Holocaust History, Far-Right Parties, and Antisemitic Incidents

Abstract

In many countries in Europe, acts motivated by antisemitism, including the desecration of Jewish tombs or simple assaults on Jewish individuals, occur with varying levels of frequency. Using new event data on antisemitic incidents, this paper analyzes two factors that influence antisemitic incidents in Eastern Europe. In particular, we analyze a country’s Holocaust history and the presence of nationalist far-right parties in legislatures as factors that influence the likelihood that a country experiences an antisemitic incident. We posit that both a high proportion of Jews murdered in the Holocaust and the presence of nationalist far-right parties in parliament will increase the likelihood of an antisemitic event in a given year. We find strong evidence that a country’s Holocaust history is a powerful predictor of antisemitic incidents in Eastern Europe, but that the presence of nationalist far-right parties in parliament, contrary to our expectations, has no effect on the likelihood of antisemitic incidents. Thus, our findings suggest that the destruction of a country’s Jewish community during the Holocaust is a better predictor of antisemitic events than the presence of far-right political parties. At a pragmatic level, we are cautiously optimistic that our results suggest that the rise in political participation of far-right parties across Europe does not increase the likelihood of antisemitic events. Nonetheless, scholars should continue to explore the causes of antisemitic incidents in Europe in order to identify what causes its fluctuations.