ABSTRACT
As the British sociologist Robert Fine critically observed, it could seem as if “antisemitism is tucked away safely in Europe’s past, overcome by the defeat of fascism and the development of the European Union antisemitism is remembered, but only as a residual trauma or a museum piece.” Antisemitism occurs in manifold contexts, e.g. in the public sphere and anonymously in online postings and other Internet genres. It is important to emphasize that “antisemitic language behaviour” may imply explicitly held and/or articulated hostility towards Jews, but it necessarily implies the presence of prejudicial assumptions about “the Jews” as a group. The many occurrences of antisemitism in Europe and beyond provide clear evidence that antisemitic rhetoric continues to be part of mainstream and extreme-right/extreme-left politics – albeit with differing stereotypes and different degrees of explicitness. Moreover, new forms of antisemitism have emerged, while attempting to cope with alleged or real accusations about war crimes and the Shoah.
