Most Americans reject Jew-hatred, though troublingly, nearly a quarter of them found recent antisemitic attacks to be “understandable,” according to a new survey from the Anti-Defamation League.
Three, in particular, stand out: Harrisburg, Pa.; Washington, D.C.; and Boulder, Colo.
“We are in a window of opportunity where the majority of Americans support anti-discrimination policies in the intervention of local, state and federal government in combating antisemitism,” Matt Williams, vice president of the ADL’s center for antisemitism research, told JNS.
“That’s really great news, and it means that we can work to mobilize the support for most Americans to help reduce anti-Jewish prejudice,” added Williams, who conducted the survey, which was released on Friday. “That window of opportunity is closing.”
Ideas that two years ago would have been deemed “extraordinarily fringe—the belief in false flags around attacks on Jews motivated by anti-Israel animus—now sits at almost a quarter of the U.S. population overall,” Williams said.
“We’re looking at it hitting younger Americans much harder, and the trends and the trajectory of the normalization of these kinds of conspiracy theories that fuel prejudice toward Jews is something that my team has been tracking for a few years now,” Williams said. “We’re seeing it hit a level of saturation.”
The survey, conducted by the ADL based on June 10 responses from the Ipsos Observer Omnibus, found that 24% said it was “understandable” that a gunman shot and killed two Israeli embassy staffers as they were leaving a Jewish museum in Washington; an attacker firebombed ralliers in Colorado as they called for the release of hostages in the Gaza Strip; and an arsonist set the Pennsylvania governor’s residence on fire as Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, and his family slept inside on Passover.
Some 13% said that those three attacks were “justified.”
The survey also found that other antisemitic views have purchase in up to a third of the population, including that American Jews are more loyal to Israel and the United States (34%); that Jews disproportionately influence politics and the media (30%); and that Jews should have to answer for the Israeli government’s actions (27%).
The ADL survey found that those under 45 believed at nearly double the rate of older Americans that Jewish Americans are responsible for Israel’s actions.
Williams told JNS that there are three reasons that young Americans are likelier to harbor Jew-hatred.
First, he said, younger people have a “zero-sum mindset” that success only comes at others’ expense. “Younger Americans are more likely to think they live in that world than older Americans, and that creates walls between in-groups and out-groups,” he said. He added that many people see Jews as high achievers.
Another factor is that “we’re swimming in an era of misinformation” and “ambient conspiracy theories,” according to Williams. “What happens when you marry conspiracy theories with a zero-sum mindset is that it makes antisemitism start to make sense.”
“If you’re thinking you live in a world where the achievers are keeping you down by definition, and we’re going to start to give you explanations about how those achievers got into the places where they are and the implications of what it means for them to be on top, those sorts of types of explanations—drawing on conspiracy theory belief—begin to fuel a kind of animus,” he told JNS.
The third factor, to Williams, is “social norms.” He told JNS that “the social cost of prejudice has dropped just precipitously.”
The survey found that 68% of respondents believe that phrases like “Globalize the intifada” and “From the river to the sea” could worsen violence against Jews.
More than 70% of respondents support the government taking action to combat antisemitism, saying college campuses should be held accountable for it.
“There aren’t huge differences between political ideologies that we find,” Williams said. “If anything, probably the most predictive factor politically on if someone is going to be antisemitic is how dispossessed they feel from either of the parties.”
Those on the fringes can feel “dispossessed” because Republicans or Democrats don’t go far enough for their taste, or can be those in the middle who feel partyless.
“We find this interesting ‘W’-shape to antisemitism,” he told JNS. “Higher on the fringes and more in the middle, so it really is a story of political dispossession more than of partisanship.”
Williams thinks that the way to fight antisemitic conspiracy theories is to minimize people’s exposure to such conspiracies and to help them hone the skills to identify them as conspiracies when exposed to them. It’s also important to “make sure that broad swaths of Americans can be successful, and we need to make sure that people know that Jews are working to do that, too,” he stated.
“The goal is to make people feel embarrassed that they have that attitude, that set of beliefs,” he said. “I want antisemitism, ultimately in this context, to be impolite.”
