The Endless Struggle: Antisemitism and Its Forms
Despite the seeming progress and technological advancement, humanity’s fundamental condition remains largely unchanged. Human beings are irrational, tribal, and driven by survival instincts, and they live in a universe that is vast, indifferent, and shaped by random, impersonal forces. The same divisions, conflicts, and self-interests persist. This story of humanity is one of perpetual striving, always seeking peace but never fully attaining it.
Philosophers and psychologists have long pointed out that humans are not fully rational creatures. According to Sigmund Freud, unconscious drives such as aggression and desire influence behavior beneath the surface of civility. Cognitive science shows that human thinking is often influenced by biases, emotions, and group loyalty rather than logic. While these traits may have once helped early humans survive, in today’s globalized world, they often lead to misunderstanding, fragmentation, and violence.
Humans form groups to which they are loyal, seeing others as outsiders. They cling to ideologies in order to find certainty. They react to threats with fear rather than understanding. These behaviors create divisions that are difficult to overcome.
Layered over this flawed nature is a universe that offers no inherent meaning and that is neither kind nor hostile but completely indifferent. Still, human beings search for meaning through art, philosophy, and relationships. This tension between the search for meaning and the silence of the cosmos is what Albert Camus described as the absurd.
In the same way, the pursuit of peace continues despite the absence of any final resolution. The world does not guarantee justice or order, yet the effort to create them persists.
One of the clearest expressions of this ongoing struggle is found in the persistence of antisemitism. Its roots seem to be embedded in the human condition itself. It is a psychological coping mechanism: the projection of existential fear and frustration onto a scapegoat.
Antisemitism is rooted not only in psychology but also in religion, particularly in Christian theology. From the early centuries of Christianity, Jews were cast as spiritually blind and stubbornly resistant to what was seen as the fulfillment of their own scriptures. Augustine’s doctrine of the “witness people” argued that Jews should be preserved but degraded. In this sense, they were allowed to survive as a testimony to the truth of Christianity and the consequences of rejecting it. His theology provided a framework that later justified discrimination and exclusion.
For centuries, Christian thought was shaped by the idea that Jews should be preserved but humiliated, following Augustine. Aquinas upheld this hierarchy, while Luther turned it into open hostility, transforming preservation into persecution. As a result, discriminatory laws were enacted. They subjected them to conversions and expulsions. Religious festivals were sometimes accompanied by pogroms, with mobs stirred by sermons invoking ancient accusations.
With time, these religious narratives persisted, and they provided moral justification for persecution, which was later also adapted into other forms of antisemitism. Eventually, these evolved into racial and political antisemitism. The figure of the Jew remained a symbolic outsider, seen as a threat to social or moral order. This continuity highlights how antisemitism became a recurring response to societal anxieties, not just a historical prejudice.
Yet while the theological framing of Jews as heretics may seem distant from modern secular societies, the emotional logic it relied on remains remarkably consistent. Emotional drivers such as fear and scapegoating still persist. In this sense, religious antisemitism is not merely a historical artifact, but rather an early expression of deeper psychological mechanisms that continue to operate today.
In response to the meaninglessness and chaos of life, humans seek comforting illusions, form tribes, and create ideologies and conspiracy theories. Faced with uncertainty and existential anxiety, people often turn to simple explanations. Antisemitism offers one: the belief in a hidden enemy that can be blamed for complex and painful realities, rather than confronting life’s true complexity.
The relationship between the human condition and antisemitism was outlined by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment, where they argue that antisemitism is an irrational phenomenon in which Jews serve as a universal scapegoat for the deepest fears, anxieties, and neuroses of individuals and societies alike. According to their analysis, the complex nature of modern life generates a sense of powerlessness and psychological distress. When people cannot deal with their feelings directly, they tend to blame external factors for their problems. The historically marginalized Jews, often associated with modernity’s disruptions, become an ideal target for this projection. By attributing their own negative impulses to the Jews, antisemites are able to maintain a sense of psychological coherence and moral purity. Economic hardship and change fuel economic resentment, which further reinforces antisemitic stereotypes. This pattern has not remained confined to the past.
In recent years, antisemitism has reemerged. It took on new forms influenced by modern politics and culture. Conspiracy theories and age-old stereotypes are now more widely circulated through digital platforms, which have long existed but are spreading more rapidly today. These expressions are no longer limited to extremist fringes but appear across a broad range of ideologies, including far-right nationalism, far-left activism, and certain religious movements. Antisemitic rhetoric, which is used as political criticism related to global conflicts, typically muddles the line between criticizing Israel and holding hostility towards Jewish people as a whole. This disguises hatred as activism or personal opinion, making antisemitism more socially acceptable. Antisemitism today is a modern revival of old prejudices.
Why the Jews? The answer lies in a striking paradox: Jewish contributions to society have made them targets. Success is recast as hidden control, and visibility breeds envy and suspicion.
Even total absence would not erase the hatred. Even if Jews were to relocate entirely to Mars, conspiracy theories would adapt. Their departure would raise new suspicions: why were they allowed to leave, and what are they doing now? And if they eventually developed planetary defense systems against asteroids, it would likely be interpreted as preparation to retake Earth. Even without their presence, antisemitism would endure because it is not based on facts. It only requires fear. It adapts and survives through irrational projection.
As long as people feel compelled to displace their fears and failures onto others, antisemitism will persist. The truth is that it cannot be escaped. It can only be dismantled when individuals and societies learn to face fear, failure, and uncertainty without assigning blame.
This raises the ultimate question: why continue striving if there is no final peace, no perfected humanity, no caring universe? Václav Havel offered a response: “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” In this sense, striving becomes a moral stance. Even when success is uncertain, the effort itself carries value.
It is sobering to realize that this darker side of human nature, antisemitism, is unlikely to disappear anytime soon, just as the human condition itself remains unchanged. Each generation of Jews will have to continue to confront antisemitism in some form. Beneath the surface, it rumbles like a dormant volcano, occasionally erupting with destructive force.
Despite advancements in knowledge and enlightenment, the human condition remains fundamentally irrational. Constant vigilance is essential in confronting this enduring reality. For Jews, this ongoing struggle has fostered resilience and a deep sense of awareness.
Antisemitism, in many ways, reflects the broader state of humanity. It is a barometer of human collective rationality, or its absence. The pursuit of justice and understanding represents a refusal to surrender to despair. As Samuel Beckett captured it, “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” The fight against antisemitism requires each generation to adapt to its changing forms, respond more wisely, and preserve the values that sustain hope.
Humans are destined always to approach but never fully arrive. The human experience is shaped by the tension between longing and the universe’s indifference. This conflict has no resolution, arising from the divide between limited understanding and the vast unknown. Yet in this struggle with the absurd, hope and effort become acts of defiance. In the space between the actual and the ideal, the very act of striving assumes its own meaning.
