A New Wave of Hatred
Der Standard, June 1, 2024
German original: https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000222359/eine-neue-welle-von-hass
Antisemitism and right-wing extremism are becoming more prominent again
Column
Hans Rauscher
In Saxony-Anhalt, in the district of Anhalt-Bitterfeld, three young people burned a copy of Anne Frank's diary. The incident fits in with the recent accumulation of antisemitic, racist and Nazi-friendly events in Europe, especially in Germany and Austria.
But it has a special quality, of which more in a moment. The headlines are currently dominated by the “foreigners out” riots of the more or less privileged youth in discos on Sylt or in Carinthia. What is being spouted to the sound of an Italo hit could perhaps be explained as follows: Young people of both sexes are obviously letting out their deep-seated resentments about the immigration of young, often quite aggressive men from the Middle East; one could almost speak of “territorial warfare.”
Antisemitism, which is also rampant, has overlaps, but is not quite the same thing. On the one hand, there is of course massive antisemitism on the part of Muslim immigrants; but alongside this, there is a new antisemitism on the part of the “natives” that demands more intensive examination.
The East German boys between 15 and 16 must have been aware of the symbolic significance of the diary of Anne Frank, who was almost the same age: The girl from a German-Jewish family hid from the Nazis in a Secret Annex in Amsterdam and wrote down her thoughts before she was betrayed to the Gestapo in 1944 and murdered in 1945. And they must have deliberately obtained this world-famous book in order to make an antisemitic gesture.
A few years ago, members of the ÖVP-affiliated action group at the Juridicum Vienna shared photos of “Anne Frank nudes”. They showed a pile of ashes. However, this deeply misogynistic and antisemitic perversity was perpetrated by young members of the middle and upper classes.
A study by TU Berlin, which analyzed the comments in the online editions of middle to upper class media such as Süddeutsche and FAZ, Le Monde and the Guardian, fits in with this. According to the study, hate comments have tripled and the tone has become much more aggressive. “On 7 October 2023, antisemitism suddenly emerged that is specifically characterized by the glorification of violence against Jews,” says Matthias Becker, head of the study.
Strongly Entrenched Antisemitism
The antisemitism taboo based on the memory of the Holocaust is presumably weakening among young people. Social media act as a multiplication machine and accelerant. The excessive war waged by the Israelis in Gaza allows a distorted “right-wing narrative.” The wave towards the right in Europe and the USA is taking antisemitism with it. And ultimately, it is probably the case that what has always been there and has never completely disappeared is becoming more visible today.
In an extremely revealing survey commissioned by Parliament in 2020, twelve percent of respondents agreed with the sentence: “It is not just a coincidence that the Jews have been persecuted so often in their history; at least in part, they themselves are to blame.” This paradigm of blame reversal roughly illustrates the extent of strongly entrenched antisemitism in Austria. (Hans Rauscher, 1.6.2024)