Antisemitic myths persist only when they can still articulate real anxieties

Evidence

Returning to the medieval period, it is remarkable how the tendency to approach ritual murder and blood libel accusations through attempts to prove or disprove them lasted throughout the twentieth century. Only recently have scholars attempted to understand the worldview of contemporaries that led to the holding of such phenomenal beliefs, even if there has been a recent revival in some academic works relating to Jews, those of color, and other minorities to blame the victims. Aside from this worrying tendency, the starting point for most contemporary scholarship is a desire to contextualize why particular allegations were made about Jews and other minorities, or why some allegations made in an earlier period (but not all) could be successfully revived and remolded, rather than to see the continuity of such imagery as an explanation in itself. Anxiety about the place and security of children, for example, continue in the modern world, but the construction of the Jew as child murderer can no longer be utilized successfully to articulate and displace such fears. Ambivalence is now the norm, and violence and exclusion the exception in responses to Jews in the contemporary world. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 524

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to the vault’s broader claims about how racial tropes get revived and remolded rather than merely persisting. — connects to: Contemporary antisemitism spreads by diffusion and adapts to local anxieties. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 227; Collective delusions like anti-Semitism persist because they function as tolerated outlets within a culture — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1793

Broader Connections

• Collective delusions like anti-Semitism persist because they function as tolerated outlets within a culture #corroborates (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1793
• Contemporary antisemitism spreads by diffusion and adapts to local anxieties. #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 227