Antisemitism – the term seems to mean being against Jews: hostility or hate towards Jews. But antisemitism has nothing to do with real Jewish people; it exists independently of their actual behaviour.

As defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, antisemitism is "a certain perception of Jews". That is the crux of the matter: one very specific perception dominates, and people are not perceived as unique individuals. Anyone who forms an opinion about Jewish people based on their Jewishness rather than their individual behaviour engages in antisemitism. Jews have nothing in common with each other apart from being Jewish – each differs from the other, just as members of other religions and cultures differ from each other. This relationship between the individual and the group is crucial: antisemitism starts where the traits of individuals are treated as deriving from their membership in a group, and vice versa. Attributing characteristics to Jews as a group which go beyond the fact that they are Jewish is antisemitic. The same is true of positive attributes, such as the idea that all Jews are especially intelligent, or the centuries-old stereotype of "the beautiful Jewess". Such generalisations are called "philosemitism" and are also a form of antisemitism.

The roots of antisemitic stereotypes

Antisemitic clichés and stereotypes are often not recognised as such, but are instead perceived as apparent facts and shared as general knowledge: "Jews are rich", they supposedly pay no taxes or are "greedy and especially powerful, as everyone knows!" The Old Testament reference to "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" is invoked as alleged evidence of their thirst for revenge. Such antisemitic tropes often have historical roots that seem to lend them credibility. For example, in the Middle Ages, Jews were not allowed to work in craft trades or to belong to guilds. Money-lending and commerce were among the few activities open to them. The cliché of Jews as "usurers", as rich or greedy is rooted in this historical discrimination. The fact that many Jewish people were and are poor is overlooked.

Hostility towards Jews, in the form of stereotypes of the "other", is probably the oldest known form of group-focused enmity, extending all the way back to antiquity. In the Middle Ages, religion-based hatred of Jews emerged, as newly established Christianity sought to set itself off from Judaism, the religion that had "fathered" it, and to suppress their common roots. The virtual quality of antisemitism lies in the basic mechanism by which a group comes to represent all that is bad and not understood. The fact that antisemitism exists as a way to understand the world even in places where no Jews live is due to the fact that it is largely based on what the non-Jewish majority imagines about the minority. This is also why antisemitism includes so many contradictory stereotypes: for example, Jews have been blamed both for Bolshevism and for rampant capitalism; they are accused of being both too foreign and too assimilated. There is no rational basis or cause for antisemitism; any alleged reason for it is irrational and false.

What is particular to antisemitism?

Antisemitism and other forms of discrimination are similar in structural terms: with all of them, certain characteristics are attributed to an entire group of people. The rise of racist discourse in the 19th century led to pseudo-scientific justification for modern antisemitism. Many Enlightenment philosophers held anti-Jewish views which they believed were based on reason.

What makes antisemitism unique is the fact that, unlike racist or xenophobic stereotypes, which characterise their subjects as inferior, antisemitic stereotypes characterise their subjects as all-powerful and over-civilised. In antisemitic thought, "the Jews" often represent the abstract nature and values of the modern, globalised world. This is how antisemitism comes to terms with modernism and enlightenment: by reducing the complexity of modern society to a simple model in which powerful Jews secretly pull the strings and control the economy, the media and/or political institutions. In this way, antisemitism also serves as a way to understand the world and often appears in connection with conspiracy theories. But its basic structure is always the same: every form of hatred towards Jews involves victim-blaming and treating them as a collective entity. The actual victims of antisemitism are cast as perpetrators, for example when Jews are accused of profiting from the Holocaust or of talking about it excessively. Antisemites also see Jews as a threat to their own group.