American anti-Semitism included lynching and night-rider violence against Jews

Evidence

Anti-Semitism was not merely rhetorical; it was also violent. During the depression of the late nineteenth century, for example, Jewish families and businesses were attacked by night riders. Two decades later in 1915, the lynching of Leo Frank in Georgia brought to light the deep roots of anti-Semitism. Convicted of murdering a fourteen-year-old Christian girl, Frank was sentenced to hang. When the governor of Georgia commuted Frank’s sentence to life in prison, the public outcry led to Frank’s lynching by vigilante White supremacists. While the lynching of Jews is not commensurate with the systematic racist violence inflicted on African Americans, Jews’ subjugation to the most violent form of American racism evinces the extent to which they were treated as outsiders. By the Great Depression, more than one hundred anti-Semitic groups existed. Like the surge in Islamophobic organizations after 9/11, their activities contributed to the spread of anti-Semitism among the public. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 268

Categorization

• XREF: The Leo Frank lynch mob parallels post-9/11 vigilante violence against Muslims and Sikhs misidentified as Muslim (e.g., the Balbir Singh Sodhi murder). — connects to: American social anti-Semitism was more pervasive but softer than European varieties. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1545