Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 26 – The radical
increase in xenophobia among Russians over the last year has triggered an
increase in anti-Semitism there, although the latter does not play the central or
independent role in Russian nationalist rhetoric it did in the past, according
to a report by the Russian Jewish Congress and the SOVA Information-Analytic
Center.
But that does not make this trend
any less disturbing because it comes after four years of declines in the number
of attacks directed against Jewish institutions and because the spread of anti-Semitic
materials via the media, including the Internet, could lead almost at any time
to outbursts of this ancient evil (help.rjc.ru/site.aspx?SECTIONID=85646&IID=2527868).
The report released last week listed
ten physical attacks on Jewish institutions and Jews during 2013, a number up
from eight the year before and one likely to rise as reports come in. A major
problem in this research, the authors say, is that Russian media often do not
report on such events or combine them with other forms of xenophobia, making
accurate counts problematic.
The
report also focused on anti-Semitic publications. Their number has gone up as
well, prompting the Russian authorities to issue “a minimum of 16” charges
concerning anti-Semitic content. Seven of these cases were exclusively about
materials directed only at Jews while the other nine were directed at Jews and
other groups as well.
While the number of hate crimes
involving physical actions actually fell
between 2012 and 2013, from 95 to 69, the anti-Semitic component of this statistic
rose from eight to ten, an indication, the report suggests that in contrast to
most of the last decade, “anti-Semitic attacks are returning [as a specific
component] of the ‘repertoire’ of national-radical groups.”
A positive development in 2013, the
report continued, was that “happily” anti-Semitic statements by officials were “quite
rare,” although they did occur. But that plus was overwhelmed by the minus of
the flood of anti-Semitic materials on the Internet, whose number is too large
to count.
The report said that “anti-Semitic
books are easy to find in popular book stores, but typically they are lost
among other kinds of materials. In a
prominent place, book dealers put only the most popular conspiratorial books,
among which of course are anti-Semitic ones like ‘The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion.”
According to the report,
anti-Semitic ideas were also spread by broadsides and handouts, and it pointed
to the case of one posted to the wall of the Abakan Jewish Community Center
signed by groups calling themselves “the Fascist Union of Siberia” and “the
Khakhass National Socialist Party” and calling for Jews to leave the area.
“The majority” of such anti-Semitic
actions remain unpunished, in part because they do not appear to represent a
serious threat to society, the report said, “but one should not fail to note a
certain inconsistency” in the way officials treat such actions, an
inconsistency which can give those who are carrying them out the sense that
they are beyond punishment.
Obviously, the report said, “the
role of anti-Semitism in contemporary Russia has become less notable than in
those periods when it was the basic content of nationalist propaganda and even
more when government anti-Semitism existed. But we see that anti-Semitism is
not disappearing from the ideology of all nationalist and fundamentalist trends
in Russia.”
But “having ceased to be their ‘visiting card,’ anti-Semtism has been
transformed for all those who in one way are subjected to the influence of
these trends into part of their basic ideas about history and society.” And that spread means that there are ever
more anti-Semitic “motifs in popular pseudo-historical books [and] films.”
Anti-Semitism
in Russia today, the report concluded, “continues to play a role as one of the
fundamental elements of any worldview connected with ethnic or religious
xenophobia.” As that set of attitudes increases for other reasons such as
immigration or events in the North Caucasus, anti-Semitism has and will
continue to increase.
“This
dynamic,” the authors of the report warned, must be the occasion for “serious
concerns.”
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