Antisemitism Now and Then: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

This introduction to the special issue of the Journal of Deradicalization contextualizes the alarming global surge in antisemitism, accelerating after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and the subsequent Gaza war. We map how ancient anti-Jewish schemas have manifested across three modern ideological streams—the far-right, the far-left, and Islamist movements—and examine how social media algorithms now rapidly diffuse these narratives. Against this theoretical backdrop, we introduce six contributions that bridge macro-level societal shifts with micro-level psychological mechanisms. These articles expose critical contemporary phenomena: the societal normalization of anti-Jewish sentiment, institutional biases within international bodies, the global contagion of extremist violence, and individual psychological drivers like the quest for significance and Social Dominance Orientation. Collectively, these findings reveal that contemporary antisemitism is highly adaptive, shifting seamlessly between traditional anti-Jewish animus and target-specific geopolitical hostility toward Israel. For the scientific community, this highlights a sobering reality: deeply motivated prejudices remain highly resistant to top-down institutional interventions like official state apologies. Critically, for policy and practice within the C/PVE spaces, this demonstrates that countering mass radicalization requires moving beyond generic messaging to implement target-specific risk assessments that analytically separate anti-Israel sentiment from traditional anti-Jewish tropes while aggressively disrupting the societal normalization of extremist narratives.

Acknowledgements:

The research was supported by the Minerva Research Initiative, Department of Defense Grant No N000 14-21-275485. Any opinions, findings, or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors alone and do not reflect the views of the Office of Naval Research, the Department of the Navy, or the Department of Defense.