Quantifying a “uniquely complex”^[1][1] Wistrich, Robert S. A Lethal Obsession . Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. Location 190 and misunderstood prejudice^[2][2] Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. The Devil That Never Dies (p. 8). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

The data has been assembled and organized to simplify and clarify the depth and breadth of a prejudice that is often poorly understood even by the people it targets. The unique complexity of antisemitism stems from its adaptability and fluidity which has enabled it to insinuate its venom into any number of cultures and contexts under multiple guises, over great expanses of both history and geography. As noted recently by Germany’s foreign minister, antisemitism is a prejudice which “keeps shapeshifting”.^[3][3] https://ihra2020.diplo.de/ihra-en/-/2437356

As explained earlier in our Introduction to 21^st Century Antisemitism, this adaptability which accounts for antisemitism’s longevity and pervasiveness, stems from its framework as a unique template of demonization distinguishing it from most other forms of prejudice. Termed by author Daniel Godhagen as the “foundational antisemitic paradigm”^[4][4] Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. The Devil That Never Dies (p. 7 ff). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition, this template in one formulation or another over several millennia, has cast the Jews as a people, or their Judaic creed, or their national identity, as irreparably and fundamentally noxious, alien and insidious, corrupting and diabolical, powerful and insatiably self-serving, and thus immensely dangerous to the non-Jewish world and its values.^[5][5] Ibid. This preconception of inherent and essentialized Jewish malevolence writ large, has been the prime mover and ideational constant in the evolution of antisemitism in any of its various forms. The foundational paradigm of antisemitism is what facilitates antisemitism’s remarkable capacities for adaptation and renewal throughout history, and accounts for its presence in a remarkably broad array of cultural, religious, or political contexts. This template, rather than simply ascribing a set construct of malign attributes to Jews as a more generic function of suspicion or disdain of “otherness”, retains a flexibility that adapts itself to the configuration of foundational evil as defined by a given circumstance in any given time or place.  Antisemitism is constantly reinventing itself to suit the changing landscapes of human development and as such, it is a construct never rendered obsolete by the crucible of time nor eroded by progress or other mitigating factors that might impact, dilute or eliminate other forms of prejudice. As noted by Goldhagen:

• While conceptions of the world, and humanity in its many aspects … have come and gone and, … have undergone such fundamental internal changes as to become unrecognizably new—antisemitism has maintained its core demonology, at least in several of its powerful strains.”^[6][6] Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. The Devil That Never Dies (p. 5-6). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition. In short, antisemitism is something of a renewable resource, concomitantly old and always new, that understands the Jew or Jewishness, in one form or another, to be a singularly “malevolent force standing between the world and its perfection”^[7][7] Jeffrey Goldberg, Is It Time For The Jews to Leave Europe?, The Atlantic, April 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/is-it-time-for-the-jews-to-leave-europe/386279/, however “perfection” is defined in any time or place.^.[8][8] Ibid.

This malleability is particularly evident with the advent of today’s distinctive mode of modern Jew-hatred – what Goldhagen has called “globalized antisemitism”. The crosspollination of antisemitic ideation^[9][9] Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. The Devil That Never Dies (p. 410). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition. that began in the late 20^th century, facilitated by modern technologies, has produced this new strain of hostility towards Jews, synthesizing a vast array of anti-Jewish discourses into an amalgamated whole which has distinctive characteristics and markers. Often genocidal or eliminationist in intent or expression, the current premutation is far more toxic than the sum of its constituent parts with a capacity for virality that is unprecedented. This conflation of antisemitic templates has created a new typology both continuous with and incorporating past iterations of antisemitism, but also new in multiple respects – an interactive organic framework for Jew-hatred of staggering and demonstrable proportions.

In one of its most insidious expressions, globalized antisemitism has developed a particularly effective formulation which has made today’s antisemitic parlance easier to deny, camouflage, qualify or whitewash. In the words of Canada’s former Attorney General, the Hon. Irwin Cotler, it “launders antisemitism”^[10][10] https://www.jpost.com/opinion/the-laundering-of-anti-semitism-through-universal-public-values-403144 by promoting it under “the aegis of universal human values” in an obsessive eliminationist demonization and of Israel and delegitimization of Jewish national identity. In doing so it has provided antisemitism a universal globalized language, grounded in a shared universal value transcending the impediments of culture and geography and thus capable of capturing a vast new audience. The challenges of this new discourse are outlined by Goldhagen:

• They [globalized antisemites] could now adopt and speak the unimpeachable language of universal human rights and international justice, which both legitimized them and effectively camouflaged their underlying antisemitic animus. They obtained ready-made and winning appeals to others not already sharing their antisemitism to join their assault. And they augmented or even transformed the antisemitic litany in a critical way. In a world where human rights and international justice are central, they turned Jews into a threat not just to a country’s people or to those people’s rights, but also to international human rights and justice—in other words, to the very foundational principles of world order and goodness. This is the elaboration of the foundational antisemitic paradigm updated.^[11][11] Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. The Devil That Never Dies (p.398). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

Given the obfuscation and prevarication of contemporary antisemitic discourses, the surveys we have focused on, measure antisemitic sentiment utilizing the more primary and common antisemitic calumnies.  These provide an unambiguous baseline for identifying the clearly discernable and foundational Jew-hatred extant in more than a quarter of the planet’s total population^[12][12] https://global100.adl.org/map predating and unrelated to Israel-related conflicts.  These calumnies, rooted in antisemitism’s template of demonization, are the real underpinning of the more sanitized and sublimated aspects of contemporary Jew-hatred, which are so ubiquitous and have become so normalized in public discourse that they are more difficult for the public to discern and have become acceptable modes of antisemitic expression.