Behind the Headlines: When Hate Went Mainstream

Behind the Headlines: The History of Modern Israel is a series that looks beyond the news cycle to explore the key moments, ideas, and people that have shaped the modern State of Israel. Each article offers context, highlights often overlooked stories, and aims to make Israel’s history more accessible and better understood—especially in light of the challenges it faces today.

The Rise of Modern Antisemitism in Europe

The story of modern Israel cannot be fully understood without first confronting one of the darkest transformations in modern European history: the rise of modern antisemitism. Unlike the exclusivly religious antisemitism of earlier centuries, modern antisemitism was religious, racial, political, and deeply woven into the cultural and national fabric of 19th- and early 20th-century Europe. It was not an outburst of fringe hatred, but a mainstream ideology that paved the way for persecution and expulsion.

Throughout medieval and early modern Europe, Jews were often persecuted for their religious beliefs. However, the Enlightenment and the era of emancipation in the 18th and 19th centuries changed the social and legal status of Jews in many European countries. Jews were granted citizenship and civil rights and were, in theory, integrated into broader European society.

But with that new visibility came new forms of resentment.

In the mid-to-late 19th century, as nationalism grew stronger and pseudoscientific theories about race gained traction, antisemitism evolved into something new: a belief that Jews were an unchangeable and dangerous racial group. Unlike religious prejudice, which could theoretically be overcome through conversion, racial antisemitism held that Jewish identity was biologically fixed and inherently harmful to the nation.

This shift occurred across much of Europe. In Germany, influential thinkers like Wilhelm Marr coined the term antisemitism itself in the 1870s, not as a religious accusation but as a racial one. Marr and others warned that Jews were infiltrating and corrupting German society through economic and political control. In France, antisemitic literature and journals gained wide readership, feeding nationalist fears about Jewish disloyalty and influence.

In 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French Army, was falsely accused of spying for Germany. Despite flimsy evidence, he was convicted and publicly humiliated. The Dreyfus Affair exposed the deep-rooted antisemitism within the French military, press, and public. Even when evidence later proved his innocence, many were more willing to believe in a vast Jewish conspiracy than to admit error.

The case divided French society. Some intellectuals defended Dreyfus, while nationalists, monarchists, and the Catholic Church lined up against him. For Jews across Europe, the message was chilling: even in a republic that promised equality, their loyalty and legitimacy could be questioned at any moment.

One of the most lasting effects of the Dreyfus Affair was its impact on Theodor Herzl, a Jewish journalist covering the trial. He concluded that antisemitism was a permanent feature of European society—and that the only solution was the creation of a Jewish homeland.

While Western European antisemitism often played out in courts, politics, and media, in Eastern Europe it took a more violent and immediate form.

In the Russian Empire, where Jews were largely confined to the Pale of Settlement, economic hardship, nationalist agitation, and official policies combined to unleash repeated waves of pogroms—mob attacks on Jewish communities, often with explicit government support. The pogroms of 1881–1884, following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, marked a turning point. Jews were scapegoated on a massive scale, and entire communities were ransacked, with homes and businesses destroyed and hundreds murdered.

These attacks spurred a massive wave of Jewish emigration. Between 1881 and 1914, over two million Jews fled Eastern Europe—many to America, but a growing number began turning toward the ancestral homeland in, what was then called, the Ottoman Mandate of Palestine.

Eastern Europe also produced the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forged text created by elements within the Russian secret police in the early 20th century. This document falsely claimed to reveal a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. Despite being thoroughly debunked, it spread widely and fed modern antisemitic conspiracy theories across Europe and beyond.

Modern antisemitism was not simply inherited from earlier religious prejudices—it was reinvented, rationalized, and integrated into modern ideologies. It was a product of nationalism, colonialism, pseudoscience, and political opportunism. And crucially, it became acceptable in polite society. This normalization of hate—whether in Vienna’s city hall, the salons of Paris, or the ministries of the Russian Empire—created an environment where exclusion and violence could be justified not only by mobs, but by laws, policies, and even popular votes.

The consequences were profound. Long before 1933, Europe’s Jews had already been told—through propaganda, violence, and social exclusion—that they had no place in the modern nation-state. This betrayal, especially in societies where Jews had believed they had finally been accepted, planted the seeds for both the Zionist movement and the tragedies to come.

COMING NEXT: Behind the Headlines: When One Man Dared to Dream
How Theodor Herzl and the First Zionist Congress turned centuries of yearning into a modern political movement.