In search of Experimental Evidence for Secondary Antisemitism

In 1955, Adorno attributed antisemitic sentiments voiced by Germans to a paradox projection: The only latently experienced feelings of guilt were warded off by antisemitic defense mecha- nisms. Similar predictions of increases in antisemitic prejudice in response to increased Holo- caust salience follow from other theoretical apparatuses (e.g., social identity theory as well as just-world theory). Based on the – to the best of our knowledge – only experimental evidence for such an effect (published in Psychological Science in 2009), the present research reports a series of studies originally conducted to better understand the contribution of the different assumed mechanisms. In light of a failure to replicate the basic effect, however, the studies shifted to an effort to demonstrate the basic process. We report all studies our lab has con- ducted on the issue. Overall, the data did not provide any evidence for the original effect. In addition to the obvious possibility of an original false positive, we speculate what might be responsible for this conceptual replication failure.

In search of experimental evidence for secondary antisemitism - A file drawer report - version 1

In 1955, Adorno attributed antisemitic sentiments voiced by Germans to a paradox projection: The only latently experienced feeling of guilt were warded off by antisemitic defense mechanisms. Similar predictions of increases in antisemitic prejudiced in response to increased Holocaust salience could also be based on other theoretical apparatuses from social identity theory as well as just world theory. Based on the – to our best knowledge –only experimental evidence for such an effect (published in Psychological Science in 2009), the present research reports a series of studies originally conducted to better understand the contribution of the different assumed mechanisms. In light of a failure to replicate the basic effect, however, the studies shifted to an effort to demonstrate the basic process. We report all studies our lab has conducted on the issue. Overall, the data did not provide any evidence for the original effect. In addition to the obvious possibility of an original false positive, we speculate what might be responsible for this conceptual replication failure.

Antisemitism in the Twenty-first Century

Antisemitism is a much more complex phenomenon than most scholars in the field and nonexperts might expect or think. Antisemitism is not just a subcategory of hatred, racism, or bigotry. The Shoah was not a genocide “among others,” as many scholars in the field of “comparative genocide studies” or “postcolonial studies” insinuate or even proclaim as a truism.Today, antisemitism appears mostly in three forms: (1) “traditional” antisemitism, both religious and racial, including anti-Judaism, blood libels, and conspiracy myths, among countless other tropes; (2) Holocaust denial, distortion and obfuscation, relativization, and universalization; and (3) hatred of Israel or anti-Zionist antisemitism. Post-Holocaust antisemitism is also framed as “secondary antisemitism,” insofar as it is related to the time after Auschwitz. Secondary antisemitism is related to the distortion or obfuscation of the Shoah and to project German guilt onto the Allies or the Jews and to minimize or trivialize German guilt.The new Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism (JCA) initiated by Academic Studies Press will focus primarily on manifestations of twenty-first-century antisemitism. However, many forms of today’s antisemitism are not manifest at all but appear in hidden or coded forms. Of course, the many forms of antisemitism intertwine to make antisemitism not only the “longest hatred” and a “lethal obsession” (Robert S. Wistrich), but also a most flexible ideology. Accusing the Jewish people of both capitalism and communism is a case in point. Antisemitism is a “specific phenomenon,” as I have framed it in Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon (2013).

Secondary Antisemitism, the Economic Crisis and the Construction of National Identity in the Austrian Print Media

This paper deals with the question of antisemitism in relation to the construction of national identity in late capitalist and post-Nazi societies. Its argument centres on the concept of ‘secondary antisemitism’, as developed within the Critical Theory tradition. Thus, I will elaborate on the complex relationships between post-Nazi antisemitism, the culture industry and the radical destruction of memory in late capitalist societies. The aim is to show the contemporary relevance of secondary antisemitism beyond the immediate context of the task of remembering the Nazi past. In the second section of this paper I will illustrate this by an analysis of examples from print media debates in Austria on the recent financial crisis and show that instances of secondary antisemitism are utilized for the discursive construction of an exclusive national(ist) unity.