Professor Russell A. Berman told a packed Student Center auditorium Wednesday night that there is an overlap between the hostility Americans and Jews face in Europe.
“What we’re seeing here is the convergence of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism in euro-skepticism in the heart of Europe,” he said.
Berman's lecture kicked off the Jewish Studies Fall 2015 Speaker Series.
The professor of comparative literature and German studies at Stanford University said both Americans and Jews are seen as outsiders by Europeans.
“[They] are deemed to be threats to some imaginary original identity,” he said.
Berman said both Americans and Jews represent an image of hypertrophic power.
“The United States, the outsider to Europe, as the embodiment of military omniscience, or Jews as the secret center of world domination,” he said.
He said the current animosity towards both targets might reflect a perception of objective weakness.
“As the U.S. steers a path towards retreat from international engagement and Israel may be facing isolation, precisely the perception of this weakness might be animating the anti-Americanism and anti-Semitic attacks,” Berman said.
Berman said the two phenomena also share a symbolic significance as each is taken to represent capitalism.
“The U.S. is the capitalist power par excellence, and Jews, whom anti-semitism is always associated with money,” he said.
Berman said there is “no acceptable, rational criticism of any ethnic or national group, in general.”
Marty Shichtman, professor in the English department and director of Jewish studies, said it’s important for students to know that the feelings Russell talked about are still around.
“There’s still hatred of Jews throughout the world, and certainly it’s growing in Europe, and in many ways it’s tied up with this kind of anti-Americanism that’s also growing in Europe,” Schichtman said. “I think students need to understand that this is not a safe world for Jews and that there is a genuine animosity toward Americans, and that those two things sometimes dovetail.”
