FutureLearn and Yad Vashem’s latest collaboration is well under way as their “Anti-Semitism: From Its Origins to the Present” entered its fourth week. Several weeks ago, the Brandeis Center provided a brief overview of the first two week’s material. This post will serve a similar function, detailing some of the material covered in weeks 3 and 4 of the course. Week 3, which is entitled “Genocidal Anti-Semitism: From World War I to the Holocaust,” investigates how modern anti-Semitic notions were developed and expressed, culminating with the horrors committed during the Holocaust. To begin this discussion, the week begins with a module exploring the relationship between World War I and anti-Semitism. The Great War, which vastly changed the world map, left a new and unstable world order that had deep implications for the development of hostilities in Europe, especially toward Jews. When the Hapsburg empire disintegrated, Jews often found themselves resented and persecuted by the new ruling powers, once again bringing about questions of belonging and otherness. More importantly however is the effect that World War I had on Germany, where radical anti-Semitism would evolve into Nazism in a few short decades. Nazi Germany’s animosity toward the Jews largely originated with many Germans blaming the Jews for the collapse the country experienced in the years following World War I. Following this discussion of WWI, the course looks at the effect of the Russian Revolution and their civil war pogroms, or large-scale and anti-Jewish rioting. While the Russian Revolution and Civil War resulted in equal status for Jews, they were still targets of violent pogroms which resulted in the death of 200,000 Jews. Additionally, as a result of the Revolution, Jews became increasingly perceived as being tied to revolutionary movements, especially Bolshevism. The Nazis would later exploit this relationship, using the relationship between Jews and communism as propaganda for their anti-communist and anti-Semitic terrors. While lower classes and minorities were allowed to participate in the political sphere during the interwar period, various opposing political voices led to multiple parties and unstable coalitions, which further polarized public opinion. This negative sentiment, combined with the perpetuation of the negative stereotype regarding Jews and money during the economically unstable interwar period, contributed to growing hostility towards the Jews. The trauma of the first World War and the turbulent interwar years helped give rise to Nazism in Germany, which incorporated anti-Semitism in their ideologies and policies. Nazi ideology was a worldview that claimed to explain everything about the world and how it functions. At its core, the ideology was racial and biological, as they believed the world was divided into superior and inferior races. The most inferior of the races, the Jews, constituted the greatest threat to the world, owing to their destructive and immutable nature. This redemptive anti-Semitism of the Nazis was not an impediment to gaining power. Many Germans were not in favor of a democracy after WWI, and this sentiment combined with the Great Depression in Germany in 1930 created a desire in many Germans for a strong leader who would solve economic problems. These factors explain why the anti-Semitic nature of the Nazis by and large did not interfere with people who were willing to vote for the Nazi party, therefore allowing them to gain power and begin implementing their policies. Some of these policies included the organization of the anti-Jewish Boycott, the implementation of the Nuremberg laws, and the changing of Jewish people’s names to Israel and Sara. The anti-Semitic policies implemented by the Nazi regime in the 1930’s and the ensuing anti-Jewish hostility culminated during the years of the World War II with the events of the Holocaust, in which millions of Jews were murdered. What we call the Holocaust, the Nazis called “final solution to the Jewish problem,” which was accomplished by implementing policies which systematically persecuted and killed Jews in order to achieve the “New World Order.” The first of these steps was to isolate all of the Jews and concentrate them into ghettos and forced labor camps. However, this policy would devolve into one designed to systematically exterminate the Jews, using tools such as gas chambers and shootings. The Jewish lives that were lost, including many children, did not lie solely at the hands of the Nazis however. Essential to their operations were their collaborators who took an active part in the persecution and roundup of Jews. These collaborators included the Dutch bureaucracy, the French Police, Slovakian government, and local populations in the Ukraine and Romania. By the time of Nazi Germany’s surrender in May 1945, entire communities had been wiped out and their Jewish populations exterminated. The physical, psychological, and cultural losses after the Holocaust are almost impossible to grasp: six million Jews murdered, including 1.5 million children. Week 4 transitions from learning about the historical roots of anti-Semitism to exploring its contemporary manifestations, specifically how anti-Semitic sentiment is expressed by the Far-right and Far-left. The first of these realms in which anti-Semitism is prolific, Far-right groups, were marginalized in their ideologies and discredited due to the horrific actions taken by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. However, as their ideology shifted to a more central position, they enjoyed more electoral victories across Europe in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. While the characteristics of various Far-right parties might differ, there is at least one common thread that unites them: a hatred of Jews. This hostility is linked to a number of clichés, including a belief in the ‘world conspiracy’ stereotype about Jews. However, the place anti-Semitism holds today in more “mainstream” right-wing populist groups differs from their more radical counterparts. For example, certain right-wing populist parties often display anti-Semitism in their desire to stop talking about the Holocaust, which mainly stems from feelings of guilt. In contrast, many Europeans still belong to the same disturbing movements that viewed Hitler and Nazi Germany as a shining example. Targeting Jews, Blacks, Muslims, homosexuals, Roma, Sinti, as well as other groups perceived as threatening “foreigners”, these radical movements continue to act, gaining online popularity and attracting crowds in Europe, and to a lesser extent, the United States. White supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, and the rise of the Alt-Right party, both of which used to exist on the fringe of American society, now have gained popularity and advocate for anti-Semitism, racism, Islamophobia, homophobia and other forms of hate in the United States. One of the most common expressions of contemporary Far-right anti-Semitism is Holocaust denial, in all its myriad forms, including Holocaust distortion, minimization and trivialization. Holocaust denial often takes one of two general forms: 1) Gross Holocaust Denial: this includes a denial that the Holocaust ever existed in the scope and means that Jews, historians, and survivors claim. 2) Distortion or Soft Holocaust Denial: This includes diminishing the numbers—acknowledging that there was a holocaust and killing but not in such scope, or comparing the Holocaust to other disasters, thereby denying its uniqueness and characteristics that made it an outlying event. The other common sphere from which anti-Semitism emanates today is the Far-left. The relationship between anti-Semitism and the Far-left is almost paradoxical when one considers that many of the Far-left’s members believe that they strongly oppose anti-Semitism. This relationship is even more confusing when one considers how anti-Semitism can exist in a realm that vehemently opposes any form of racism or xenophobia. The reason why anti-Semitism fits with Far-left ideology is because, in contrast with most forms of racism which treats its targets as subhuman, anti-Semitism usually portrays Jews as being immensely powerful—because they can “pull the strings,” have all the money, or control politicians. Importantly, the ways in which the Far-left display anti-Semitism are very different than those of the Far-right. When discussing anti-Semitism in the Far-left, one must be acquainted with the term ‘anti-Zionism,’ which is used today to describe various religious, moral, and political points of view. Oftentimes, anti-Zionism is used as a camouflage term for hostility to the state of Israel and often to the Jewish people. However, it is important to note that legitimate differences with Israeli policies or actions should not be considered anti-Semitic. But when those criticisms call the existence of the state of Israel into question, or when Israel is compared to apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany, anti-Zionism becomes anti-Semitic. In correlation with the anti-Zionist narrative and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel has increasingly been perceived as a key site of the imperialist system by the Far-left. Whether because they view Israel as America’s guard dog in the Middle East, or because they supposedly pioneer technologies of surveillance and oppression, Israel is often viewed as the center of the global system. This is particularly worrying when one considers how all kinds of different anti-Semitisms have portrayed Jews at the center of everything bad that happens in the world. While many of these forms are relatively new in the history of anti-Semitism, they build on pre-Holocaust anti-Semitic stereotypes and imagery, often adapting them according to the changing ideological needs. Although the manifestations of anti-Semitism may differ between the Far-right and Far-left, it is a shared reliance on classical anti-Semitic perceptions that bridges the gap between the two groups. The topics covered here provide a brief glimpse into some of the material covered in weeks 3 and 4 of the course. Weeks 1, 2, and 3 examine the historical roots of anti-Semitism, while week 4 transitions into the contemporary manifestations of anti-Semitism. Week 5 will continue this trend by focusing on an additional sphere which has not been discussed in the course so far—that of the Arab and Islamic world.