Few forms of violence have demonstrated such historical persistence, rhetorical adaptability, and geographical ubiquity as antisemitism. Besides being a remnant of the past, it is a still-effective grammar of exclusion, mutating and reconfiguring according to political needs, ideological climates, and present technological platforms. At its core lies a structural problem: the Jew as a liminal figure, as an uncomfortable subject for grand identity narratives. Analyzing antisemitism, then, is to delve into the genealogy of hatred as a way of ordering the world.
Genesis and mutations: from dogma to algorithm
Antisemitism cannot be understood without being inscribed in the long duration. From medieval councils that prohibited Jews from holding certain jobs to forced conversion campaigns or blood libels, Europe built a Christian subjectivity in opposition to Jewish otherness. But the 19th century introduced an epistemic change: antisemitism became secularized. The figure of the Jew ceased to be the "deicide" to become the "stateless capitalist," the "cosmopolitan intellectual," or the "infiltrated subversive." From Marx to Drumont, from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to socialist antisemitism, judeophobia moved from the church to parliament, from the pulpit to academia.
The 20th century was its most tragic laboratory. The Holocaust not only marked the paroxysm of that hatred but also its bureaucratization. It was not an irrational explosion but a rational extermination machinery, inscribed in the heart of the modern state.
In the Middle East, after the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, antisemitism amalgamated with an anti-colonial resistance narrative. The Palestinian cause, absolutely legitimate in its claim for self-determination, was instrumentalized by various authoritarian regimes that found in the "Zionist enemy" a pretext to justify their internal repression, economic failure, or authoritarian deviation. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict became a floating signifier, where national demands mixed with latent or explicit antisemitic impulses. The geopolitics of hatred found, there, a new scenario.
II. Contemporary topology of antisemitism: denialism, punitive progressivism, and social networks
Today's antisemitism does not present itself as a vulgar re-edition of the past. Its sophistication lies in its camouflage ability. On social networks, it manifests as cynical humor, in conspiracy theories that, under the guise of "wokeness," reinstall old images of the Jew as a global puppeteer. In certain spaces of postcolonial progressivism, a Manichaean critique of Israel emerges that, instead of problematizing its specific policies, presents it as an essentially illegitimate entity. The issue is not the criticism of the Israeli government — necessary and healthy in any democracy — but its transformation into a total delegitimization device.
We live in a geopolitics of emotions, where moral outrage replaces analytical complexity. In that context, the Palestinian cause is reduced to an absolute victim and the State of Israel to an ontological aggressor. That moral asymmetry sterilizes all dialogue and strengthens the most extreme positions.
In this climate, postmodern denialism emerges, which no longer outright denies the Holocaust (though that brutal form also persists) but trivializes it. The banal comparisons between Gaza and Auschwitz, between Netanyahu and Hitler, constitute a form of profanation of meaning. As if everything could be an analogy, as if history had no thickness or uniqueness.
The Argentine case: between structural impunity and rhetorical trivialization
Argentina, with its tradition of migratory hospitality and cultural pluralism, also carries its own antisemitism record. From the Creole Nazism of the 1930s to post-war Nazi infiltration and radical right discourses, antisemitism has been part of the national political substratum. But the turning point was undoubtedly the AMIA bombing in 1994. A massacre planned from abroad, executed with local complicity, and covered up by the mechanisms of the state.
The absence of justice — more than thirty years after the attack — is a symbol of judicial impunity and a crisis of democratic sovereignty. Argentina has neither known nor wanted to institutionally shield itself from violent antisemitism. The murder of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, directly linked to the AMIA case, deepens that shadowy and helpless storyline.
In the discursive realm, ambiguous or directly complicit political positions proliferate. Some appeal to a false neutrality, while others flirt with radicalized anti-Zionist narratives. Local Jewish institutions, such as DAIA or AMIA, play a fundamental role, fighting and resisting political volatility, lack of will, and, in some cases, readings that reduce antisemitism to a community problem instead of considering it a structural symptom.
Complexity, nuances, and intellectual courage
In this scenario, voices arise that challenge binary logic. Daniela Nemirovsky masterfully synthesized it:
"I am Zionist and I am pro-Palestinian. I want peaceful coexistence and self-determination for both peoples. I want the Palestinian people to have their independence and freedom, and this cannot be at the expense of the destruction of Israel. I want the liberation of all hostages. I want the surrender of Hamas. And I want a ceasefire."
This statement is an invitation to complex thought, a form of political responsibility that does not abdicate empathy or lucidity. Recognizing Palestine’s right to exist and Israel’s right to defend itself is not contradictory: it is morally necessary. The opposite is to yield to the emotional blackmail of extremes, where identity becomes a trench and solidarity becomes a dogma.
Questions that do not surrender
Can humanity shed its sacrificial mythologies? Is a pedagogy of difference possible that does not lead to essentialism or moral relativism? Will the international system be able to articulate a simultaneous defense of the rule of law and the rights of peoples?
Perhaps antisemitism has not only been a hatred but a mirror: the harshest reflection of our difficulty in coexisting with the plural, the ambivalent, the irreducible. Overcoming it, then, implies more than eradicating a prejudice: it requires rethinking the very way we organize belonging, nation, memory, and justice. And this task, of course, is far from over.
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