Relativisation and Denial of Antisemitism

AbstractWhilst antisemitic stereotypes and analogies aim at a generalising and essentialising attribution of negative characteristics to Jewish entities (thus, from the non-Jewish in-group to the Jewish out-group), the communicative strategies of Relativisation and denial of antisemitism only indirectly refer to Jewish entities by denying or reinterpreting antisemitism when it occurs in specific instances or in general. Moreover, these strategies focus on the speaker or commenter (and not on a character trait imputed to Jews); it is thus a matter of self-reference: in this particular case, they deal with the phenomenon of antisemitism in a certain discursive way. Thereby, antisemitism is deprived of its Judeophobic quality in the most diverse contexts, in order not to have to deal with it (be it due to a lack of empathy, injured national pride or a desire for exoneration). Relativisation of antisemitism aims to play down antisemitic acts—both in the past and the present—by imposing additional conditions on them for being deemed antisemitic, for example, when antisemitism is located solely in a certain era, or when Israelis are excluded from it, or when antisemitism is only considered within a religious dimension.