The Mainstreaming of American Antisemitism: The Defeat of an Ideal

Abstract To recognize the depths of American antisemitism, this article contends we must dispense with the conventional ways we think about it. This requires a rejection of an “American exceptionalism” in which antisemitism happens elsewhere-in other states, political parties, professions, campuses, and communities. Antisemitism so understood occurs only to the unfortunate, in places we don’t frequent, and at the outer edges of the political spectrum. By contrast, I suggest American antisemitism is so pervasive-so utterly mainstream- that it hides in plain sight.