He demonstrates persuasively how we might turn it from a weapon back into a word ... It is rigorous and lucid, and, like any good work of history, it absolutely bristles with primary sources. Even when Mazower’s writing is explicitly opinionated, he always shows the reader precisely what documents or events he’s basing his opinion on. In a book that deals so intensely with the manipulation of ideas and emotions, this transparency is an intense relief.
Fine-grained and bracing ... Something close to revelatory ... In clear and graceful prose, remarkably free of polemic or cynicism, Mazower soberly describes how and why the politics of anti-Semitism have metastasized in such maddening ways.
Consistently partisan, frequently incoherent and, especially in its final chapters, studiously unwilling to illuminate the present ... He consistently emphasizes it as an ideology of the right and plays down its popularity on the left ... Mazower’s book slides into self-serving polemic.
Mazower’s book contains many...distinctions – subtle twists of the lens that bring different shades of personal and ideological animus into focus. The underlying thesis is not controversial, at least not as historiography ... Mazower strives to be systematic in setting out legitimate reasons for political opposition to the actions of the Israeli state and identifying the place where a certain ferocity of condemnation shades into antisemitism ... Crowds of Israelis who protest against Benjamin Netanyahu’s government manage it all the time. Plainly they aren’t all antisemites willing destruction on themselves and their country ... As Mazower engages with these present-day arguments, his book takes less nuanced, more polemical and US-centric turns ... But it surely asks too much that a book on this subject, at this inflection point in history, might illuminate all angles equally. For Mazower to provide any respite of clarity on a topic befogged in rage and confusion is achievement enough.
Clear, comprehensive, and nuanced ... A welcome attempt to offer some clarity ... Mazower provides a fast-paced and comprehensive summary of developments across Europe until 1914 ... Mazower’s final chapters focus on debates in Israel and the United States. The narrative here is more polemical and focused on cultural and identity politics, while also perhaps less relevant to debates elsewhere ... Books like this can hopefully contribute to the honest discussions that are desperately needed in a new age of racism, war and genocide.
I am struggling to view a book that purports to be a word history of antisemitism, but studiously ignores its religious dimensions, as anything other than disingenuous. Yet I can see that Mark Mazower has written On Antisemitism: A word in history from the heart ... To begin with, there is the problem of geography. Antisemitism may have been born in Europe, but it has become a global phenomenon. This book, however, has a more limited geography: it deals primarily with Europe, the US and Israel ... These are phenomena to which Mazower pays scant attention, though they provide a crucial context for events such as the recent synagogue attack in Manchester ... He has nothing to say about the Brotherhood’s growing influence in Europe and the US ... One of the many problems with this book is that Mazower does not attempt to identify or define the other keywords that help us to capture the changing meaning of antisemitism ... Among other things, a consideration of Islamophobia might have prompted Mazower to think more deeply about religion ... The narrative provided here does centre Jewish voices, but it consistently privileges European, American and (in Israel) Ashkenazi players and perspectives over those of others.
