Transformations in French Anti-Semitism

Abstract

The increase in the number of anti-Semitic acts since the start of the Second Intifada has sparked off a broad debate on the return of anti-Semitism in France. This article focuses on the question whether this anti-Semitism is still based on the alleged superiority of the Aryan race as in the time of Nazism, or if it represents the birth of a “new Judeophobia” that is more based on anti-Zionism and the polemical mixing of “Jews,” “Israelis,” and “Zionists.” One supposed effect of this transformation is that anti-Semitism is in the process of changing camps and migrating from the extreme right to the extreme left of the political arena, to the “altermondialistes,” the communists, and the “neo-Trotskyists.”