Editor's Introduction

Abstract

Editor's Introduction Catherine Chatterley, Founding Editor-in-Chief In this issue, we begin with a discussion of American antisemitism, a subject of renewed interest after the mass shootings at synagogues in Pittsburgh (October 27, 2018) and Poway (April 27, 2019). Richard Frankel compares the antisemitism of the United States to that of Germany in the early interwar years (1914-1923) arguing that these contexts were not so different when it came to public attitudes toward Jews. Frankel's work reminds us of the deep anti-Jewish bias that existed in American culture historically and challenges any notion of a specifically German antisemitism that led inevitably to the Holocaust. Canada is a country that evokes positive regards from most people, but it remains a minor player on the world stage in many ways. The French-speaking province of Quebec is perhaps even less well known to those outside Canada. Hugues Théorêt's research on Adrien Arcand and his antisemitic newspapers, activism, and fascist politics during the Nazi years (1933-1945) may come as a surprise to readers. His article details Arcand's life, attitudes, and career, including the boycott campaign he helped support in Quebec against Jewish merchants (Achat chez nous) and his relationship with Canadian-German Holocaust denier, Ernst Zündel. For years, European football has bewildered many of us for its antisemitism and abuse of Holocaust vocabulary and imagery, especially Anne Frank. This is not a phenomenon North Americans witness in professional sports like hockey, baseball, or football. Michael Curtis explains why antisemitism is used by a small number of vocal and violent football fans across Europe by revealing the larger context of ethnic, national, and religious conflict in this sport. All teams, to one degree or another, re-enact old wars and historical rivalries through soccer games. The damage to people and property is quite extensive on some occasions, as Curtis clearly demonstrates. [End Page 189] Add to this general context hooliganism and neo-Nazism and you have a potentially toxic mix. Ilya Yablokov studies conspiracy theories and in this issue he examines how they function in Russia under Vladimir Putin. Anti-Western and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories have flourished in Russia since the mid-nineteenth century and continue to do so today. In 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, antisemitic conspiracies gained new ground as explanatory means for the rapid and dramatic developments occurring at the time. Under President Putin, however, as Yablokov explains, anti-Jewish animus has declined. By examining three recent high profile events in Russia involving antisemitism, Yablokov investigates the operation of anti-Western and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories in today's Russia and finds the latter to be controlled in new ways as interethnic harmony becomes a central priority for Putin's administration and its nation-building goals. In our final article, Jarrett Carty investigates the relationship between Martin Luther's anti-Judaism and his political philosophy, including his views on temporal government. Recognizing that Luther held a consistently negative view of Judaism through his adult life, Carty argues that whatever tolerance Luther may have expressed toward Jews in earlier years was simply in the service of efforts to convert them to the new confession. As a result of their failure to convert, Jews remained a threat to Christian society and temporal authorities had an obligation to enforce laws against blasphemy to protect their subjects. This, Carty argues, is what explains Luther's call for the suppression of Jewish freedom and expulsion from German lands in 1543. In addition to our regular collection of book reviews, Lars Rensmann provides us with an extended review essay offering his evaluation of two recent books on left-wing antisemitism: Robert Fine and Philip Spencer's Antisemitism and the Left: On the Return of the Jewish Question and David Hirsh's Contemporary Left Antisemitism. [End Page 190] Copyright © 2019 Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism