The flawed historicist take on anti-Semitism

The Hamas pogrom of 7 October 2023 turbocharged an already fraught debate on the nature of anti-Semitism and its relationship to Israel. On one side are those who see anti-Semitism as a serious contemporary problem and view visceral hostility to Israel as an expression of that hatred. On the other are those who maintain contemporary anti-Semitism is a marginal force and insist that Israel is cynically weaponising the charge of Jew hatred to discredit its critics.

Even the use of the word ‘pogrom’ illustrates this division. Those who favour it tend to believe the Hamas atrocities were motivated by a visceral animosity towards Jews. Those who eschew it generally believe that Hamas, although it may not be perfect, is an expression of Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonialism.

Naturally there is a variation in what individuals argue. Some people within each school downplay certain points and emphasise others. Nevertheless, it is instructive to divide the debate into two broad camps. That makes it easier to identify the shortcomings of different arguments and therefore develop a better understanding of anti-Semitism.

Matthew Bolton, a post-doctoral research fellow at Queen Mary University of London, has performed a great service to anyone wanting to develop a deeper understanding of this debate. In an article for K., an online magazine, he has delved deep into the arguments of what he calls the Historicist Antisemitism Studies school. That is those who are sceptical about the use of anti-Semitism as a concept and are generally highly critical of Israel. Most of them are also historians by profession. Bolton has also outlined his argument in an online seminar for the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (not yet available to watch online).

The historicists were quick to react to the way the defenders of Israel framed the 7 October atrocities. Rishi Sunak, the Britain’s prime minister, made a point of calling it a pogrom in a statement to the House of Commons. Many other defenders of Israel used the same terminology.

Some right-wing pundits went even further. Douglas Murray and Andrew Roberts both ill-advisedly described Hamas as worse than the Nazis (although their specific point, that the Nazis were coy about making their atrocities widely known while Hamas livestreamed them on the internet, had merit).

A highbrow push back against such language came in an open letter to the New York Review of Books (the letter also prompted a response from other scholars). It was signed by eminent experts on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust who rejected what they described as the misuse of Holocaust memory. The signatories included Omer Bartov, Christopher Browning, David Feldman and others.

An article published by Vashti Media, which describes itself as “a voice for the British Jewish left”, argued against the use of the world ‘pogrom’. Two academics associated with Birkbeck, University of London, Brendan McGeever and David Feldman, argued it was inadmissible in this context. Israel’s plight should not, in their view, be compared to that of low status Jews in Eastern Europe. “Describing Hamas’s 7 October massacre as a pogrom encourages us to ignore the vast difference between the low status of Jews in eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and their place in Israel today, where they constitute the majority population in a state boasting one of the world’s most formidable armies.”

This view embodies the historicist argument that Israel’s establishment fundamentally changed the conditions of Jewish existence. After 1948 the Jews, in this view, were no longer weak and marginalised in the way they had been before Israel was founded. They had what became a powerful military force on their side.

The assumption that Israel’s existence changes things informs the historicist reaction to what others have seen as blatant acts of anti-Semitism. For example, McGeever got over two million views for a tweet arguing that the violence directed at Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans in Amsterdam should not be regarded as a pogrom against Jews. 

Many members of the historicist school go so far as to accuse Israel of behaving, in some respects, like the Nazis. For example, Omer Bartov was among several Israeli Jewish scholars accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. 

Bolton goes on to outline the arguments of the historicists in more detail. In particular he looks at an anthology edited by Scot Ury and Guy Miron on Antisemitism and the Politics of History (Brandeis 2023, first published in Hebrew in 2020). Bolton argues that the authors’ work is based on four main assumptions:

• They are opposed to what Hannah Arendt calls the “fallacy of eternal anti-Semitism”. That is the idea that anti-Semitism has existed through the ages. (It is worth noting that Stefanie Borkum has argued against this fallacy on this site and I have also publicly rejected the argument ).
• They do not believe that anti-Semitism is different from any other form of prejudice. It is wrong to regard it as exceptional. Indeed it can easily become ‘entangled’ (their word) with other forms of prejudice.
• They reject the claim that the Holocaust is the conclusion of 2000 years of hatred against Jews.
• They reject the idea that Israel is the target of what has been called a ‘new anti-Semitism’.

Of these it is the first two which are the most important premises of the historicist argument.

One of the most influential historicists is David Engel, a historian at New York University. In an influential 2009 essay “Away from a Definition of Antisemitism” he argues that anti-Semitism is “an invented analytical category”. For him it simply brings together disparate events on the basis that Jews are the victims. For example, the Dreyfus case in France and the Tsarist pogroms happened at roughly the same time but they had no relation with each other. Most historicists do not go as far as Engel but an expanded version of his seminal essay appears at the start of the Ury and Miron anthology.  

It should be noted that Bolton’s goal is not to side with the historicists or their critics. It is, rather, to move towards a better understanding of anti-Semitism through critically examining their arguments.

For example, he points out that both sides have similar problems in locating anti-Semitic events in their proper historical contexts. Eternalists tend to simply assume that events from different times and places must have a similar dynamic. In contrast, the historicists move towards rejecting any commonality between instances of anti-Semitism. Ironically the historicists end up as lacking in a sense of history as the eternalists.

From my perspective it is important to uphold the argument that anti-Semitism is far worse than a prejudice. Defining it in such a limited way leads almost inexorably to a failure to grapple with anti-Semitism’s unique character. As I have argued elsewhere it is better seen as a flawed way of understanding evil in the world. Or, to use different terminology, Jews are viewed as a cultural code to refer to the world’s perceived vices.

This notion of anti-Semitism as a perception of evil has the added advantage of making the clear distinction between traditional anti-Semitism and the visceral hatred of evil. In the former case the Jews are perceived to personify the evils of modernity, speculative capitalism and sometimes communism too. In the latter case they are seen as personifying the evils of civilisation and colonialism.

It also seems worth exploring in more detail how the historicists relate to identity politics. They seem all too willing to understand racial thinking in simple black and white terms. That is literally in relation to skin colour or in terms of a binary distinction between oppressors and oppressed.

*Those who want to explore Bolton’s arguments in more detail would do well to read his article in K. He is also evidently planning to expand on this theme in the future.

** I have recently reviewed  a book on the same theme by Pankaj Mishra. Although Bolton does not cover him in his K. article the arguments of the Indian leftist intellectual are broadly in line with those of the historicists.