One key fact about contemporary antisemitism is that it must not be mentioned. Antiracists are educated to assume that talk about antisemitism is an indicator of a Zionist attempt to silence the oppressed Palestinians; it is mis­recognized as the mobilisation of Jewish victim­power, the playing of the Holocaust card. The left is not hostile to Jews when they are powerless and stateless; but it finds it hard to shake the idea that Jews are untrustworthy and are connected to money. The image today is that the Jews have managed to strike a bargain with the American and capitalist devil; instead of playing their role as the symbol of the oppressed, they are conceived of as having saved themselves at the expense of everybody else.

When Sir Keir rightly attacked anti-Semitism in his party, he did not analyse its nature clearly enough. It is not like the old Right-wing anti-Semitism which regarded Jews as creepy foreigners. Rather it a lethally political cocktail of two things – whites on the hard Left who hate anything white, Western or British, and Islamists who, for pseudo-religious reasons, see Jews as the eternal enemy and imagine Allah is telling them to take Palestine by slaughter.

As for the Jews, their explanation of anti-Semitism is more characteristic yet. In addition to the usual cliche, "with hatred and savagery" - naturally with no motive, they do not care to discuss motives - according to them, anti-Semitism is a madness, an intellectual degeneration, an affliction of the spirit.

European anti-Semites, Zionism believes that European Jews, unlike European Christians, are not Europeans but foreigners who need to leave Europe to its 'real' people and be 'repatriated' to their own state in Palestine. Today's Israeli Jewish supremacists are reviving anti-Semitic ideas of the turn of the century that had accused Jews of seeking to control the world. From the infamous czarist Protocols of the Elders of Zion to genocidal Nazi propaganda, Jews as a 'power-hungry' people was a notion that was part and parcel of the anti-Semitic lexicon. Today's Israeli Jewish supremacists seem to agree with the anti-Semites that, if Jews do not control the world, they at least control America.

What does the strange irrational hatred called antisemitism consist of? I am not a historian of this vast topic, but personally I define it as the theory that holds Jews responsible for the spilling of the blood of non-Jews.

And the venality of those Judaized is incapable of explaining anti-Semitism as a social phenomenon, we will call it the anti-Semitic theory.

I'm learning that a lot of people--on the left as well as the right--have a problem with Jews. It is not that they object to Jews as people. It's that they object to Jews as Jews.

Maybe the Jews interfered in the American elections, maybe the Jews control the world, maybe Jews slaughtered the Jews in Poland. For all those allegations, there is one origin: Jew-hatred

I believe that I understand Anti-Semitism, which is really a highly complex movement. I consider it from a Jewish standpoint, yet without fear or hatred. I believe that I can see what elements there are in it of vulgar sport, of common trade jealousy, of inherited prejudice, of religious intolerance, and also of pretended self-defence. I think the Jewish question is no more a social than a religious one, notwithstanding that it sometimes takes these and other forms. It is a national question, which can only be solved by making it a political world-question to be discussed and settled by the civilized nations of the world in council. We are a people — one people. We have honestly endeavored everywhere to merge ourselves in the social life of surrounding communities and to preserve the faith of our fathers. We are not permitted to do so. In vain are we loyal patriots, our loyalty in some places running to extremes; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow-citizens; in vain do we strive to increase the fame of our native land in science and art, or her wealth by trade and commerce. In countries where we have lived for centuries we are still cried down as strangers, and often by those whose ancestors were not yet domiciled in the land where Jews had already had experience of suffering. The majority may decide which are the strangers; for this, as indeed every point which arises in the relations between nations, is a question of might. I do not here surrender any portion of our prescriptive right, when I make this statement merely in my own name as an individual. In the world as it now is and for an indefinite period will probably remain, might precedes right. It is useless, therefore, for us to be loyal patriots, as were the Huguenots who were forced to emigrate. If we could only be left in peace.... But I think we shall not be left in peace.

Antisemitism is a menace. It is not simply the preserve of knuckle-dragging neo-Nazi skinheads; this centuries-old sickness infects progressive circles, too. There are people reading this and thinking "ah, but what about Israel?" I know this because whenever I tweet about antisemitism, someone replies with a sentence along those lines. Sorry to sound self-righteous here, but if that's you, then you're part of the problem.

Fucking Jews... Jews are responsible for all wars in the world.

What does anti-Semitism have to do with socialism? I would put the question this way: What does the Jew have to do with socialism? Socialism has to do with labor. When did one ever see him working instead of plundering, stealing and living from the sweat of others? As socialists we are opponents of the Jews because we see in the Hebrews the incarnation of capitalism.

Anti-Semitism has become a major issue for the American people, and for all democratic mankind. In the pattern of imperialist reaction, anti-Semitism today looms ever larger, not only alongside of anti-Communism, anti-Sovietism, anti-unionism, anti-alienism, and anti-Negroism, but in a kind of special relationship to these other elements: Negroes, aliens, union men, the Soviets, and Communists are all in some degree tarred by reaction as Jewish or as the dupes of the Jews. Every reactionary movement today is itself anti-Semitic, or is allied with anti-Semites; on the other hand, the more consistent a progressive movement is, the more it makes the fight against anti-Semitism a prominent part of its program of action. No anti-Semite can be in any sense progressive now; no progressive can for any reason compromise with anti-Semitism.

There should be no compromise here: anti-Semitism is not just one-among ideologies; it is ideology as such kat'exohen. It embodies the zero-level (or the purest form) of ideology, providing its elementary coordinates: social antagonist ("class struggle") is mystified and displaced so that its cause is projected onto the external intruder.