I think the important thing to understand about antisemitism as a political factor is that its not coterminous with "Jew hatred", it's a particular type of obsessive preoccupation and fantasy about the presence of an alien force in the national body

It's difficult to understand the type of politics being practiced by Tucker, Vance, Hawley et. al. without understanding the history of antisemitism. Jews were not just singled out as Jews, but filled a structural role as the cause of various maladies, liberalism, socialism, etc

Antisemitism was a synthesis of reactionary ideals and myths, it focused the tangled problems of society onto a single, identifiable enemy figure

Americans don't actually have much experience with political antisemitism and so for the most part only understand explicit negative prejudicial treatment of Jews, which is fortunately pretty rare in the US. So have trouble understanding when things are redolent of antisemitism

Unfortunately trying to identify the appearance of more political forms of antisemitism often devolves into sort of quasi-literate "trope hunting", which just makes talk of political antisemitism more phantasmic and hysterical, because it seems to see it in every shadow

Can you be antisemitic without fully intending to be? In some ways, yes, if you're extremely irresponsible like Carlson . I think we can see this in the irritation that more hardcore antisemites have when he seems to be coming up to the line of that sort of talk but not

quite going there. They are flirting with the themes, but unwilling to enjoy it fully in all of its obscenity, to channel Zizek for a moment.

Antisemitism is a much, much weirder thing than "hating Jews", people can be prejudiced against Jews without really being antisemitic in the full sense that its the center of their entire political consciousness

Certain forms of anti-blackness definitely come close in the American experience to this type of antisemitism, where the increasing integration of blacks in the middle class, political office, and popular culture actually accelerates rather than allays racist fears

The difference between political antisemitism and just negative personal feelings against Jews is apparent when you look at the history in Europe: many antisemites had friendly, even intimate, connections with Jews on a personal level but adopted antisemitic politics

So this game of being "well, they can't be antisemitic because they have a Jewish friend etc" or even perversely enough, are Jewish, is not useful. Unfortunately, there are antisemitic Jews or at least ones willing to do work for antisemitic movements

Sartre said antisemitism is not a view, it's a passion, it becomes an existential principle through which to organize one's life, I think that's true, but it's also sometimes a convenient and opportune method of organizing political passions

Look at what Charles Maurras, one of the big anti-Dreyfusard ideologues and nationalists said of it—it allows everything to be smoothed over, arranged, etc. it's useful

So I think in summary whenever there's an effort to synthesize the various perceived social maladies into a single figure of "enemy" antisemitism becomes a possible threat but the history is also an important lesson no matter who or what becomes the ultimate target

One more great quote, from the historian Nancy Fitch, “Dreyfus, the Jewish traitor, appeared almost miraculously in 1898 to save the cause of anti-parliamentarian conservatives.”

I would encourage people to try think of antisemitism as a type of propaganda and politics and not first and foremost as a form of interpersonal prejudice

One more remark, about a recent piece of writing that I actually had a lot of merit, the reason to me to "center" discussions of antisemitism is not to privilege the suffering of the Jews over everyone else, but to use it as a lesson in the way racism functions politically

Here's Michel Winock, a historian I really like

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