The casual anti-semitism of the European clerisy

From Kippah-wearing Swedish reporter assaulted in Malmo from The Jerusalem Post.

A Swedish reporter who walked around Malmo while wearing a kippah to test attitudes toward Jews was hit once and cursed at by passersby before he fled for fear of serious violence.

Sveriges Television on Wednesday aired secretly recorded footage from Petter Ljunggren’s walk through Malmo, which documented some of the incidents that occurred within the space a few hours.

In one scene, Ljunggren — who, in addition to wearing a kippah was also wearing Star of David pendant — was filmed sitting at a café in central Malmo reading a newspaper, as several passersby hurled anti-Semitic insults at him.

Elsewhere, one person hit his arm, the reporter said on camera, though this was not recorded. One of the people who cursed Ljunggren called him a “Jewish devil,” “Jewish shit” and another told him to “get out.”

One person on a scooter approached Ljunggren to warn him to leave for his own safety. In the heavily Muslim Rosengard neighborhood, Ljunggren was surrounded by a dozen men who shouted anti-Semitic slogans as eggs were hurled at his direction from apartments overhead. He then fled the area.

[snip]

Dozens of anti-Semitic incidents are recorded annually in Malmo, a city where first- and second- generation immigrants from the Middle East make up one third of a population of roughly 300,000. Several hundred Jews live there.

Fred Kahn, a leader of the local Jewish community, told JTA that most incidents are perpetrated by Muslims or Arabs.

Hanna Thome, a municipal councilor for culture and anti-discrimination, told the Expressen daily that she was shocked by the events documented by Ljunggren.

“There is much more to do, and both the municipality and the police have a great responsibility. But I also want to emphasize that there is great solidarity in the city,” she said in reference to several so-called kippah walks, where Jews and non-Jews marched through Malmo’s street while wearing yarmulkes to protest against anti-Semitism.

I lived in Sweden a number of years as a child and have great affection for Swedes and their accomplishments. They are a pragmatic, resourceful, problem-solving people. They are among the very few that have come the closest (though failing as have all others) to actually making a socialist system work.

But what was evident to me even as a child in the early seventies was that there was a poor reading of context by many Swedes. America attracted a lot of attention in Sweden at the time in part centered on the Vietnam War but also fueled by perceptions arising from the Civil Rights movement in the 1960's. In discussions there was a tendency to solicitously and generously offer Swedish solutions to American problems. It should be noted that at that time, the sum of Sweden's immigrant and diversity experience was a 10% minority of Finns who had migrated to Sweden during the post-war manufacturing boom. And even the Finns were giving the Swedes problems.

Sweden opened the floodgates of immigration to refugees around the world in the 1970s and 80s so that now, 15% of the population is foreign born, most from cultural traditions antithetical to Swedish egalitarianism, rationalism, and Enlightenment ethos.

Cause and consequence to Ljunggren's experience reported above.

I have noticed a dynamic in many European countries which I have not seen reported much, though occasionally obliquely alluded to. The countries to which I am alluding are Britain, Sweden, France, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands. It may true for others as well, but I don't know.

What I observe is a general tendency to speak of rising anti-semitism in Europe. At an aggregate average level, that is empirically true as measured by self-reported attitudes in surveys, in hate-incidents, attacks, etc.

But nobody breaks it down into details which are far more revealing. From what I have been able to piece together, it appears to me that there are two different dynamics in play.

There has long been a casual anti-semitism among European elites. That has not precluded Jews from rising to the very top of most European societies in the arts, finance, commerce, academies, even political power. That casual anti-semitism manifests itself in two fashions. The first is the maintenance of a ready awareness that someone is Jewish and therefore an outsider. Between a nudge, a wink, a casual aside, or even a blatant statement, it is not uncommon in a conversation of elites for a participant's status as a Jew to be pointed out, making them an outsider. The other way elite anti-semitism manifests itself is a reflexive and uncritical support for the Arab states against Israel on nominally principled grounds. So elite anti-semitism is one strand. Noxious as it is, it doesn't on its own lead to any significant negative action against Jews other than neglect. But that neglect is the very root for Martin Niemöller's concern:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

The second dynamic that is observable if you look carefully is that in all the countries mentioned, most, perhaps all, the increasing anti-semitic acts are being committed by Muslim immigrants. So what looks like increased European anti-semitism is actually European tolerance of increasing European Muslim immigrants committing anti-semitic acts.

That is a tragedy of many parts and not easily addressed. It will take a self-awareness, courage, and willingness to change their ways which the European elites and the clerisy have not in the past demonstrated.