Volume 44, Issue 1

For some years now (and increasingly since the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023), postcolonial theory has been the focus of criticism. The accusations are widely known: relativization of the Holocaust, anti-Zionism, Israel-related antisemitism. However, it sometimes seems as if there is a disparity between strong and strongly pejorative opinions about postcolonialism and the actual level of knowledge or understanding. In addition, the question arises as to whether the criticism of postcolonial critique reproduces Eurocentric ideas and epistemological asymmetries. This article will complicate the debate by suggesting its entanglement in the dynamics and mechanisms that have always been the focus of postcolonial theory.

The Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October has intensified the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Since then, antisemitic incidents have increased in Germany, in which Israel serves as a target for antisemitic projection. At the same time, however, the numerous public controversies demonstrate that the distinction between legitimate criticism and Israel-related antisemitism is controversial. Discussions about the appropriateness of criticism, the use of historically and morally charged terms and their ability to connect to antisemitic semantics are carried out in public as well as in academia. The article discusses the contribution of regional and comparative area studies to a differentiated debate that takes both Israel-related antisemitism and the conflict and its dynamics seriously.

The focus of this article is on “antisemitism” as a “political language”, as suggested by Gadi Luzzatto Voghera (2024). Benito Mussolini’s 1938 racist and antisemitic speeches (held in Forlì, Trieste and prior to the National Council of National Fascist Party ) are now compared for the first time with contemporary antisemitic political language in Italy, especially in the aftermath of the Hamas Attack on the 7 October 2023. A rhetorical linguistic analysis of this uncommon comparison shows that the structure of old antisemitism remains in its new form. The main argument of this article is that the rhetorical figure of the ἐπανόρϑωσις can represent the whole antisemitic Mussolinian rhetoric in a symbolic manner, both in its formal and content terms. The Greek word ἐπανόρϑωσις, which means “correction” or “improvement”, is a useful tool here to demonstrate how Mussolini gradually developed hateful content in his discourse. Moreover, the ἐπανόρθωσις is morphologically functional to the construction of an enemy and the manipulation of the sense of words in order to achieve set political objectives. Finally, our assumption is that the current political antisemitic language is essentially a worsening of the previous language of Mussolini in 1938, due to the use of digital artifacts that subtly whisper antisemitism, like a whistling for a dog.

Connections of antisemitism and misogyny have been widely examined from the present back to the 19th century. Going back to pre-Christian antiquity the article examines connections between exclusion and suppression of female and Jewish humans. Antique Greek tales of male child killing by Amazons and roman infanticidal practices correspond to accusations of Jewish human sacrifice. The age of crusades generated the blood libel and fixed it to the feminized, menstruating Jewish man. Pogroms, witch trials and Hexenhammer use the same words to accuse females and Jews of witchcraft, non-reproductive medicine and sexuality, as Jews and witches are marked with the same iconography. Finally post Shoa narration invents the Jewish witch and infanticidal Jewish mother.

In recent years (since approx. 2018), a new genre for the dissemination of far-right concepts, ideological fragments and argumentation patterns has developed within the spectrum of the far right, or more precisely: its (mostly male) intellectual protagonists, ‘masterminds’ and international networkers. Books as well as weblogs are published that arouse the impression of being academical and seem to be presenting academic texts in Philosophy, Theology or Social Ethics, but actually spread identitarian and anti-universalist world views, trivialise extreme right ideologies of inequality and even serve to normalize far-right terminology, Nazi rhetoric and antisemitic conspiracy narratives. Protagonists of the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement , as well as the international traditionalistic (and extrem right) Movement for Tradition, Family and Property TFP and philosophers of a post-liberal Neo-Integralism seem united, with the aim of an authoritarian society. One such weblog, europa-aeterna.org , and a text published there (Godehard Michaelis, “Volk und Nation aus biblisch-theologischer Sicht”) will be analysed as an example.

During the last years, the rejection of Israel has become an identity-forming factor in left-winged movements: Anti-fascist, queer and climate-protection groups perceive activism against Israel as an element of connection. Anti-Israel and antisemitic messages spread via social media at high speed and find new followers especially in the Generation Z. The authors of this content are using recurring visual-rhethoric techniques which will be analysed in the present text. The visual strategies are divided in three categories: First the ones that emphasize diversity, inclusion and human rights which makes them connectable to a young, unradicalised audience. Second, strategies that advertise with left-winged revolutionary romanticism and use freedom fighter aesthetics of militant movements. Third, content that appeals to an arabic-muslim collective identity and uses folkish and religious symbols. In addition, the text shows how propaganda motifs of the Hamas are used and differently interpreted by different groups. Finally, the question is raised to what extent the anti-Israel-activism actually tries to help the people in the Palestinian territories and wether the authoritarian longing for a group identity plays a role for many activists.

Following Raymond Williams’ notion of keywords, we explore the extent to which antisemitism is part of the cultural and social vocabulary of Britain, explicitly and implicitly. We establish a conception of rhetoric as the theory-praxis of becoming attentive to speech and its workings in individual and collective life, both in speaking as well as in listening. In the form of a dialogic exploration of the articulation of antisemitism in individual, lived experience, we explore how what is said and what is not said determines cultural memory, belonging, identity and difference. The resulting text puts the new conception of rhetoric we propose into practice. Antisemitism emerges as a keyword in the discursive formations regarding particularity, embodiment and care. It thus transcends the bounds of ethnic, religious or migrant discrimination and shows us an essential feature of the nature of human communication.