Editorial

Abstract

Antisemitism continues to rise on both sides of the Atlantic. Since the last issue of the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism went to press, the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that advises and represents the UK’s Jewish community on matters of antisemitism, terrorism, extremism, and security, published its mid-year Antisemitic Incidents Report for January–June 2019.1 It recorded 892 antise-mitic incidents in the UK for the first six months of 2019. This is the highest number of incidents the CST has ever recorded in the January to June period of any year and is a 10 percent increase on the 810 incidents recorded for the same period in 2018. The CST has been recording antisemitic incidents since 1984. While these recorded incidents include vio-lent assault, damage to property, and abusive behavior, 36 percent of the 892 total involve social media, with the highest monthly totals of online antisemitism recorded for February and March, the very months when issues relat-ing to Jews and antisemitism were prominent in the news and politics due to the continuing controversy about antisemitism in the Labour Party. Indeed, a further CST report published in August 2019 titled, Engine of Hate: the online networks behind the Labour Party’s antisemitism crisis revealed that the problem of antisemitism in the Labour Party since 2016 has been fueled by a steady flow of antisemitic tweets and posts on social media. These have spread the lie that concerns about antisemitism in the Labour Party are nothing more than a bad faith attempt to smear Corbyn and have also promoted con-spiracy theories about Israel, Zionists, and Jews.