History of American Antisemitism

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In December 2023, Pamela Nadell, a professor of Jewish history at American University, testified alongside the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT at a congressional hearing on antisemitism on college campuses.

If you don’t recall her testimony, don’t blame her or yourself: That’s the hearing when two of the presidents, Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Penn’s Liz Magill, appeared to equivocate on how their schools were handling charges of antisemitism, and consequently resigned under pressure.

At the time, Nadell was at work on a history of antisemitism in America, and couldn’t have known that she would become a supporting player in a key moment in that story. Now, she has completed her book, “Antisemitism, an American Tradition,” in which she chronicles the different forms Jew-hatred has taken from colonial times to the present.

Puncturing the largely flattering story of an America that created the conditions for Jews to flourish as never before, the book shows, she writes, “how powerfully antisemitism has coursed throughout American history and how much it impacted the lives of America’s Jews no matter where they lived.”

It’s a history that includes Peter Stuyvesant’s efforts to oust the 23 Jews who had recently landed in what is now New York in 1654; the discrimination Jews faced in the Revolutionary and Civil War eras; the anti-immigration fervor of the early 20th century; the virulent isolationism and pro-Nazism of the 1930s and 1940s, and the purported “Golden Age” that saw Jews come into their own after World War II.

It concludes with the current-day explosion of antisemitism on the right and the left: the shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and the white power marches in Charlottesville, Virginia; pro-Palestinian demonstrations that, she writes, “erased” the line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and the killing of two Israeli embassy staffers outside a Jewish event in Washington, D.C.
While Nadell believes that Jews are facing a “high tide” in terms of the psychological impact of what others have called the “enduring hatred,” she also stresses that hers is not a “post-Oct. 7” book.

If anything, the impetus for writing the book was a remark made by a colleague years before the start of the current Israel-Hamas war, who noted how antisemitism appeared to be “all over” her previous book, “America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today.”
“I was stunned,” she said. “I went back and I looked, and I had some story about an anti-Jewish encounter in every chapter. Which brings me back to the point that to be a Jew, no matter where you live or when, is to encounter anti-Judaism or antisemitism. It’s just part of that experience.”

Nadell also believes her book is one of the first to see American antisemitism through the eyes of its victims.

While Jews have flourished since World War II, she takes seriously their hard-to-account-for but persistent insecurity. Call it paranoia, but the psychological impact of antisemitism, despite the Jews’ outward signs of prosperity, is “profound,” she said. “It shapes how Jews live their lives.”
Nadell, 73, is a professor and Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History at American University in Washington, D.C. She is a past president of the Association for Jewish Studies.

In our conversation Thursday, we talked about the distinction she makes between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, why the post-war years were less golden than they seemed and how the Trump administration is using antisemitism in its efforts to remake American universities.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why did you decide to call the book “Antisemitism, an American Tradition”? What does that phrase capture?

The phrase is a nod to historian Tony Michels, who wrote an important article about 15 years ago pointing out that American Jewish historians had essentially ignored antisemitism in our histories.

We wrote hundreds of books about how Jews engaged with America, but because we were products of our own time, we didn’t foreground antisemitism. Then Charlottesville happened, and then Tree of Life. After Tree of Life, many of us were meeting at the Center for Jewish History, under the auspices of the American Jewish Historical Society, and we wondered: How had we missed the story?

A different form of antisemitism
What are some of the myths your book punctures about antisemitism in America?
I think many readers will be surprised by the persistence of Christian anti-Judaism, which surfaces from the very beginning, and why I write that it was carried over in the rucksacks of the colonists.

The other myth is that antisemitism in America was never or rarely violent. People think of the Holocaust, pogroms, or the Inquisition when they hear “antisemitism,” and assume that American antisemitism was different and somehow benign.

It was different, yes, but not harmless. Local attacks, arson, murders, they often never reached the national press, but they happened.

Can you unpack the distinction between Christian anti-Judaism and other forms of antisemitism?

They differ tremendously. I use the word “antisemitism” throughout, but it wasn’t coined until the 1870s. “Anti-Judaism” is theological, rooted in the charge that Jews killed Jesus. “Antisemitism,” as coined by Wilhelm Marr and others in Europe, was race-based; a belief that Jews were a racial threat to society, but they’re not looking to blame them for the murder of Jesus.

In America, because the debate over whether we are a Christian nation has never gone away, Christian anti-Judaism and antisemitism are braided together. I didn’t watch the funeral of Charlie Kirk, but I did read about the comments [by Tucker Carlson] repeating the gospel stories about the Jews murdering Jesus. Evangelical support for Israel, for example, is tied to their belief in the coming of the Messiah. So I don’t think you can separate them.

Antisemitism comes from both the right and the left
I am always amazed, and was so in reading your book, about how both the right and left have variously used antisemitism and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories as a proxy for whatever else might be fanning the flames of their extremism: economic discontent, isolationism, nativism, anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism. I almost see that as the defining feature of “American” antisemitism, and wonder if you agree.

That’s right, but it’s not unique to America. In Europe, you have “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the Dreyfus Affair, and Soviet antisemitism.

Antisemitism flourishes on both the right and the left. That’s something I was careful to stress, because as I was finishing the book, Oct. 7 happened, and suddenly all the focus was on antisemitism on the left, especially on campuses. But antisemitism from the right is just as virulent. American history shows that it has always been present on both sides.

But I guess my question is also about that most perennial of questions: Why the Jews? Why does this small minority become the scapegoat again and again?

This issue did not develop overnight
Robert Wistrich called antisemitism “the longest hatred.” Antisemitism adapts. Whatever people are unhappy about, they can map it onto Jews. In a New Yorker interview with Isaac Chotiner, David Nirenberg [author of “Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition”] tells the story of being on the subway a few weeks after 9/11. One rider said, “It’s the Jews’ fault, they made New York the capital of capitalism.” The other replied, “And because they killed Jesus.” You can’t separate the motives. One is economic, the other theological, but they converge on Jews.

Henry Ford is the classic American example: Whatever was wrong with society, he blamed on Jews.

You devote a chapter to what some call the postwar “Golden Age” of American Jewry, but warn in the chapter title, “No Age is Golden.” What led Jews to talk about that era, roughly from the end of World War II to the 1970s, or maybe to the year 2000, as a halcyon time, and in what ways did it fall short?

It depends on how you look at it. It didn’t happen overnight.

“Gentleman’s Agreement” [Laura Z. Hobson’s novel that Nadell writes “would expose the disgrace of genteel American antisemitism”] came out in 1947, but quotas and restrictions lingered for years.

Still, real changes happened: It’s a golden age because so many of the structural barriers to Jewish success in America ultimately fell. Country clubs admitted Jews, elite universities dropped quotas, the Fair Housing Act meant restrictive housing covenants were no longer enforced, and Jews rose to leadership in business and politics.

We get a vice-presidential candidate who’s Jewish, and a [Senate majority leader] who is a proud Jew. So that’s the reason for the perception of the Golden Age.

But when I talk to Jews who lived through that era, I hear a different story. People remember being pelted with pennies, taunted with slurs. After Oct. 7, I kept hearing from people who said, “I never thought I’d live to see this,” and yet, in the same breath, recalled childhood antisemitism. So the Golden Age was real, but it was also never free of hatred.

If some saw the post-war years as the high point in terms of Jewish acceptance, of their cultural and political impact, what was the nadir?

Living through a new "high tide" of antisemitism
Historians long called the 1930s the “high tide” of American antisemitism: plots to hang Jews in Hollywood, pro-Nazi rallies, Father Coughlin [the influential antisemitic priest] on the radio.
But I’ve been saying for a while now that we may have to rename that period. Because of antisemitism from both left and right, and especially because of social media, I think we are living through a new high tide of American antisemitism right now. That’s because of the violence coming from both the right and the left.

I’d like to push back on that somewhat. Despite the violent attacks in Pittsburgh and Poway, California, and the eruption of anti-Zionism on campuses and in the streets, Jews are disproportionately successful.

Jews have flourished in academia and in their professions. Law firms hire Jews, and most Jews live in prosperous neighborhoods. Does antisemitism really have the power to affect Jewish lives?
You mean structurally?

Yes, that’s a better way to ask the question.

Structurally, no. Jews are not going to face quotas in universities again. But I come at this from a slightly different angle. When I toured for my last book, I began asking audiences if they had ever experienced antisemitism. The stories poured out: incidents from 50 years earlier, told in vivid detail, with pain and anguish.

What jumped out at me then, and what I have said publicly since, is that, even if other people want to say their anti-Israel positions are not antisemitic, it’s how Jews internalize what they face as antisemitic that has a lasting effect on Jewish lives.

Antisemitism shapes how Jews live their lives
Now, some of this may be because I’m married to a clinical psychologist, but what we’re seeing now is that, psychologically, the impact is profound. It shapes how Jews live their lives. I keep reading all these studies of the number of Jews who won’t disclose that they’re Jewish.
My son told me recently he was in an Uber. I called him and said, “Shana Tova.” He answered, “You too.” Later he admitted he hadn’t wanted to say “Shana Tova” out loud in front of the driver. That’s how antisemitism affects Jewish lives: by shaping behavior, by instilling caution.

The current debate, and any present or future assessment of the degree to which we are living through a new wave of antisemitism, often centers on when anti-Zionism crosses a line to become antisemitism. The Anti-Defamation League has its own way of determining when an act is antisemitic or not. What criteria did you use in describing an act or statement as antisemitism?

For me, calling for Israel’s destruction is absolutely antisemitism. Criticizing Israeli policies is not; Israelis themselves do that every day. But increasingly, “Zionist” has become a slur, a new code word, just as “Jew” was pejorative in the 19th century, so that Jews themselves preferred to call themselves “Israelites.” NYU’s student conduct code even recognizes that “Zionist” can be used as a term of hate.

But an anti-Zionist Jew, for example, might argue that they don’t have an issue with an individual’s religious beliefs or biology, but are opposing anyone who chooses to support what they consider an oppressive, colonialist state.

I’ve been in conversations with colleagues who have done that, saying, “Oh, I’m not an antisemite, but Israel has no right to exist.”

How do you respond?

My response is, “You and I are never going to agree on this.”

Education will not combat antisemitism
Your book is not prescriptive, but did you find a common theme in what approaches work best to combat antisemitism?

What hasn’t worked is the belief that education will end antisemitism. “If only people knew the Jews, they wouldn’t hate us.” That’s been said since the 19th century.

Now, we have a huge new National Endowment for the Humanities grant [to the conservative Tikvah], NEH’s largest grant ever, which is going to educate about the Jews, and that is optimistic that educating about the Jews will change people’s attitudes towards them.

And yet the reality is, Jews are the most favorably regarded religious group in Pew surveys, yet millions of Americans still hold antisemitic stereotypes.p
What does help is allies. When the government or institutions act, antisemitism can be checked. But there will always remain that irreducible percentage of people, maybe ten percent of Americans, who hold strong antisemitic beliefs.

Speaking of allies, as a historian, have you ever seen anything similar to what’s going on now where the government is committed to fighting antisemitism, but is doing it in a way that’s going right at your livelihood; that is, punishing universities and withholding federal funds and using antisemitism as, depending on your politics, a reason or an excuse for demanding changes, from scrapping DEI programs to disclosing “foreign influence” to banning transgender students from women’s sports. Have you seen this before, and, to ask another perennial question, is it good for the Jews?

It’s bad for the Jews. You’ll recall that in December 2023, I testified alongside the university presidents, two of whom later lost their jobs. Just a month before, Trump was campaigning on taxing university endowments to fund a new “anti-woke” university.

That idea went into the dustbin, but antisemitism became the pretext for going after higher education. In 2021, J.D. Vance gave a speech saying conservatives need to “aggressively attack the universities.” Antisemitism is giving them the coverage to do that now.
And why is that bad for the Jews?

The danger is that when the tide turns, Jews will be blamed for the diminishment of American universities, for the loss of their global standing. That’s a disastrous place to be.

With all this in mind, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the Jews’ place in America and the waning of antisemitism?

I take solace in history. After the high tide of the 1930s, things improved. My hope is that it will happen again. My concern is the unprecedented role of social media, which amplifies antisemitism in ways we’ve never experienced. Campus encampments declined last year, vandalism declined, but antisemitism online exploded. That’s what worries me most.

Here in NYC, in 2005 to 2010 or so, I encountered quite a few people of Jewish background who didn't seem to feel that there was any danger, at all, of a revival of anti-Jewish bigotry.

When I noticed the rise of Alex Jones and expressed concern about his popularization of grand conspiracy theories reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I was told things like, "You're not even Jewish, and you're more worried about antisemitism than I am!"

(I was concerned about bigotry not only against Jews, but also against the other religious minorities more explicitly targeted by Alex Jones's grand conspiracy ideology.)

Back then, a lot of people had the attitude that "conspiracy theorists" were a totally insignificant fringe. It was commonly assumed that the only people whose views anyone (or, at least, anyone with any power) would ever take seriously were educated professional experts, and that the crackpots were worth a few laughs and nothing more.

Since the key figures in Alex Jones’s New World Order conspiracy theories were Bush Sr. and Jr., Cheney, and the Saudi Royal Family antisemitism was not top of mind

For this article I expected people to jump all over the authors conflation of anti zionism and antisemitism.

In 2000, Alex Jones secretly filmed a mock human sacrifice ritual at the annual gathering of the Bohemian Grove, an exclusive all-male club for powerful men in politics and business. He released the footage in his documentary, Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove, and alleged that the ceremony was a Satanic ritual.

Jones's documentary and claims

* Infiltration: In July 2000, Jones and his cameraman, Mike Hanson, infiltrated the heavily secured Bohemian Grove and captured footage of the "Cremation of Care" ceremony.
* "Cremation of Care": Jones portrayed this theatrical performance as a genuine, occult ritual. It is an annual tradition at the Grove where members perform a play in which they cremate an effigy of "Dull Care" to symbolize a temporary escape from worldly concerns.
* Interpretation: In his film, Jones claimed that the ceremony represented a Satanic ritual sacrifice conducted by a secret cabal of global elites.

Differing accounts

The footage and Jones's interpretation have been widely debated and contradicted by other reporters who have visited the Grove.

* Journalist Jon Ronson: The journalist Jon Ronson was with Jones during the infiltration and recounted the experience in his book Them: Adventures with Extremists. Ronson described the scene differently, characterizing it as "an overgrown frat party" rather than a sinister, occult gathering. He noted that Jones "totally oversell[s]" the event.
* Mock ritual: Others, including the documentary filmmaker Jon Ronson, clarified that the ceremony uses a papier-mâché effigy, not a real person, and is more of a theatrical performance than a genuine ritual.

Impact and legacy

Despite the contradictions, Jones's video remains a source for conspiracy theories surrounding the Bohemian Grove.

* Influence: The film cemented the idea within certain conspiracy communities that a shadowy, powerful elite gathers at the Grove to conduct occult practices.
* Subsequent events: In 2002, a man named Richard McCaslin, who was inspired by Jones's film, broke into the Bohemian Grove with weapons and set a fire, believing he was acting against a corrupt elite.

On July 15, 2000, Jones infiltrated the Bohemian Grove Cremation of Care,[55] a Jones-alleged planning event of the New World Order involving child sacrifice,[31] which he called "a ritualistic shedding of conscience and empathy" and an "abuse of power"[127]

“I have found evidence that the secret societies were planning as far back as 1917 to invent an artificial threat from outer space in order to bring humanity together in a one-world government which they call the New World Order,” Cooper wrote in his seminal 1991 book, Behold a Pale Horse. “I am still searching for the truth.”

Cooper claims that the government tried, twice, to kill him for his whistleblowing.

Behold a Pale Horse is perhaps the most popular, and all-encompassing, conspiracy manifesto ever published. In it, Cooper claims the Illuminati, Rothschild family, Bilderberg Group, CIA, Pope, United Nations, Communist Party, Nazi Party, Skull & Bones, Bohemian Club, and a raft of others were responsible for this Satanic globalist plot. A secret deep state, operating in the shadows.

Some of this theorizing was old hat, at this point. A French minister had accused the secret society of secretly plotting all manner of world events, including the Reign of Terror, which begat an anti-Illuminati panic in America in the eighteenth century. Through the Cold War, the arch-conservative John Birch Society warned that America had already fallen prey to a one world socialist government, and that its “tentacles now reach into all of the legislative halls, all of the union labor meetings, a majority of the religious gatherings, and most of the schools of the whole world.”

Whether it was crypto-Catholics or Communists, these tall tales warned the enemy was lurking somewhere in the shadows—or, perhaps, in the rival political party. What made Cooper’s conspiracy theories so terrifying is that he pointed a long finger at the face of the conspiracy: The U.S. government.

For Cooper, all politics was corrupted by these secret societies. “The important fact to remember is that the leaders of both the right and the left are a small, hard core of men who have been and still are Illuminists or members of the Brotherhood. They may have been or may be members of the Christian or Jewish religions, but that is only to further their own ends. They are and always have been Luciferian and internationalist.”

[...]

In 2000, Jones produced a documentary called Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove. In it, he cribbed Cooper’s fantastical ramblings about secret societies and boiled it down into something snappy and compelling. Where Cooper preferred to lay out the secret order of the world from his compound in Arizona, Jones believed in getting into the field.

The documentary honed in on one of Cooper’s oft-cited secret societies: The Bohemian Club. Every year, the club threw a party in a private park in Sonoma County, California—it treated politicians and captains of industry to much of the esoteric pageantry of Yale University’s Skull & Bones society.

Jones spun a fantastical tale, insisting that the meeting of powerful men inside the park was not just a silly getaway, but a planning event for the New World Order. (Harry Shearer, who attended the party at the Grove once, remarked to documentarian Jon Ronson, “if they were really serious about the task of running the world in secret conspiracy I don’t think they’d be doing so much drag.”)

As a shaky, grainy camera shot narrowed in on the gathering, from a vantage point across the lake, Jones explained that the true purpose of the Bohemian Grove was about child sacrifice. These powerful men burned their human tribute at the foot of a giant wood owl.

Towards the end of the documentary, Jones stands with a bullhorn across the street from the Texas capitol building, screaming that then-governor George W. Bush was a “Luciferian twit.” Jones was convinced that every member of the Bush family had also been a patron of the Bohemian Grove. “You might think you can feed on the human population: We say no to you!”

[...]

For years afterwards, Cooper continued sermonizing for legions of militia members, sovereign citizens, conspiracy theorists, and extremists. In September 2001, as planes felled the twin towers, slammed into the Pentagon, and crashed in rural Pennsylvania, Cooper spent 10 hours on the air.

In that wreckage, Cooper saw the saw clues as he did in 1995.

“What happened to the World Trade Center towers today is exactly what happened in Oklahoma City,” he said. “It wasn’t that truck parked up on the street that brought the building down, and I can’t bring down a building like that by flying a plane into the top quarter of it.”

That conspiracy theory would become prolific. In 2006, one pollster found that more than 15 percent of Americans thought it very or somewhat likely that explosives brought down the Twin Towers, not planes.

Other aspects of Cooper’s deluded worldview have lived on in even bigger ways. The tenets of his conspiratorial dogma are everywhere in the QAnon conspiracy movement: From his core belief that the plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy was an inside job, to his allegation that a secretive deep state of Luciferian secret societies secretly run the world.

As I remember it Jones was fixated on the Bilderberg meetings. He opined the idea that there was a consensus on how to rule the world for profit for themselves not Satan. He pushed the idea the neocons via the Project for a New American Century’s paper “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” was involved the attacks for the purpose of driving American public opinion to support war and dictatorship. I am sure there were some people that interpreted this through a Satanic lens but they were far from central to the 9/11 conspiracy world during the era we are discussing. Satan did not become a significant factor until 2016 and Pizzagate.

If your impressions are based only on mass media coverage, then your memories are probably correct. My impressions are based not just on mass media coverage, but on an exploration of the "9/11 Truth" movement itself.

And this is probably the reason why I had such extreme difficulty getting people to take my warnings about Alex Jones seriously. Back then at least, a lot of people had the attitude that if something wasn't making headline news, then it didn't exist, or, at least, couldn't possibly be important. For that matter, even if something had been making headline news, but had ceased getting coverage during the past few weeks, then it must be dead already. (A lot of pundits frequently pronounced the Christian religious right wing to be "dead" for this reason, when in fact it was far from dead.)

When the Satanic ritual abuse scare finally was thoroughly discredited, at least on a governmental/institutional level, back in the mid-1990's, the mass media probably saw its remaining advocates at the last gasps of a discredited idea, not worthy of any further news coverage. And indeed, not giving them further oxygen at that point was probably a good idea, in the interests of not inspiring too many more people like Timothy McVeigh.

I did listen to the Jones show and read infowars on a fairly regular basis but not in 2000. My main years were the 2005 to 2010 and what I described was the issues I remember. I should add while New World Order was always part of the conversation it ramped up after Bush left office.

Since we are discussing Antisemitism and 9/11 conspiracy theories one that popped up immediately is that 4000 Jews and Israelis were told in advance to evacuate the area.

Since we are discussing Antisemitism and 9/11 conspiracy theories one that popped up immediately is that 4000 Jews and Israelis were told in advance to evacuate the area.

Hope I am reading this right Or not ? How is it that , that many Jews and Iraelis had fore Knowledge?
about the 9/11 event . And were even advised to leave that area? Please now, I hope I am wrong ,or misreading this
in someway.???

Yes, I remember that one.

Fortunately, it wasn't very popular in the organized 9/11 Truth movement. I remember seeing it denounced on a 9/11 Truth movement message board, and I don't remember any of the major leading figures of the 9/11 Truth movement advocating it (although I could be wrong about this).

Ditto for the "Mossad did it" theory. I remember overhearing some people talking about it while riding a bus, shortly after 9/11, but it was generally unpopular in the organized 9/11 Truth movement (at least at the time when I was exploring it in 2007-2008).

What was much more popular in the 9/11 Truth movement was the video Zeitgeist, which, without overtly advocating bigotry against Jews, promoted a bunch of classic banking conspiracy theories apparently based on the writings of Eustace Mullins, who was indeed a full-blown anti-Jewish bigot. It also included a secularized version of various "New World Order" worries.