As a topic for research, contemporary antisemitism has never been more popular, with a plurality of scholars, publications and projects attracted to this fast-expanding field. This interest is closely connected to antisemitism become a major topic of debate and political contestation in many countries, often as a consequence of research showing an increase in antisemitic incidents and discourse. Octover 7 2023 and its aftermath has deepened these trends. Yet what are the absences and limitations of this field? This paper draws in part on an extensive mapping exercise of the field as it exists in Europe, drawing on the holdings of the European Jewish Research Archive. This research shows how  antisemitism studies is fragmented, with frequent duplication of effort and ‘entrepreneurialism’ in the foundation of new and competing organisations and projects. In addition, there are striking absences and under-explored areas in antisemitism research. These include detailed studies of how antisemitism impacts on the everyday lives of Jews and research on how antisemitism is understood and ‘policed’ within particular institutions.

The centerpiece of today’s apologetics for antisemitism is the denotational account of antisemitism. In the denotational account, antisemitism is when individuals mentally refer to or denote Jews in negative ways, as opposed to Israel or other persons or institutions. The denotational account makes antisemitism an empirically unobservable phenomenon, since it is impossible to know in any given instance if an individual is ultimately referring to “Jews” or “Israel.” While criticisms of Israel may code hostility to Jews as such (as the Jerusalem Declaration (JDA) admits)), attacks on Jews might be interpreted simply as resistance to the policies of the State of Israel (as the JDA suggests). We distinguish the denotational account from a tropes-based analysis, which does not depend on demonstrating denotational reference, but rather on the presence of identifiable antisemitic tropes (metaphors) in discourse associated with violence against Jews. Whereas the the denotational account is methodologically individualist and naively psychologizing, the tropes-based analysis points to an empirical historical pattern in which a specific type of discourse drives violence. Both JDA and the Nexus Project rely on the denotational account, while the IHRA is still vague as to whether it uses denotation or tropes-analysis, implying that a new definition should be considered.

As an ideology that also stems from socialization in Western societies itself, anti-Semitism cannot be captured, let alone combated, with uncritically applied means of research. In a scientific community in which the primacy of statistics degrades theory to a mere appendage of methodology, anti-Semitism is usually operationalized as prejudice.  With the help of a systematic literature review, the empirical evidence of various interventions was compared. While contact with Jews can reduce anti-Semitism under certain conditions, educational interventions without further contextualization are often even counter-productive.

To investigate these sobering results there will be a focus on the phantasized sado-masochistic relationship between the antisemite and his imagined Jewish victim. The projective and disavowing reference to reality of anti-Semites represents a specificity that cannot be absorbed in the concept of prejudice.  Following this considerations, the antisemitic establishment of an transitional inner space of perverse and self-destructive phantasies will be explained. These intrapsychic dynamics are specifically conveyed with external reinforcements and constitute a reality which feels like a nightmare. A testimony to the primary processuality of a way of thinking that is directed against itself.

Recently, racist and religious appearances of antisemitism have been becoming less relevant within antisemitic thought. On the other hand, antisemitic constructions around money and power persist, in which certain Jews, an imagined Jewish collective, or Israel direct world-spanning systems of political and economic governance. Two particular features of modern society are routinely and reflexively identified with Jewishness: the inter- and supranational organization of representative democratic politics and the organization of the economy as globalized capitalism. In examining the links between these phenomena and antisemitism, the focus has been on their abstractness and stand-in function for modernity itself provoking antisemitic explanations. This focus on abstractness neglects the question of legitimacy in modern power arrangements. This article aims to show that real legitimacy deficits in political and economic systems play an important part in contemporary antisemitic phenomena. Using empirical evidence gathered in Germany in the past years, the role real legitimacy deficits play in informing antisemitic constructs will be analyzed. This opens another avenue to explaining particular forms without losing sight of the basic dynamics they share with other forms of antisemitism, prominently the idea of Jews and Jewishness as ultimately illegitimate.