Assessing the antisemitism ‘experts’?
Preface
In my earlier articles I spoke of the centrality of the concept of antisemitism in Zionist ideology. Now we need to ask a prior question about our knowledge of antisemitic events themselves.
How do we know that antisemitic events have taken place? Who tells us? On what basis do these interpellaters of the identity of antisemitism draw their conclusions — in other words how do they know this — and then send out their message that antisemitic events have occurred? Do we agree with
how they came to their conclusions categorising certain reported events as antisemitic? On what basis do we agree or disagree with their conclusions?
Answering these questions is critical for assessing whether or not antisemitic events, as reported, have indeed taken place.
The aim of this article is to identify the agents that, in specific conjunctures, have determined that definite historical events instantiate antisemitism. The incidence trends of antisemitic events is drawn from recent attitudinal surveys, in Germany, South Africa and the United States (US). While these country case studies are by no means exhaustive, unpacking them could demonstrate a modus operandi whereby states — or parastatals — interpellate[1] people, organisations and events as antisemitic.[2] A further aim is to assess whether these surveys are accurate indicators of the reality of antisemitism. In doing this we might glean whether real antisemitism has been on the increase, stagnant or even receding in its frequency of occurrence. However, tracking real incidents of antisemitism and comparing annual statistical data about the incidence of antisemitism, is not the purpose of this article. That is a separate study that must await another occasion.
Understanding what the antisemitism is that is being reported is important if we are to provide a context for the struggles around the meaning of the term in Germany, South Africa and the US, as well as in Austria and the United Kingdom (UK). Describing and analysing the meaning and outcome of these ideological struggles in these five countries, forms the content of the remaining nine articles that I will be publishing.
The fifth article and the sixth article in this series laid the basis for a rational and empirically verified identification of a person, organisation or event as antisemitic. This identification is both a conceptual and an empirical process. Antisemitism as a concept is not simply an element in an overall ideological framework. Antisemitism is not just an idea about Jews as a malevolent other. It is also a practice against Jews qua Jews. As ideological practice it takes a range of forms — from formally calling out Jews (as in the “f*kken Jood” that I was referred to frequently in my teens) to the extremes of stripping Jews of citizenship, geographically segregating them and finally exterminating them (as practised in the Third Reich).
Antisemitic ideas about what constitutes a Jew are embedded with social practices against Jews.
Individuals, as they really are in everyday life, are the agents implementing antisemitic acts — therefore individual intentions are a necessary criterion for assessing whether or not an act is antisemitic. Additionally, the impact of the act on other individuals, collections of individuals and social structures and policies is equally important in determining whether an event should reasonably be characterised as antisemitic.
Extent of antisemitism in Germany?
Germany’s criminalization of antisemitism is justified in memory of the holocaust. Prior to and after the 1989 reunification the Federal Republic acknowledged its special responsibility for Israel’s security as a Jewish state including fighting antisemitism within Germany, Europe and further afield.
In 2004 the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophopbia (EUMC) — in which Germany played a key role — developed a working definition of antisemitism (referred to by the Department for Research and Information on Antisemitism [RIAS Berlin] — formed in 2015 — under “operating principles”) with state, civil society and NGO participation. This definition exceptionalises antisemitism within the genre of racism. It represented the beginning of a process that culminated with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), referred to in the fifth article of this series.
Notwithstanding the commitment of the German state antisemitism has been reported as persisting in Germany. Besides RIAS the other experts on the incidence of antisemitsm in Germany are the German police , and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) (an organisation that defends Israel’s right to exist and uses, inter alia, the IHRA definition of antisemitism).
Three comprehensive surveys conducted by the ADL in 2014, 2015 and 2019 concluded that 27 per cent of the German adult population harboured antisemitic attitudes in 2014 but that this proportion fell to 16 per cent in 2015 and 15 per cent in 2019.
RIAS reported a rise in anti-semitism in 2020, with reference to this being manifested in far-right political circles but also with popular support at times.
German police reported that during 2020 they logged 2 275 reports of antisemitic incidents (including 55 violent crimes), identified about 1 400 suspects but only made five arrests. This represented an 11 per cent increase of antisemitic incidents over 2019. Ninety-four per cent of these incidents had a right-wing political motivation.
To assess the extent of antisemitism in Germany requires precise definition of what is meant by antisemitism and also scrutinisng the organisations making these claims for potential confirmation bias. A 2015 study by the Centre for Antisemitism Research (located in the Faculty of Humanities and Communication of the Technical University of Berlin) concluded that antisemitism needs to be consensually defined and more research and data are required before drawing firm conclusions about the current extent of antisemitism and its trends over time.
In order to make sense of these reported trends we need to know the definition of antisemitism and the methodology employed (i.e. method of surveying and questions asked in order to probe for operational indicators). The proportion of Israel-related antisemitic events (reflecting the so-called new antisemitism) that has been counted by those parties claiming that antisemitism is on the rise in Germany needs to be clarified. To mitigate the risk of confirmation bias customized and crafted questions are required that effectively probe for concrete examples of racism-as-othering in respondents’ attitudes and behaviour. A rigorous methodology also requires finegrained cross tabulation of answers to different sets of key questions. The intention of the individuals putting out the alleged antisemitic messages, the verbal content of these messages and their known (or likely) impacts on a collective of audiences (likely receivers of these messages) needs to be incorporated into the analysis.
The RIAS definition closely resembles the IHRA definition (referred to in the in the fifth article of this series), including all the specific examples of Israel-related antisemitism. According to Iris Hefets (also referred to in the fifth article of this series and the chairperson of Jewish Voices for Peace in the Middle East — Germany during 2019) RIAS is an institutional mechanism for Germans who oppose criticisms of Israel by Jewish and other voices, to register their complaints for investigation. RIAS is therefore not an independent research organisation.
Neither is the ADL a specialised independent research institute: it is partisanly Zionist, has adopted the IHRA definition and examples of the meaning of antisemitism and has engaged in political practices that contradict its claimed progressive agenda “to secure justice and fair treatment for all”. The fact that the ADL actively supported South African apartheid in the past is a strong example of these contradictory practices, and should give pause for concern about their understanding of what constitutes institutionalized racism.
Criticisms of Israel and of the way in which holocaust memory is articulated are included in the ADL’s and RIAS’ research output measuring the extent of antisemitism. The ADL found in 2014 that 55 per cent of German respondents said that Jews were more loyal to Israel and 52 per cent that they overemphasized the holocaust. In 2015 49 per cent of German respondents said Jews were more loyal to Israel and 51 per cent that they overemphasized the holocaust; and, in 2019 the figures were 49 per cent and 42 per cent respectively.
These opinions about Jews’ attitudes towards Israel and the holocaust stand out as the highest percentage of respondents’ views when compared with other questions and undoubtedly influenced the ADL‘s conclusion.
Yet neither of these attitudes necessarily implies an othering of Jews. ADL pointed to another indicator of antisemitism: respondents’ identification of a disproportionate Jewish presence in ownership and management positions in established business. However, the ADL report lacks evidence of the intentions underlying respondents’ comments about the perceived disproportionate influence of Jews in business. Therefore, it is plausible that this simply could be a perception that might reflect the reality of German commercial life rather than antisemitic animus of the respondents: the point stands even if a Jewish presence in (say) shareholding and management of business is not disproportionate. In the absence of an explicit research and analysis methodology (which would reflect the discourse analysis structure referred to earlier) it is impossible to get an informed picture of the trends of incidence of antisemitism in Germany from the results of the ADL research.
Extensive internet research did not reveal the detail underlying the German police trends, which pointed to a noticeable rise in right-wing antisemitic incidents in 2019. Given the views of the reputable Centre for Antisemitism Research at the Technical University of Berlin, there appears to be a dearth of in-depth surveys of this issue, that could form the basis for more rigorous statistical analysis.
Extent of antisemitism in South Africa?
The extent of antisemitism (as othering) in contemporary South Africa is unclear and indeed contested even amongst Zionists.
These differences of opinion emerged in reaction to the 2019 ADL survey that concluded that 47 per cent of South African adults harboured antisemitic feelings.
The 2019 survey found that 60 per cent of South African adults thought that Jewish South Africans were more loyal to Israel, and 49 per cent that they spoke too much about the holocaust. The 2014 survey had found that 38 per cent of South African adults harboured antisemitic attitudes. Fifty-seven per cent reportedly thought that Jews were more loyal to Israel and 19 per cent that they spoke too much about the holocaust.
All the critical qualifications mentioned in respect of the ADL survey findings about antisemitism in Germany are equally valid for their findings about antisemitism in South Africa. The point made with respect to the perception of Germans of a disproportionate share by Jews of local businesses, also applies to the claim that Jewish South Africans are more loyal to Israel than South Africa. But this alleged antisemitic canard represents an accurate self-description of self-appointed representatives of the Jewish community. In 2015 Al Jazeerah reported that prominent Jewish leaders in South Africa, including members of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBoD), were Mossad (Israel external security) assets (i.e. they collected and passed on information to their Mossad handlers, particularly about activities of and
individuals involved in Palestine solidarity groupings in the country). SAJBoD presents itself as the authentic representative body of Jewish South Africans, prioritises Israel’s survival and plausibly has no problem with its membership and leaders functioning as assets for a foreign intelligence service whose apartheid interests cannot be congruent with the South African constitution, the highest state law of the land. The truth value of the statement that a body claiming to represent Jewish South Africans is more loyal to a foreign state than to the South African constitution, needs to be considered separately from the question of antisemitism.
Ironically SAJBoD also called into question the ADL findings on the incidence of antisemitism in South Africa. It questioned the veracity of the ADL survey findings on South Africa, and expressed concern at the methodology used. SAJBoD reported that during 2019 antisemitic incidents had fallen to an all-time low with 36 incidents recorded as against 62 the previous year. They mentioned that this was despite widespread anti-Israel sentiment in the country and within the SA government. The latter point is noteworthy because it is inconsistent with the IHRA definition, 64 per cent of the examples of which are “unfair” criticisms of Israel, and also inconsistent with the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism definition of antisemitism 73 per cent of the examples of which refer to the way Israel is depicted — arguably anti-Israel sentiment should have pushed South Africa’s antisemitic incidence higher rather than lower.[3]
Jewish journalist Jeremy Gordin questioned the ADL’s 2019 conclusions on the basis of it not differentiating between anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiments, and he noted that 47 per cent of respondents claimed never to have met a Jew. This suggested that almost half of those being surveyed might not have been aware of what they were being surveyed about.
Milton Shain, referred to in the fifth article in this series, and a self-proclaimed expert on antisemitism, responded to the SAJBoD as well as Adam Mendelson’s (his successor as the University of Cape Town’s Kaplan Centre’s director) critique of the ADL survey. Shain put the ADL study conclusions into historical perspective by referring to four historical studies on antisemitic attitudes harboured by South Africans. A 1970 Soweto matriculation group study (by S Buxbaum) found that the respondents singled out Jews as the visible symbol of white financial wealth in a process of displaced aggression. A 1971 study of the same group type (by M Edelstein) found that they were more socially distanced from Jews than from other white English speakers. A 1994 Human Sciences Research Council study found that black elites harboured “substantial antipathy” towards Jews. A 2008 Pew Global Attitudes Survey found that South Africans held some of the most negative views of Jews outside the Muslim world; and, that 46 per cent harboured unfavourable views — two thirds of these disliked Jews in the extreme.
Shain speculated that the ADL research might have picked up often unconscious and unexpressed prejudices about Jews and he made the point that these attitudes could become intentional to antisemitic practices in a crisis situation.
However, it is unclear what questions were asked and how these were framed, whether more fine-grained cross-tabulation of responses was used to create a synchretic set of respondents’ views and whether these views reflected actual socio-economic profiles of Jews rather than expressing a rejection of a malevolent other. Critically, it is also unclear whether any of these surveys included criticisms of Israel as part of their definition of antisemitism.
As in the case of the ADL conclusions about antisemitism in Germany there was no analysis of the intentions of speakers of an alleged antisemitic discourse, the contents of their messages and the likely impact of this on the receivers of these messages. Finally there was no assessment of the plausible truth value of statements about perceived Jewish loyalty between Israel and South Africa.
Extent of antisemitism in the US?
As with the case studies from Germany and South Africa it is useful to examine the extent of antisemitism in the US in recent years. This provides a context within which to coherently interpret the meaning of a cluster of events there during 2018 to 2021 reported as antisemitic, and assess whether they had anything to do with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.
An extensive and intensive internet search failed to identify independent, scholarly institutes — like the Centre for Antisemitism Research at the Technical University of Berlin — that have produced objective assessments of the extent of antisemitism in the US. Instead Zionist partisan organisations, the ADL and the American Jewish Congress (AJC) have provided the broadest range of statistics about the occurrence of antisemitism in the US since 2014. Reported police crime record data has embellished the ADL and AJC claims. Much of mainstream US media reporting tends to reinforce the combined effects of ADL, AJC and police reports about the rising threat of antisemitism.
Reference has already been made to the ADL demonstrating its conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism. The AJC ‘s definition of antisemitism is the working definition of antisemitism developed by the EUMC in 2005 (and referred to earlier with respect to Germany). Andrew Baker, AJC’s Director of International Jewish Affairs, explained in August 2021 that he was one of the experts who developed the EUMC’s working definition of antisemitism, and that in 2016 the IHRA adopted this EUMC working definition. In rejecting the criticism that the working definition functions to suppress criticism of Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians he pointed to the endorsement of the definition by the UN Secretary General, the European Parliament, the Organisation of American States, and a majority of European Union (EU) Member States, arguing that “one could hardly accuse any of these groups of conspiring to suppress pro-Palestinian voices”.
Two comprehensive surveys conducted by the ADL in 2014 and 2015concluded that nine per cent of the US adult population harboured antisemitic attitudes in 2014 and that this rose to 10 per cent in 2015. The ADL found that in 2014 31 per cent said Jews were more loyal to Israel and 22 per cent that Jews overemphasised the holocaust; and, in 2015 the figures were 33 per cent and 20 per cent respectively. As in the case with the ADL survey of German and South African adult perceptions about Jews these opinions about Jews stand out as the highest percentage of respondents’ views when compared with other questions and therefore influenced the ADL’s overall conclusion. Yet, as has been argued earlier, neither of these attitudes necessarily implies an othering of Jews.
As further evidence for the existence of antisemitism harboured by US adults the ADL surveys found that in 2014 11 per cent of them, and in 2015 12 per cent, thought that Jews had too much control over the US government — as pointed out earlier the activities and influence of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which projects itself as a Jewish organisation protecting Jewish interests (through its unwavering defence of Israel against any criticism of its policies towards Palestinians) as well as then Israeli Prime Minister Nethanyahu’s address to the US Congress against President Obama’s Iran-deal, suggests that this apparent antisemitic cannard is in fact an accurate reflection of political reality. The self-proclaimed Jewish state and its main US lobby group openly organise to influence US foreign policy in respect of Israel and the Middle East, and say that this is necessary to protect and safeguard the Jewish people.
The other US authority on the occurrence of antisemitism in the US, the AJC, published the results of two surveys that they sponsored in 2020, one reflecting Jewish US citizens’ views and the other the general US public’s view of the incidence and extent of antisemitism. Eighty-eight per cent of Jewish respondents thought that antisemitism was a problem, 82 per cent noted an increase in antisemitism over the past five years, and 43 per cent felt less secure than a year before. Ninety-seven per cent had not been a target of antisemitic physical attacks over the past five years, 75 per cent had not been a target of antisemitic remarks and 77 per cent had not been a target of remarks over social media. By contrast 53 per cent of the US public said they understood what was meant by antisemitism, and 25 percent said that while they were familiar with the term they did not understand what it meant; 62 per cent thought that antisemitism was a problem in the US currently and 33 per cent said that this problem had increased over the past five years. Twenty-five per cent of the public said that they were familiar with the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement, which 21 per cent said was antisemitic while 47 per cent said that only some of their supporters were antisemitic. When asked whether saying that “Israel has no right to exist” was an antisemitic statement, 74 per cent answered in the affirmative; 55 per cent thought that saying that the US government supported Israel only because of the influence of Jewish money, was antisemitic, and 50 per cent said that saying that Jewish US citizens are more loyal to Israel than to the US was an antisemitic statement.
The meaning of antisemitism in the US ideological state apparatuses’ discourses includes anti-Zionism as a new form of antisemitism that targets the legitimacy of the state of Israel allegedly through using classical antisemitic canards and tropes. The articulation of the dominant discourse around antisemitism does not explain the codes that link critique of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinian people with classical anti-Jewish canards and tropes. Particularly, this discourse avoids explanation of how one should interpret what it claims are antisemitic canards (e.g. statements about
“Jewish money”, “Jewish influence” and “overemphasising the holocaust”) when these can be shown to be plausibly true (as in the example above, of AIPAC and Nethanyahu addressing the US Congress in a campaign against a sitting US president’s strategy vis-à-vis Iran). Comments about Jews’ overemphasising the holocaust reflect “the Holocaust Industry” fraudulent claims[4] for reparations by people in organisations claiming to represent the survivors. It is plausible that through the media this fact has percolated into public awareness and exerted an influence over opinion polls. Therefore the opinion about overemphasis of the holocaust cannot be ipso facto antisemitic.
The IHRA definition is what underlies the meaning of “support for antisemitism” which is explored in these surveys, although a quarter of US adults (according to the AJC survey) do not understand what antisemitism means; the AJC survey also reports that despite between 75 and 97 per cent of Jewish US adults having no experience of antisemitism in the past five years, 88 per cent of the same demographic noted that antisemitism was a problem and 82 per cent that it had become worse over the past five years. Consequently the AJC survey results raise more questions than they answer. The survey also included loaded questions about BDS. It is reasonable to question whether the AJC survey was designed tendentiously, i.e. to demonstrate an increase in antisemitism through an increase in anti-Zionist practices through BDS.
Conclusion
The internet research revealed that the ADL surveys of antisemitism in many countries across the globe have been implemented regularly over the past decade.
These surveys were prominent public commentary on the alleged extent of antisemitism in Germany, South Africa and the US. Additionally RIAS and the police in Germany, SAJBoD and the Kaplan Centre in South Africa and the AJC and the police in the US, surveyed and framed the incidence of antisemitism. Individuals like David Baker (US) and Milton Shain and Adam Mendelson (South Africa) also provided commentary and analysis of the ADL survey outputs. The ADL surveys were predominant on the internet search results. The others presented results and comment — sometimes critical — in relation to the ADL conclusions.
The IHRA definition and examples of antisemitism guided the ADL survey questions, as well as the focus of the other institutions and individuals (referred to above). This meant that the key questions related to whether respondents articulated views critical of Israel, supported BDS, and perceived their Jewish fellow-citizens to have split loyalties, a disproportionate influence over state policies and a disproportionate share of economic wealth (e.g. through skewed ownership of business/commercial assets patterns).
Responses critical of Israel and of holocaust consciousness as well as an awareness of Jewish wealth and political influence, were ipso facto categorised as antisemitic regardless of the truth value of such responses. These made up the major contributors to the ADL’s overall antisemitic index to the citizens of each of the three countries, Germany, South Africa and the US. The IHRA definition and guidelines, and likely also the ADL methodology eschew analysis of the intentionality underlying these responses as well as their likely impact on local audiences where the respondents were embedded. The reports of these surveys have a noticeable superficial focus in a range of subjective and objective factors that can be shown to determine whether an event can reasonably be described as antisemitic. Given the above it is very difficult to make sense of what these surveys conclusively show about the extent of antisemitism defined as ideological practice (as explained earlier). There might well be latent antisemitism which is not being revealed or there might be relatively few incidents of antisemitism that are being exaggerated.
Antisemitism experts publish the outcomes of their surveys in the public domain, telling us that these events — the practices of people or groups of people — are indeed examples of antisemitism. By people[5] I am referring to individuals or collectives. Collectives could take the form of mobs (i.e. many atomised individuals who get drawn into mass action initiated by others, such as the mobs baying for the blood of Jews during the Dreyfus affair in France in the early 1900s[6]) or an institution (e.g. the current Azov brigade[7] in Ukraine).
In the present conjuncture these experts play a crucial role in ascribing a meaning to the term ‘antisemitism’ and legitimating that ascription: they alert the public about the (alleged) rise in incidence of antisemitism, or the frequency with which antisemites commit antisemitism. All antisemitic events ipso facto involve antisemites; therefore there is a need to identify and name and shame individuals, and we will see in later articles that almost all these experts undertake that task with gusto. Thus the practices of these experts is crucial for the framing of antisemitism and identifying specific antisemitic events and individuals. Equally crucial is our informed assessment of their claims.
In the first article of this series I located my role as an intellectual — what Sartre[8] refers to as a ‘technician of practical knowledge’ — supporting a popular struggle. Sartre describes this role as the exposure of dominant ideologies and the violence they mask.
Sartre also notes the contradictory nature of intellectuals, originating from dominant socio-economic classes and interpellated around particularist interests but claiming universal truth on the basis of rigorous exact reasoning. For Sartre by adopting the standpoint of the oppressed group intellectuals are able to get knowledge of the underlying truths about power, exploitation and violence of social relations in capitalist societies.
It is not a given that all intellectuals will make this journey. The dominant discourse of ideological state apparatuses in Germany and the US — and to a lesser extent in South Africa — has affected the popular meaning of antisemitism. Organisations (like the ADL) and individual academics who project the popular meaning claim to be doing so on the basis of rigorous, exact reasoning. But the critique of these expert surveys shows this to be defence of a particularist ideology, i.e. Zionism. Sartre explained that the function of these intellectuals and organisations is to provide technical support to the dominant political narrative. He speculated that these individuals feel that their interests are tied to those of dominant social forces — in this case the state of Israel and Zionist economic elites — because they refuse to feel anything else. He termed these functionaries of a dominant power false intellectuals. Paul Nizan called them watchdogs, because they actively defend particular ideologies that justify the dominant social and political relations in a society. On this meaning it is useful to identify the ADL, AJC, RIAS, The Kaplan Centre, Milton Shain, Adam Mendelson and other Zionist intellectuals as the watch dogs who police the meaning of the term antisemitism to ensure its linkage to the defence of Zionism and the state of Israel.
This provides a context for examining a series of events in Austria, the UK, Germany, South Africa and the US over the last two decades. These involved intense ideological struggles over the meaning of the term antisemitism. In recent years the BLM movement emerged through widespread mobilisation and protest in the US. The above understanding of the nature of antisemitism and proponents of the Zionist meaning of that term provides a framework for analysing several events in US geographical locations between 2018 and 2021 and assessing whether these can be regarded as manifesting antisemitism defined as the othering of a malevolent subject. Several of these events involved black people — some of whom were part of BLM or what appeared to be BLM protests — interpellating Jews. I will examine this in a later article dealing specifically with antisemitic incidents in the US.
Paul Hendler, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 13 April 2022.
[1] See the second and fifth articles in this series for an explanation of this key term and also the critical role played by ideological state apparatuses in assigning and reproducing identity concepts, including that of antisemitism.
[2] By implication this act of interpellating people and actions as antisemitic implies that there are others that are not antisemitic because their discourse and actions do not fall within the descriptive boundaries of the definition of antisemitism. Some discourses and practices might express a love of Jews (i.e. philosemitism). Alternatively, there could be events that experts might categorise as neither antisemitic nor philosemitic.
[3] Unless the SAJBoD judged that the criticism made of Israel was fair, which is highly unlikely.
[4] The title of a book by Norman Finkelstein, son of holocaust survivors, that demonstrated that many reparation claims against Swiss and German banks could not be verified against a paper trail and quite a few of the survivors on whose behalf claims were made had passed away. Raoul Hilberg, the doyen of holocaust scholars, referred to in the sixth article in this series, confirmed these conclusions of Finkelstein and praised the scientific nature of the latter’s analysis, saying that they reflected his own conclusions about reparation attempts.
[5] ‘People’ refers to individuals and masses (or mobs).
· Individuals might have more or less specifically expressed hostility towards Jews qua Jews, and these expressions could be unconsciously driven or more or less ideologically defined around the notion of a malevolent Jewish other.
· Hannah Arendt, 1976 The Origins of Totalitarianism, Harcourt, defines mobs as collections of individuals who tend to be politically neutral/indifferent, seldom participate in elections, and for whom fanaticism gives an undiluted sense of purpose; this means that they have little capacity for authentic experience and independent thought, and their actions from day to day are contradictory. Erich Fromm, 1941 Escape from Freedom, Avon Books, explores the mass psychology of mobs further, in terms of sado-masochistic character formations within the general problematic of Freudian psychoanalysis.
The point is that intentional animus towards Jews by individuals and mobs needs to be demonstrated empirically within the context of interpretive theories, and not simply assumed.
[6] Cf. Hannah Arendt, 1976 op. cit, in this regard.
[7] A militaristic organisation widely recognised as hostile to Jews, Russians and Poles.
[8] Sartre, Jean-Paul 1983 A Plea for Intellectuals, in Between Existentialism and Marxism, Verso, pages 252 to 254.
