Anti-Semitism: canary in the coal mine?

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Since the Hamas attack on Israel of 7 October 2023, there’s been a significant recorded rise in incidents of anti-Semitism throughout Europe and the US – including physical attacks on Jews, Jewish businesses and synagogues, and the harassment of Jews on university campuses. A recent UK government-backed report goes so far as to claim that anti-Semitism has been ‘normalised in middle-class Britain’, with the most marked rise being amongst 18- to 24-year-olds.

However, some argue that anti-Semitism was on the rise long before October 2023 – as witnessed in the UK over the controversy within the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. An investigation into the National Union of Students, published in January 2023, claimed that ‘Jewish students have not felt welcome or included in NUS spaces’ for at least a decade. How do we explain this?

Anti-Semitism has often been seen as a feature of moments in history of tremendous upheaval. Why is this? Some have suggested that Jews are history’s scapegoats – made to take the blame for everything wrong with the world. Others argue that Jews have long been symbols of disquiet with major forces like capitalism or modernity or, more recently, even Western Civilisation itself.

If anti-Semitism is on the rise, what features or forces are causing this disquiet? And in what ways might it differ from the past?