Recognizing the ‘Grammar’ of Terms

‘What is the meaning of a word?’ This is the disarming sentence that opens the Blue Book, which Ludwig Wittgenstein dictated to students at Cambridge University in 1933–1934. In a way, it is the sentence that ushers in the later period of his philosophical thought, which occupied him until his death in 1951. Wittgenstein's question goes to the very idea of a word – any word – having a meaning. So, it could be glossed this way: What do we mean by the meaning of a word?

This might lead us to expect an answer in the abstract, a general theory of linguistic meaning. But this is precisely the approach to philosophy that Wittgenstein kicks against in this work and throughout his later period. The opening sentence of the Blue Book turns out to be a point of departure for a long and winding path of philosophical investigation into what – idiosyncratically – he calls the ‘grammar’ of words. Roughly, this means paying close attention to their actual use in the ordinary employment of language. He pursues this activity not for its own sake but with a view to ‘clearing misunderstandings away’. But where do the misunderstandings of which he speaks come from? They arise, paradoxically, from language itself, from certain formal properties that ‘tempt’ us into conceptual confusion. ‘Philosophy, as we use the word,’ says Wittgenstein, ‘is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.’

I mention this because disentangling anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism begins with recognizing a difference in the ‘grammar’ of the two terms, a difference that we are tempted to overlook due to the fact that the two expressions share a similar form. We are subject in this case (to quote Wittgenstein again) to ‘the fascination which the analogy between two similar structures in our language can exert on us.’ Andrei Markovits, Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Michigan, takes it for granted that anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism belong to the same logical category: ‘Both are “isms”,’ he says, ‘which indicate they are institutionalized and commonly used as a modern ideology.’ Similarly, Josef Joffe asks, ‘What is the difference between criticism and anti-Semitism or anti-Americanism? What, indeed, are the elements of any “anti-ism”?’ Both Markovits and Joffe assume that there is a class of concepts called ‘isms’ or ‘anti-isms’, all of which are on the same logical footing. This is a natural assumption to make: the structural analogy is strong, and it is tempting to think that words with the same form perform a similar function. But in the case of ‘anti-Americanism’ and ‘anti-Semitism’, appearances are misleading.

One way of revealing the underlying difference is to remove the affixes ‘anti’ and ‘ism’ from both words. A little reflection will show that the bits in the middle are not logically equivalent. There is such a thing as America: it is an existing political state. The territory, government, institutions, people, culture and history: these are among the many things that the words ‘America’ and ‘American’ denote. But what – in the real world – corresponds to the words ‘Semite’ and ‘Semitic’? Nothing. There is a black hole at the heart of the word ‘anti-Semitism’; or perhaps I should say a yellow star. Let me explain.

During the Second World War, the Nazis used a yellow Star of David to identify Jews as Jewish. But what did ‘Jewish’ mean? Imre Kertész, the Hungarian-Jewish writer who survived a Nazi concentration camp, reflects on his wartime experience in his essay ‘The Freedom of Self-Definition’. ‘In 1944,’ he writes, ‘they put a yellow star on me, which in a symbolic sense is still there; to this day I have not been able to remove it.’ What he is unable to remove is the meaning of the word ‘Jew’ that the Nazis invested in the badge. He recalls Montesquieu's dictum ‘First I am a human being, and then a Frenchman’ and comments: ‘The racist … wants me to be first a Jew and then not to be a human being any more.’ In a brilliant dialectical riff, Kertész works through the implications for the victim: ‘[A]fter a while,’ he says, ‘it's not ourselves we're thinking about but somebody else.’ That is to say, the self that we think about is not our own: I am not my own person. ‘In a racist environment,’ he concludes, ‘a Jew cannot be human, but he cannot be a Jew either. For “Jew” is an unambiguous designation only in the eyes of anti-Semites.’

This is how I understand Kertész: he is saying that the yellow star was not just a form of identification, picking him out as a Jew, but a whole identity. Pinning the star to his breast, they were pinning down the word ‘Jewish’, determining what it means. This meaning or identity – this ‘unambiguous designation’ – belonged to the Nazis, not to the Jews, not to him.

When I say that a yellow star lies at the heart of the word ‘anti-Semitism’, what I mean is this: the star stands for – designates – that ‘Jewish’ identity which was in the Nazis' possession and which they pinned on Jews. And I call this a black hole because this identity is unreal: it corresponds to nothing. By which I do not mean that no Jews can be found who fit the anti-Semitic stereotype. But this stereotype is a construction, not a description; it does not describe what Jews are like but prescribes what they must be like. The ‘Semite’ or ‘Jew’ that is the object of the anti-Semite's animus is essentially unreal: the product, not just the object, of that animus or of the ideology informing it. (The point I am making here is about the logic of the stereotype, not its genesis or the sources on which it draws, which might or might not be altogether imaginary.) Simply, there is no Semitism without anti-Semitism.

But there is an America – and even Americanism – with or without anti-Americanism.

The difference to which I am pointing is reflected in a difference in the orthography of the words ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘anti-Americanism’; or rather, in the fact that there is a question about the one but not the other. Which is the right spelling: ‘anti-Semitic’, ‘anti-semitic’ or ‘antisemitic’? Opting for the third alternative, the Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer remarks (very much in the spirit of what I have been arguing): ‘Antisemitism, especially in its hyphenated spelling, is inane nonsense, because there is no Semitism that you can be anti to.’ The authors of a landmark report on anti-Semitism in the European Union, published by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia in 2004, also prefer the solid version of the word. In their view, it helps avoid ‘the problem of reifying (and thus affirming) the existence of races in general and a “Semitic race” in particular’. Perhaps; although this might be over-estimating the power of a hyphen or the efficacy of removing one. Be that as it may, my point is this: No one would think of questioning the spelling ‘anti-Americanism’ on the grounds that it reifies America or that it affirms the existence of states; for there is such a thing as America, and states, as it happens, exist.

The argument I am making is open to the objection that the difference to which I am drawing attention, though real, is irrelevant. Yes, America is part of the external world. But the ‘America’ that is the object of anti-Americanism is as much a fiction as the ‘Jew’ who is hated by the anti-Semite. Such is the drift of the literature under discussion.

Or is it? There is some confusion in the literature on this point. Take, for example, the sociologist Paul Hollander, author of the classic Anti-Americanism. In his Introduction to the anthology Understanding Anti-Americanism, he says that it is a ‘premise’ of the book ‘that a proper understanding of anti-Americanism can only be achieved by balancing two apparently incompatible perspectives or propositions’. On the one hand, there is the view that anti-Americanism is ‘a direct and rational response to the evident misdeeds of the United States abroad and its shortcomings and inequities at home’. On the other hand, in the opposing view, it is ‘a largely groundless, irrational predisposition (similar to racism, sexism, or anti-Semitism), an expression of a deeply rooted scapegoating impulse …’ In the first view, the ‘America’ that is the object of anti-Americanism is the real thing; in the second view, it is (essentially) fictitious.

Having pointed out this duality, Hollander goes on to say, confusingly, that only those described by the second view ‘qualify for the designation of “anti-American”’. Which means that the first view of anti-Americanism is just wrong. Which obviates the need to balance the two views – which is (he says) the premise of his book. This is the logical equivalent of slipping on your own banana skin. It is the result, I suggest, of being pulled in two opposite directions by two different considerations. One is the actual use of the word ‘anti-Americanism’, which, in its ordinary employment, fits positions covered by both of the views that Hollander outlines. The other is the a priori conviction that ‘anti-ism’ words must function in the same way; in which case only the second view can be right.

In practice, we use the term ‘anti-American’ quite differently from the way we use the term ‘anti-Semitic’. For one thing, it is much looser, covering a multitude of views that lack a common denominator and might even conflict with each other. One person might oppose American foreign policy in the Middle East, another might reject certain values associated with the United States, and both could be called ‘anti-American’; yet each might denounce the other's anti-Americanism! Furthermore, there could be good reasons for their anti-American views; or at least reasons which, though insufficient or poor, do not necessarily signify an underlying bigotry. The same, however, cannot be said about anti-Semitism; this, perhaps, is the principal difference between the two concepts. In any event, as I said earlier, looking below the surfaces of these words and recognizing the differences in their ‘grammars’, we begin to disentangle the one concept from the other.

Anatomizing the ‘New’ Anti-Semitism

In much of the literature that I am critiquing, there is a mediating factor that links anti-Americanism to anti-Semitism: hostility to Israel and Zionism. The basic argument tends to go along these lines:

1. 1. Hostility to America is inseparable from hostility to Israel and Zionism.

2. 2. Hostility to Israel and Zionism constitutes a new kind of anti-Semitism.

3. 3. (So), anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are inseparable.

Is this argument sound? If we grant the two premises, then the conclusion certainly seems to follow. On the face of it, the first premise overstates the case, although it is true that America and Israel are often bracketed together as objects of opprobrium, especially in connection with conflicts in the Middle East. But it is the second premise on which I shall dwell, especially the conceptual issues that it raises, since this is the bridge that connects anti-Americanism to anti-Semitism.

The second premise says that there is a kind of anti-Semitism that is new, which implies, of course, the existence of an older variety and a contrast between them. This invites two questions: (i) What makes them different kinds of anti-Semitism? (ii) What makes both of them kinds of anti-Semitism? Let us consider these two questions in turn.

In ‘The Hatred that Won't Die’ (Guardian, 28 February 2002), Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Britain and the Commonwealth, describes anti-Semitism as ‘undeniably the most successful ideology of modern times’. He explains: ‘Its success is due to the fact that, like a virus, it mutates. At times it has been directed against Jews as individuals. Today it is directed against Jews as a sovereign people.’ This is the standard account of the difference between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’, and the metaphor of the mutating virus is ubiquitous. Gabriel Schoenfeld develops it into a full-blown conceit: he speaks of ‘an unexpected twist in the helix of anti-Semitism's DNA’. But note the title of his book: The Return of Anti-Semitism. Oddly, those who champion the view that there is a new kind of anti-Semitism emphasize that what we are witnessing is the return of something old; it is the object of this hatred which, according to them, is new.

But firstly, it is not true that the focus of anti-Semitism in the past was primarily on Jews as individuals. The periodic expulsions of Jews from European cities and states were directed against whole communities; while the aim of the Nazi Final Solution was to eliminate the Jewish People as such. Furthermore, in the anti-Semitic construction of the ‘Jew’, there are, in a way, no individuals: the Jewish People are seen precisely as a collective that acts as one. If the Jewish state (‘Jews as a sovereign people’) is a relatively new object of anti-Semitic attack, this is only because Israel is a relatively new entity. In essence, it is just another example of a Jewish collective.

Secondly, in any case, a new object is not a new kind. Hostility to Israel and Zionism would constitute a new kind of anti-Semitism if and only if it were qualitatively different from the old; if, for example, it entailed a modified image of the ‘Jew’. (I shall touch on this possibility later.) But, as I have been saying, when the authors in question talk about a ‘new kind’ of anti-Semitism they mean the return of the same old motifs, with Israel cast in the role of ‘the world's Jew’. They hear the thud of Nazi jackboots, the splintering of glass on Kristallnacht, and declare that the nightmare is back – but centered on the Jewish state. But in this case, they need a different metaphor: not a virus that mutates, changing its properties, but one that migrates, relocating from one organism to another.

They can, however, maintain their basic argument – that anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are inseparable – by amending the second premise thus:

1. 2. Hostility to Israel and Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism.

This revised version of the second premise sidesteps the question of whether, or in what sense, the focus on the Jewish state is ‘new’. As mediating between the first premise and the conclusion, it cannot be asserting merely this: ‘Hostility to Israel and Zionism can, but need not, be a form of anti-Semitism’, but must be asserting this: ‘Hostility to Israel and Zionism is, always or as such, a form of anti-Semitism.’ Is this premise true? This brings us to question (ii), which goes to the heart of the matter, and which we can now put concisely as: What is anti-Semitism?

A simple working definition of anti-Semitism is this: hostility to Jews as Jews (or for the reason that they are Jews). The definition is imprecise but, as the historian Tony Kushner has said, it is ‘a useful tool’. So, let us utilize it to weigh the second premise. Consider the following two statements: (a) ‘Hostility to Israel is anti-Semitic for the reason that Israel is a Jewish state.’ (b) ‘Hostility to Israel for the reason that Israel is a Jewish state is anti-Semitic.’ There is a sharp logical difference between these two statements, and, by our working definition, (a) is false and (b) is true. Accordingly, we can say that hostility to Israel and Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism only when the Jewishness of the state or the movement is the underlying reason (or one underlying reason) for this hostility.

I specify ‘underlying’ in view of a beguiling argument that goes like this: ‘If anti-Zionism means opposing Israel (either its creation or its continued existence or both) as a Jewish state, and if anti-Semitism means hostility to Jews as Jews, it follows that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism.’ But this argument is fallacious. The description ‘opposing Israel as a Jewish state’ does not necessarily get to the underlying objection on the part of the anti-Zionist. There is a difference between opposing the existence of the state because it is Jewish, simpliciter, and opposing it because, as Jewish, it is not, say, Muslim. In the latter case, the Jewishness of the state is neither here nor there; the state would face the same kind of hostility if it were, say, Christian. Indeed, the Medieval Crusader states, which were Christian, did face the same kind of hostility; and in radical Islamist rhetoric, Israel is often called a ‘crusader state’. This suggests that it is not on account of its Jewishness per se that the existence of Israel is anathema to such people. By the same token, Arab nationalists might oppose the existence of Israel as a Jewish state because, as Jewish, it is not Arab. Which is neither to justify their hostility nor the grounds on which it is based. The point is purely analytical. Anti-Zionism, insofar as it is a reaction against the non-Muslim or non-Arab nature of the state of Israel, is not a form of anti-Semitism.

A similar line of reasoning applies where anti-Zionism is grounded in the view that Israel, as a Western settler state, is a form of European colonialism or a tool of American imperialism or both. (This is a common view of Israel not only in the Arab Middle East and the wider Muslim world but also in certain sections of the left in the West.) Again, our question is not whether this view of Israel is true or adequate (which it is not), but whether, by our working definition, it is anti-Semitic; which it is not. So, once again, anti-Zionism, in and of itself, is not a form of anti-Semitism.

There is a familiar objection that takes the form of saying that anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli sentiment is a form of anti-Semitism in disguise. In the opening chapter of her book The New Anti-Semitism, Phyllis Chesler claims that ‘hidden behind that smoke screen of anti-Israeli fervor is, as we shall see, a familiar hatred of the Jew, the “other,” the Christ killer, the Elder of Zion: the powerful, secret, international conspirator, the pariah and scapegoat of the Earth.’ Or as one correspondent to the Guardian put it: anti-Semitism is ‘usually hidden under the mask of anti-Zionism’. Whether or not this is true, it is not a valid objection to the argument I have been making. On the contrary, it tends to confirm it. A mask whose appearance is identical with what it is masking is no mask. (This would be like a wolf in wolf's clothing.) So, if anti-Zionism can function as a mask, hiding the ‘familiar hatred of the Jew’, this implies that, in and of itself, it is not anti-Semitic.

Nonetheless, the objection is not redundant. It says, in effect, that hostility to Israel and Zionism, though not inherently anti-Semitic, is so in practice because it conceals an anti-Semitic animus. Indeed, sometimes it does; and for that matter, the animus is not always concealed. If, on inspection, it turns out to be the case that this animus, whether concealed or manifest, is a recurring feature of anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli discourse, this might save the argument that anti-Americanism is inseparable from anti-Semitism (It would shore up the amended version of the second premise in that argument.) But how can we tell? What criteria should we apply?

Let us recall our working definition of anti-Semitism: hostility to Jews as Jews (or for the reason that they are Jews). This is a useful formula provided we keep in mind the anti-Semitic image of the ‘Jew’ that the Nazis evoked with the yellow star and which Chesler begins to unpack when she describes the ‘familiar hatred’. For, though the Nazis racialized and embellished it, the image of the ‘Jew’ was not their invention. The main lineaments, which were part of the general culture of Europe, were transmitted from generation to generation down the centuries. Knowing that this is anti-Semitism, we know what to look for in anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist discourse: language or graphics that portray Israel for the reason that it is a Jewish state (or Zionism for the reason that it is a Jewish movement) as the enemy of the human race, bent on ruling the world for its own diabolical ends, mysteriously controlling the world's banks and media, and so on.

If a given text is ambiguous, then we must scrutinize the context to determine whether these themes are present. If they are concealed, there are ways of bringing them to light by calling on evidence from other sources. (We might look at other literature produced by the group or person in question; their history; their political connections; and so on.) This is, perhaps, more an art than a science, and there will often be room for argument in a given case. But it is still a disciplined exercise, controlled by criteria derived from the anti-Semitic image of the ‘Jew’, to which our working definition implicitly alludes. So far, so clear.

However, today there is a new kind of hostility to Jews as Jews, one that is based on the controversial nature of the state of Israel and its policies, rather than on ancient or medieval European ideas about Jews. Israel, for its part, promotes itself as the state of ‘the Jewish people’, where in some sense this includes all Jews everywhere, even if they do not take up citizenship. Reciprocally, many Jews around the world, precisely as Jews, align themselves conspicuously with the Jewish state. From these facts there arises, in certain circles that are hostile to Israel or Zionism on moral or political grounds, hostility against all Jews as Jews. This is an unwarranted generalization; as such, it is a prejudice. But this prejudice is not rooted in the image of the ‘Jew’ associated with the ‘familiar hatred’. It is a new phenomenon.

Furthermore, with Israel seen as an occupying power that is both expansionist and oppressive, this hostility is sometimes associated with an image of Jews as brutal thugs who use their physical and military might to crush those who are weaker. So, there are signs that a new anti-Jewish stereotype might be developing. But, if so, it has its own aetiology; it is not produced by modifying the old anti-Semitic figure of the ‘Jew’. It is not a mutation of a pre-existing ‘virus’ but a brand new ‘bug’.

We can, if we like, call this new phenomenon a ‘new kind’ of anti-Semitism. But does this help us understand the place that it occupies in the constellation of conflicts in which Jews, as Jews, are involved? Wittgenstein remarks, ‘Say what you choose, so long as it does not prevent you from seeing the facts.’ Given that the word ‘anti-Semitism’ is so emotive; given that invariably it connotes ‘the familiar hatred of the Jew’; given the tendency to see anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist sentiment as the return of this hatred; and given that the old hatred has never gone away: given all these things, extending the reach of the word ‘anti-Semitism’ is unwise. Or, if inevitable (because no Canute can stem the tide of language), it is unfortunate, for it is liable to prevent us from seeing the facts for what they are.

Whatever we call it, this new phenomenon – a prejudice against Jews that derives from hostility to Israel and Zionism rather than vice versa – ‘is what it is and not another thing’ (to apply Bishop Butler's elegant truism). In particular, it is not a form of anti-Semitism in the usual and established sense of that word. The same can be said for a host of motives and reasons that might underlie the antagonism that people feel towards the Jewish state or the ideology of Jewish nationalism. Put it this way: hostility to Israel and Zionism can be a form of anti-Semitism, but it can also express many other things: a commitment to human rights and international law; sympathy for the Palestinian cause; an Islamist agenda; a view about the best kind of future for Jews and Palestinians in the area west of the Jordan River; a conviction about the conditions for peaceful co-existence for states in the region; a general antipathy to ethno-nationalism; a particular objection to construing Jewish identity in ethno-national terms; and so on, and so forth. And none of these considerations (whatever their validity or otherwise) is, in and of itself, a form of anti-Semitism.

It is unreasonable, not to say irrational, to discount such considerations and to jump to the conclusion that the hidden hand of anti-Semitism lies behind hostility to Israel and Zionism. (It is also wrong to construe all criticism, opposition and anger as hostility.) If, however, someone thinks otherwise, if they see anti-Semites under (nearly) every bed, then the onus is on them to make a plausible case for their view. If they cannot do so (and how could they?), then the most that we can say is this: Hostility to Israel and Zionism is sometimes a form of anti-Semitism. But ‘sometimes’ is not enough to support the second premise of the argument that I have been evaluating. With the collapse of this premise, the whole argument – that anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are inseparable – falls apart.