In attempting to understand the psychology of those who dislike and detest Jews and Israel (I think that by now we can all do away with the charade that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism), any rational and objective person should conclude after these past two-and-a-half years that it is less a problem of Israel and more one of those who detest us.
It is, I suggest, in great part, a matter of Weltschmerz.
Weltschmerz is German for “world pain,” and it is used to describe the mood that arises when you understand that the world is crueler than you would like it to be. You feel a sense of mental weariness and experience sadness when the world falls short of your expectations, when reality can never satisfy the expectations of the mind,
The real problem begins, however, when a realization of disappointment becomes overly internalized to the extent that one begins to believe that he or she is personally inadequate in the face of the situation. And it grows to a feeling that one’s personal inadequacy is a reflection of the inadequacy of the world in general.
Such a situation can lead to a form of depression or melancholy apathy. The ideal turns into a tool of pessimism. Frederick C. Beiser, in his book, Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900, writes that it also had a derogatory meaning of extreme sensitivity to the evil in the world, even despair, focusing on whether life is worth living.
In response to an essay in Tablet magazine by Todd Pittinsky, which argued that antisemites essentially have a “really good time” hating Jews as their attitude “bundles pleasures together: revelation, belonging, moral certainty and even entertainment,” Abe Greenwald, editor of Commentary, wrote that “the antisemite feels suddenly enlightened. He’s finally got an answer to why he’s miserable.”
Here is where Weltschmerz plays a slightly different role to my mind. It is not that antisemites hate Jews because it’s joyful on their behalf, which it is. It could be self-satisfying in a perverse way as well. The malaise they are seeking to shed through their hate of Jews is because their own lives are joyless.
Instead of being positive about the world, judging others fairly or learning the history of a conflict before acting on false information, trusting a local parish priest’s Bible lessons uncritically and surely doing the same with a university lecturer, the contemporary crop of Jew-haters and Israel-bashers are ignorant and unwilling even to tolerate the ingestion of a counter-narrative.
Yet what remains a mystery in all this hate and animosity is the willingness to engage in and promote actual violence. That violence has been rhetorical and verbal, expressed in language most foul and characterized by the usage of expletives. The terms hurled at Israel and Jews suspected of favoring Israel are extremely outlandish.
The violence could be semi-passive, as in denying students access to college classrooms or libraries or more active, such as bullying them. Jews or Israelis can be chased out of restaurants, stores and cafes, or refused entry into the same. Events can be shut down if they involve persons perceived as pro-Israel, whether in Hollywood or museums or sports stadiums.
Jews have been killed by bullets, firebombs, stabbings and more over the last few years in some dozen countries as a result of an anger that has festered over the issue of whether one more Arab Muslim state must be established and added to the dozens that already exist.
It could be said that almost every form of pre-Holocaust action has happened, such as those that occurred in Germany during the 1930s, even those that include a form of anti-Jewish legislation. All the money and effort over major Jewish organizations that have been invested for many decades in Holocaust education, all the museums and other teaching training centers and programs, and the development of all the materials for the curricula have not withstood the test as anti-Jewish—and not just anti-Zionist—sentiment grows among the woke.
More than one-third of Americans under 30 have a favorable view of communism, according to an April 2025 Cato poll, 62% of Americans aged 18 to 29 say they hold a “favorable view” of socialism, and 34% say the same of communism. If one adds on the popularity of a Bernie Sanders-style leftist populism, one comes to the realization that the Weltschmerz of today is channeling the young into a direction of authoritarianism.
In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s talk of “aggressive legal action” against landlords—a policy he first publicized in April 2025, when he declared “will use every single tool at our disposal, including seizing buildings from slumlords” to ensure the city’s residents get a home, including the “transfer ownership to responsible stewards”—appeals to his supporters less because they assume it can solve a problem rather than the element of force it contains.
Force and dominance are the instruments of relief for the younger generation’s Weltschmerz. They have been schooled to admire radicalism and revolution by their teachers and instructors. They have been indoctrinated to see the United States and Israel, its portrayed proxy, as powers of oppression to be overthrown. That is the sedative they have been fed; the pill they have been swallowing.
As Lion Feuchtwanger wrote in his 1933 novel, The Oppermanns—a compelling story of a remarkable German Jewish family confronted by Hitler’s rise to power—a truth that applies today, too: “The authority of sober reason is being undermined.”
In 1934, following its publication in English translation, Fred T. March, writing in The New York Times, opined that the novel is also “addressed to the world outside, bearing the message, ‘Wake up! The barbarians are upon us.’”
In our time, the awoken have become the barbarians.
