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Wednesday, March 6th, 2019

What’s behind Europe’s surge in anti-Semitism?

Author:     WILLIAM ECHIKSON
Source:     Politico
Publication Date:     3/5/19, 2:51 PM CET
 Link: What’s behind Europe’s surge in anti-Semitism?
Stephan:   In my opinion, Anti-semitism is a religious social disease, a kind of emotional gonorrhea. Jews as a group constitute 0.2% of the world population, and half of them live in Israel, and most of the other half live in the U.S. An interesting fact about this tiny community: as of 2017, 902 individuals have been awarded the Nobel Prize, 203 of them have been Jews. A wildly disproportion distribution, and the Nobel committees are overwhelmingly Christian, so this is not bias. What it tells us is that much of the world's major advances in science and medicine have been made possible by Jews. So when anti-semitism climbs out of the psychological cesspool where it lives it is clear that a major social disorder is occurring in the society where it is happening, and nowhere is this affliction clearer than in Europe as this report describes.

Many factors have contributed toward an increase in European anti-Semitism
Credit: Frederick Florin/AFP/ Getty

Anti-Semitism is back in Europe. Cries of “dirty Jew” during Yellow Jackets protests in France, anti-Semitic posters condemning Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros in Hungary, a row over anti-Semitic remarks that threatens to tear the Labour Party apart in the U.K. — these are all part of the same worrying trend.

This particularly European pathology never truly went away, of course, but it had been confined, after the Holocaust, to the far-right fringes of society. Now the numbers of high-profile incidents and violent attacks are multiplying. Not only is this disease back; it is being weaponized by nationalist governments and parties on both sides of the political spectrum.

The collapse of Europe’s center-right, center-left political consensus plays an important role. As the center has dissolved, the fringes have expanded. The rise of extremist parties has acted like a green light for the Continent’s anti-Semitism, much like U.S. President Donald […]

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2 Comments

  1. Jon Klimo on Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at 10:49 am

    Stephan, I am moved finally to reach out to you, I think for the first time, because of how right-on I feel you are in your thinking and In the quality of your writing in your today’s (3/6/19) newsletter piece about the surge in anti-Semitism. I have been following your Schwartzreport newsletter for quite a while now and am very much enjoying and finding useful much of what you are sharing through it, and I especially respect the quality of your own thinking and writing in it. Beyond this newsletter context, I have followed and had real respect for the work you have done on a wider scale, everything from your years of involvement with the Parapsychological Association (I too am a member), through reading quite a bit of your published writing, including your “Opening to the Infinite” book (which I own). We are about the same age and seem to me to think along quite similar lines and share similar values. We met very briefly decades ago at a PA conference; we were introduced by our friend Jerry Solvin, though I doubt you would remember that. Now long overdue, I will shortly be making a contribution to your newsletter (and hopefully do more than just that). By the way, it is certainly not my intention that anyone other than you be also reading what I am writing to you here in this ‘comment.’ to you. I very much avoid social media such as Facebook and other public venues; in my naïveté I may be writing all this to a lot of total strangers as well, which is certainly not my intention. I wish you well, Stephan.

    Jon Klimo

    • Stephan Schwartz on Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at 8:47 pm

      Thank you for your gracious words, Jon. I do remember you, although I had forgotten Jerry introduced us. I wish you well and hope our paths cross again soon.