On October 7, the LIFE Research Group will hold a seminar in collaboration with the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology at Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon, on Authoritarian Anti-Semitism. The guest speaker will be Peter Ullrich (Universität Berlin). The event will take place online, starting at 11:00 a.m.

Much has been written about the events of 7 October 2023, including about what they brought to light, such as the lack of empathy for the victims of the Hamas attack on the part of sections of the campist Left. And yet, the friend-enemy binary is not only to be found among the campist troops of Israel’s opponents. On the contrary, the second-order Middle East conflict quickly reached a new level. In a downright “moral panic” (della Porta 2024), there was soon a tendency, mirroring the above, to suspect antisemitism behind every expression of (pro-)Palestinian perspectives and demands and of compassion for the Palestinian victims of Israel’s war in Gaza (which quickly turned into a war crime with genocidal tendencies), and ultimately, to impute an antisemitic motivation to every form of activism against what’s going on in Gaza.

What is new about the current constellation is the scope and depth of this misguided anti-antisemitism and, in particular, the degree to which it has become bureaucratized — and hence the degree to which the debate over the Middle East conflict has become the object of juridification and securitization. This means that the space of what is considered to be debatable in public is increasingly being governed by (quasi-)law, monitored by law enforcement agencies and treated as a problem of social order rather than a political problem. Only obliquely is this about fighting actual antisemitism, and involves other aims as well. Above all, it is a trend that is attaching to other illiberal tendencies, embedding itself in and reinforcing an authoritarian turn, even if not always intentionally. That is why I call it authoritarian anti-antisemitism (Ullrich 2024). The (geographical/political) focus of the presentation will be Germany. 

Peter Ullrich, Dr. phil. Dr. rer. med. is a sociologist/cultural scientist at Technische Universität Berlin (senior researcher at the Centre for Technology and Society and fellow at the Center for Research on Antisemitism), fields of research: antisemitism and debates about antisemitism, social movements and protest policing; recent publication “What is Antisemitism? Concepts and Definitions of Jew-Hatred” (Co-editor, Göttingen 2024).

References:

della Porta, Donatella (2024): Moral Panic and Repression: the contentious politics of anti-semitism in Germany. In: PArtecipazione e COnflitto, The Open Journal of Sociopolitical Studies, 17(2), 276-349. DOI: 10.1285/i20356609v17i2p276

Ullrich, Peter (2024): Anti-Antisemitism Is Fuelling an Authoritarian Climate in GermanyAnalysis, Rosa-Luxemburg Stiftung.