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Antisemitism is on the rise in Europe, sometimes manifesting in violent acts against Jews, but more commonly noticeable in everyday discourse. This innovative empirical study examines written examples of antisemitism in contemporary Germany. Drawing on 14,000 letters and e-mails sent between 2002 and 2012 to the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the Israeli embassy in Berlin, as well communications sent between 2010 and 2011 to Israeli embassies across Europe, the authors show how language plays a crucial role in activating antisemitism across a broad spectrum of social classes, investigate the role of emotions in antisemitic argumentation patterns, and analyze “anti-Israelism” as the dominant form of contemporary hatred of Jews A COMPARISON WITH OTHER COUNTRIES IN EUROPE: RESULTS OF A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS -- Austria -- Switzerland -- The Netherlands -- Spain -- Belgium -- England -- Ireland -- Sweden -- Conclusion -- THE EMOTIONAL BASIS OF MODERN HOSTILITY TOWARD JEWS -- On the Relevance of Emotions to the Analysis of Antisemitism -- The Emotional Potential of Antisemitic Texts: Expression of Emotions and Description of Feelings -- The Obsessive Dimension -- Contrary to Reason: On the Dominance of the Irrational Dimension in Antisemitic Texts -- Fallacies and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies -- Contradictions and Paradoxes: Statements in Collision -- Hate without a Real Object: Jew as an Abstract Notion -- Conclusion -- ACTS OF VERBAL VIOLENCE -- Abuse, Insults, Threats, Curses -- Hostility toward Jews as a Missionary Urge: Moral Appeals and Advice -- Suggestions for Solving the “Jewish Problem”: “Exterminate them for good!” and “Dissolve the state of Israel” -- Conclusion -- TEXTUAL STRATEGIES AND PATTERNS OF ARGUMENTATION -- Communicative Strategies and Argumentative Elaboration -- Strategies of Legitimation and Self-Aggrandizement: “I am a humanist through and through!” -- Strategies of Avoidance and Self-Defense: “I am no antisemite!” -- Strategies of Justification: “You provoke that!” -- Relativizing Strategies: “After all, it’s 2007!” -- Strategies of Differentiation: “You are one team” -- Conclusion -- APPENDIX: The Basic Corpus—Letters to the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the Israeli Embassy in Berlin, 2002–2012 -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index Preface to the English Edition (2016) -- Preface to the German Edition (2013) -- Notational Conventions -- INTRODUCTION: THE NEED FOR THIS BOOK -- HOSTILITY TOWARD JEWS AND LANGUAGE: VERBAL IMPOSITION OF POWER AND VIOLENCE -- Language as a Cognitive System and Communicative Instrument for Action -- The Power of Language as Violence through Language -- The Reconstruction of Antisemitic Conceptualizations: Linguistic Utterances as Traces of Cultural, Cognitive, and Emotional Processes -- Conceptual and Verbal Antisemitism -- Conclusion -- HOSTILE STEREOTYPES OF JEWS AND THEIR HISTORICAL ROOTS -- On the Genesis of Resentment toward Jews: Why the Jews? -- Survival and Resistance of Judeophobic Stereotypes in Modern Times -- Antisemitism as State Doctrine: The “Final Solution” as the Ultimate Consequence of Judeophobia -- Hostility toward Jews after 1945: Minimization of the Caesura in Civilization and Withholding of Empathy -- Present-Day Hostility toward Jews: The “New” Antisemitism of the Twenty-First Century -- Conclusion -- PRESENT-DAY VERBALIZATION OF STEREOTYPES -- Stereotypes, Mental Models, Prejudices, Clichés, and Stock Phrases: Terminological and Conceptual Clarifications -- Current Stereotypes and Their Verbal Manifestations -- Conclusion -- ECHO OF THE PAST: “THE INSOLENT JEW IS HARASSING GERMANS ONCE AGAIN!” -- Components of Nazi Speech in Contemporary Discourse Hostile toward Jews -- Lexical Analyses of Insolence/Insolent and Harass/Harassment -- Conclusion -- ANTI-ISRAELISM AS A MODERN VARIANT OF VERBAL ANTISEMITISM: THE MODERN CONCEPTUALIZATION OF THE COLLECTIVE JEW -- Criticism of Israel versus Anti-Israelism: Two Different Speech Acts -- Characteristics of Antisemitic Anti-Israelism -- Derealization: False Statements, Concealment, Distortion, Biased Perspective -- “As I just read in my paper . . .” —Intertextual Allusions and Verbal Convergences: On the Potential Effects of One-Sided Reports on the Middle East Conflict -- Conclusion
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