Expert warns of a 'perfect antisemitic storm' masked as anti-Zionism in 2024

Professor Christer Mattson, a radicalization expert, addressed attendees of the EJA Auschwitz delegation.

By MATHILDA HELLER NOVEMBER 19, 2024 17:04

Professor Christer Mattson and David Lega at the 2024 EJA conference in Krakow. (photo credit: MATHILDA HELLER)

The current global situation for Jews is a "perfect antisemitic storm," Professor Christer Mattson, the Director of the Segerstedt Institute at the University of Gothenburg, claimed at the 2024 European Jewish Association Auschwitz delegation on Monday.

Mattson, an expert on radicalization and antisemitism, explained how the idea of a perfect storm - a geological term referring to a storm fueled by different sources at the same time - can be applied to antisemitism.

In his speech, Mattson drew on the different sources of antisemitism, such as the far left, the far right, Islamism, and traditional Christian anti-Jewishness, among others. In 2024, Mattson said, all of these are active at the same time, contributing to the rise in hate. 

Now, this antisemitism has taken the form of anti-Zionism, which those who hate Jews use to mask their hatred under an acceptable facade, he said.

He added that this masking has been prolific in regimes that wanted to make use of traditional antisemitism but without mentioning Jews, especially providing examples such as the USSR.

Protesters running after Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam (credit: REUTERS)

"Antisemitism is easier to sell without specifically referring to Jews," he said.

Antisemitism as anti-Zionism

Antisemitism, Mattson continued, "is not about Jews. It's about antisemites and their fantasies about Jews."

He referenced the famous 1946 quote by Jean-Paul Sartre that "If the Jew did not exist, the antisemite would invent him." 

"The Jew becomes whatever is needed, the communist, the cosmopolitan. If Christianity is the ultimate good in society, the Jew is the antichrist."

"Now, in 2024, human rights are the ultimate good, and the ultimate Jew is the Jew who is not a Zionist."

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Mattson referred to this as the "Israelification of antisemitism," whereby "Israelis become the collective global Jew."

What is the solution to this? For Mattson: "We teach, we educate."

"If we can't believe in education, what future can we believe in?"

Speaking ahead of the annual EJA visit of key diplomats and political figures to Auschwitz, 80 years since its liberation, Mattson said he did not believe that Birkenau was a death factory.

"It was a Nazi dream factory."

"They mass-produced their vision of a Europe without Jews," he added.

Mattson stated that, to "a large extent," the Nazis succeeded. 

He referenced the drastic decrease in the Jewish populations of cities in Europe, such as that of Rhodes, Greece, which used to have a thriving Jewish population - at its peak, numbering around 5000 - and which is now believed to be fewer than 20.

"Auschwitz is more present in Rhodes, in Germany, in Sweden, than it is in Auschwitz itself," Mattson concluded.