Semitic category/race concept

A nineteenth- and early twentieth-century racial-linguistic concept that grouped Jews and Arabs (and other peoples) under a single “Semitic” racial/ethno-linguistic category. Claims treat it as an intellectual construct—an abstraction built on Christian and state-backed foundations—whose internal asymmetry and differentiation between Jew and Arab ultimately proved unstable and led to its collapse.

Claims that use this term

• The Semitic myth gains force when allied with state institutions
• The Semitic category’s inner asymmetry between Jew and Arab predetermined its collapse
• The Semitic race concept was an abstraction, not a political reality, before 1914
• The Semitic idea’s Christian foundation sowed its own eventual split into Jew and Arab