Description
This paper examines anti-Semitism in international politics. Despite the recent resurgence of anti-Semitic tropes in global politics, evidenced most strikingly by the groundswell of conspiracy theories– regarding issues as diverse as Covid vaccinations, trans health care and election fraud – IR scholarship has thus far failed to address anti-Semitism as a potent global political force in its own right. This is, the paper shows, a result of a failure of IR scholarship to consider anti-Semitism more broadly. The paper proceeds in two parts. First, we consider three fields of IR scholarship – regarding Nazi Germany, populism and race – where we might expect to find the analyses of anti-Semitism. In each case we find an absence of discussion of anti-Semitism, despite its constitutive roles in the objects of all three fields. The second part of the paper proceeds to outline two ways in which anti-Semitism has structured (international) politics. Drawing on histories of anti-Semitism in medieval and modern Europe, we show that anti-Semitic tropes of blood libel and the all-powerful minority have been a constitutive feature in the government of peoples and polities. To conclude, we return to contemporary conspiracy theories and argue that these anti-Semitic tropes remain central to global circuits of power, fear, and exclusion today.
