Figurations of Jews in Discourses About European Identity, Antisemitism and Migration: Forbear, Victim, Model Minority, Mastermind

This article analyzes the contemporary debate on the resurgence of antisemitism in Europe and the way it is tethered to discourses about European identity, migration and the viability of the liberal project. The debate on antisemitism has become explosive, with commentators sharply disagreeing about its claimed transformation into a “new” antisemitism which is primarily anti-Zionist in focus. In this article, I reframe these debates about antisemitism by foregrounding the “deep time” of Judaizing, or rather, anti-Judaizing tropes within them. The figuration of Jews, I argue (borrowing from David Nirenberg), far exceeds the range of concepts usually associated with antisemitism. This brings us face to face with a genealogy in which Jews were the primary figure of “difference” through which European societies thought about and negotiated the relationship between particularism and universalism and a whole slew of other social phenomena. I bring this genealogy to the surface in a close reading of a 2004 speech on antisemitism by then President of the EU Commission, Romani Prodi. I argue that in the speech, which kicked the EU’s combat against antisemitism into high gear and spotlighted the question of the relation between the resurgence of antisemitism and migration, we can detect the shadow of the so-called “Jewish Question”, which has always been about the limits of minority “emancipation” and belonging, whether on a national or a supra-national level. It attests to the aporia and blind spots in discourses about Jews, the Holocaust and antisemitism in Europe and showcases how reductive and instrumentalizing the institutional discourse is. Critically evaluating these figures of thought and their genealogy is strategically important considering the role they play in the constitution of a projected field of politics, especially when it concerns the resurgence of antisemitism, the securitization of Europe’s migrant and Muslim populations, the rehabilitation of the far right and the normalization of states of exception.