"Concern about antisemitism in the U.S. has grown following recent rises in deadly assaults, vandalism, and harassment. Public accounts of antisemitism have focused on both the ideological right and left, suggesting a “horseshoe theory” in which the far left and the far right hold a common set of anti-Jewish prejudicial attitudes that distinguish them from the ideological center. However, there is little quantitative research evaluating left-wing versus right-wing antisemitism. We conducted several experiments on an original survey of 3500 U.S. adults, including an oversample of young adults. We oversampled young adults because unlike other forms of prejudice that are more common among older people, antisemitism is theorized to be more common among younger people. Contrary to the expectation of horseshoe theory, the data show the epicenter of antisemitic attitudes is young adults on the far right."
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"Right-wing antisemitism and left-wing antisemitism are not identical. In the far-right mentality, Jews are viewed as people pretending to be white—“a faux-white race that has tainted America”
13—or disloyal white people—“the ultimate betrayers of the white race” (
Weiss, 2019, 68). American Jews are distinctive in that they are high in socioeconomic status and mostly identify as white, but unlike others with those attributes, they are liberal in their social views and supportive of racial equality and immigration (
Smith and Schapiro 2019;
Smith 2013). Prior work has argued that American Jewish liberalism is not a coincidence, but in fact, a political manifestation of Jewish identity—the distinct history of Jewish oppression may have led to prioritizing equality and support for marginalized groups (
Forman 1998;
Brodkin 1998). Conservatives might feel negatively towards Jews if they perceive Jewish religious values to be in direct conflict with their preferred conservative policy stances."
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"Research on left-wing antisemitism suggests some commonalities with antisemitism on the right. As mentioned, populism and anti-capitalism may trigger anti-Jewish tropes and scapegoating on the left just as on the right. The political left—typically sympathetic to oppressed minorities—may see Jews not as an oppressed religious group but instead as oppressors due to stereotypes of Jews’ involvement in capitalism or to solidarity with Palestinians in the Israel/Palestine conflict (
Lerner 1992)."
