents in the United States The following is a list of antisemitic incidents in the United States. See also * List of attacks on Jewish institutions in the United States This is a list of violent attacks and failed attack plots targeting Jewish institutions in the Un ...
* List of attacks on Jewish institutions in the United States * Antisemitism in the United States in the 21st century * Racism in the United States#Jewish Americans * Radical right (United States) * Religious discrimination in the United States *
United States and the Holocaust A neutral state, the United States entered the war on the Allied side in December 1941. The American government first became aware of the Holocaust in German-occupied Europe in 1942 and 1943. Following a report on the failure to assist the Jewish ...
*
Israel–United States relations Since the 1960s, the United States has been a very strong supporter of Israel. It has played a key role in the promotion of good relations between Israel and its neighbouring Arab states—namely Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt, along with several oth ...


Notes


References


Further reading

* Buckley, William F. ''In Search of Anti-Semitism'', New York: Continuum, 1992 * Dershowitz, Alan M. ''Chutzpah'' 1st ed., Boston: Little, Brown, c1991 * Dinnerstein, Leonard. ''Antisemitism in America'', New York: Oxford University Press, 1994 * Dinnerstein, Leonard ''Uneasy at Home: Antisemitism and the American Jewish Experience'', New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. *Dobkowski, Michael N. ''The Tarnished Dream: The Basis of American Anti-Semitism'' (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979, a major scholarly stud
online
* Dolan, Edward F. ''Anti-Semitism'', New York: F. Watts, 1985. * ''Extremism on the Right: A Handbook'' New revised edition, New York: Anti Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, 1988. * Flynn, Kevin J. and Gary Gerhardt ''The Silent Brotherhood: Inside America's Racist Underground'', New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, c1989 * Ginsberg, Benjamin ''The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press, c1993 * ''Hate Groups in America: a Record of Bigotry and Violence'', New rev. ed. New York: Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, c1988 * Jaher, Frederic Cople ''A Scapegoat in the Wilderness: The Origins and Rise of Anti-Semitism in America'', Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994 * Lang, Susan S. ''Extremist Groups in America'', (New York: F. Watts, 1990). * Lee, Albert ''Henry Ford and the Jews'', (New York: Stein and Day, 1980). * Mart, Michelle. "Constructing a universal ideal: anti-Semitism, American Jews, and the founding of Israel." ''Modern Judaism'' 20.2 (2000): 181–208. * Rausch, David A. ''Fundamentalist-evangelicals and Anti-semitism'' (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1993). * Ridgeway, James ''
Blood in the Face ''Blood in the Face'' is a 1991 documentary film about white supremacy groups in North America. It was directed by Anne Bohlen, Kevin Rafferty and James Ridgeway. It features many interviews with various white supremacist leaders, and archival foot ...
: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads and the Rise of a New White Culture'', (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1990). * Roth, Philip ''
The Plot Against America ''The Plot Against America'' is a novel by Philip Roth published in 2004. It is an alternative history in which Franklin D. Roosevelt is defeated in the presidential election of 1940 by Charles Lindbergh. The novel follows the fortunes of the R ...
'', (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2004). * Shapiro, Edward S. "The Approach of War: Congressional Isolationism and Anti-Semitism, 1939–1941." ''American Jewish History'' 74.1 (1984): 45–65
online
* Volkman, Ernest ''A Legacy of Hate: Anti-Semitism in America'', New York: F. Watts, 1982


Historiography and memory

* Brackman, Harold David. "The attack on Jewish Hollywood: A chapter in the history of modern American Anti-Semitism." ''Modern Judaism'' 20.1 (2000): 1–19. * Carr, Steven Alan. ''Hollywood and Anti-Semitism: A Cultural History up to World War II'', (Cambridge University Press 2001). * Dinnerstein, Leonard. "Anti-Semitism exposed and attacked, 1945–1950." ''American Jewish History'' 71.1 (1981): 134–149
online
* Gerber, David A. "Leonard Dinnerstein (1934–2019): The Historian and His Subject." ''American Jewish History'' 105.1 (2021): 235–245
online
* Goldman, Eric A. "Gentleman's Agreement and Crossfire: Films That Took on Anti-Semitism in 1947 (The 1940s)." in ''The American Jewish Story through Cinema'' (University of Texas Press, 2021) pp. 50–96. * Levinson, Daniel J., and R. Nevitt Sanford. "A scale for the measurement of anti-Semitism." ''Journal of Psychology'' 17.2 (1944): 339–370. * Hirsch, Herbert and Jack D. Spiro, eds. ''Persistent Prejudice: Perspectives on Anti-Semitism'', Fairfax, Va.: George Mason University Press; Lanham, MD: Distributed by arrangement with University Pub. Associates, c1988 * Lipstadt, Deborah E. ''Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'', (New York: Free Press; Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada; New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1993) * Short, K. R. M. "Hollywood fights anti-Semitism, 1940-1945." in ''Film & Radio Propaganda in World War II'' (Routledge, 2021) pp. 146–172. * Tobin, Gary A. and Sharon L. Sassler ''Jewish Perceptions of Antisemitism'', New York: Plenum Press, c1988


External links


State of the Nation: Anti-Semitism and the economic crisis
by
Neil Malhotra Neil Malhotra is an American political economist. He is the Edith M. Cornell Professor of Political Economy in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, where he is also the Louise and Claude N. Rosenbrg, Jr. Director of the Center ...
and Yotam Margalit in '' Boston Review'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Antisemitism In The United States Jews and Judaism in the United States