Three Faces of Antisemitism examines the three primary forms of antisemitism as they emerged in modern and contemporary Germany, and then in other countries.
The chapters draw on the author’s historical scholarship over the years on the form antisemitism assumed on the far right in Weimar and Nazi Germany, in the Communist regime in East Germany, and in the West German radical left, and in Islamist organizations during World War II and the Holocaust, and afterward in the Middle East. The resurgence of antisemitism since the attacks of September 11, 2001, has origins in the ideas, events, and circumstances in Europe and the Middle East in the half century from the 1920s to the 1970s. This book covers the period since 1945 when neo-Nazism was on the fringes of Western and world politics, and the persistence of antisemitism took place primarily when its leftist and Islamist forms combined antisemitism with anti-Zionism in attacks on the state of Israel. The collection includes recent essays of commentary that draw attention to the simultaneous presence of antisemitism’s three faces. While scholarship on the antisemitism of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust remains crucial, the scholarly, intellectual, and political effort to fight antisemitism in our times requires the examination of antisemitism’s leftist and Islamist forms as well.
This book will be of interest to scholars researching antisemitism, racism, conspiracy theories, the far right, the far left, and Islamism.
Foreword for Jeffrey Herf’s Three Faces of Antisemitism
David Hirsh
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Three Faces of Antisemitism
1 Reactionary Modernism, the Jews, and Anticapitalism in Weimar and Nazi Germany
2 The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Germany’s Core Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory
3 Nazi Anti-Zionism
4 Nazi Propaganda Aimed at Arabs and Muslims during World War II and the Holocaust
5 The Importance and the Limits of Husseini’s Influence in Nazi Berlin
6 East German Communists and the Jewish Question: In Memory of Sigrid Meushel (1944–2016) and for Anetta Kahane
7 East Germany from Antifascism to Undeclared Wars with Israel, 1967–1989
8 The West German Left and Israel, 1967–1977
9 Antisemitism and White Racism: Similarities and Differences
10 Antisemitic Conspiracies Yet Again: White Racism, Holocaust Denial, and Ideological Assaults on Israel
Essays on Antisemitism and Contemporary History Since September 11, 2001
11 What is Old and What is New in the Terrorism of Islamic Fundamentalism?
12 Why They Fight: Hamas’ Too-Little-Known Fascist Charter
13 Is Donald Trump a Fascist?
14 Ideological Exceptionalism: Taking Iran’s Antisemitism Seriously
15 Antisemitism and the Academy since 9/11
16 Conclusion: The Era of Simultaneity of Antisemitism’s Three Faces
Selected Bibliography
Index
Biography
Jeffrey Herf is a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA. His previous publications include: Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (1984), Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (1997), The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust (2006), Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (2009), Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967–1989 (2016), and Israel’s Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State (2022).
'Herf's analyses provide outstanding insights into the historical nature of anti-Semitism. More, it is a decisive read to understand that anti-Semitism is an element not just in National Socialism, but in leftwing extremism and Islamic fundamentalism and a troubling political threat that looms to the present day.'
Magnus Brechtken, Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin, Germany
'Jeffrey Herf has given us an indispensable collection of essays on how contemporary antisemitism cross-pollinated between the Nazis, Cold War Communists and New Leftists, and the Arab/Muslim allies of both. The essential thread throughout is that there is not, nor has there ever been, separation between the hatred of the Jews and the “anti-Zionism,” which supposedly makes it respectable.'
Norman JW Goda, author of The Holocaust: Europe, the World, and the Jews, 1918-1945
'With the defeat of Hitler and Stalin, many thought the antisemitism of the modern era was over. To understand the shocking, worldwide resurgence of antisemitic ideology and violence in recent years, the renowned historian Jeffrey Herf dissects the contemporary in light of the historical. His essays are thoughtful, profound, and crucially important.'
Susannah Heschel, Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor, Dartmouth College, USA
'Jeffrey Herf is a superb historian, meticulous in his research, thoughtful and morally acute in his analyses, and uniquely capable of training his spotlight across large swaths of the globe. Read his essays––you will see this for yourself.'
Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism and The Flight of the Intellectuals
'In analysing links between antisemitism on the right, the left and within Islamist thinking, Herf demonstrates just how pervasive and corrosive the hatred of Jews can be. Three Faces of Antisemitism is an incisive, timely and judicious study of forms and expressions of antisemitism in the 20th and 21st centuries.'
Bill Niven, Professor Emeritus for Contemporary German History, Nottingham Trent University, UK
'An immensely valuable book by one of the most inspiring experts on antisemitism. Jeffrey Herf's essays span from Nazi antisemitism as the precondition for the Holocaust to contemporary forms of hatred of Jews and Israel. This reveals how totalitarian thinking has been targeted at the "Jewish Enemy" for a century.'
Martin Cüppers, Scientific Head Research Institute Ludwigsburg, University of Stuttgart, Germany
"Jeffrey Herf has made a scholarly commitment to document the words of Islamic Jew-hatred from their origins in Egypt and wartime Berlin. That has made him a lonely voice in the American professoriate, which has been largely colonized by the pro-Palestinian Left..For the rest of us, though, Herf’s books teach us that we should always take the Islamists’ words and promises seriously. For the Jewish state, this is now a matter of life and death."
Excerpt from Sol Stern, "A Historian for Our Moment", review for Quillette: https://quillette.com/2024/01/10/a-historian-for-our-moment/
Q&A Interview with Deborah Kalb: https://deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com/2024/01/q-with-jeffrey-herf.html
"How could antisemitism have persisted in the wake of the European Holocaust of the first half of the 1940s, the worst crime in human history, in which the forces of Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews? Germany was defeated in World War II, the Nazi regime was dismembered and discredited and its leaders came to be regarded, rightly, as criminals. Yet the core of its ideology, hatred of Jews, lives on, more than seventy-five years after the Third Reich perished. How could this have happened? Answers to both questions can be found in a recently published book, Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left, and Islamist."
Excerpt from Michael Mandelbaum, American Purpose: https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/why-the-oldest-hatred-persists/
