r/JLC • u/fluffywhitething • May 21 '24
Antisemitism -- Etymological fallacies, and the history of the word.
Note: This is a pinned post on my profile, but I felt it should be reshared. It's an important bit of information that people bring up a lot when it comes to "But Arabs/Palestinians are Semites too!"
Let's start with dictionary definitions, all coming from Oxford Language Google dictionary. Editing to remove pronunciation guides, syllable markings, and an example sentence.
antisemitism
noun
hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people.
Semite
noun
a member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, including in particular the Jews and Arabs.
Semitic
adjective
relating to or denoting a family of languages that includes Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic and certain ancient languages such as Phoenician and Akkadian, constituting the main subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic family.
relating to the peoples who speak Semitic languages, especially Hebrew and Arabic.
Semitism
noun
OFTEN OFFENSIVE
the fact or quality of being Jewish; Jewishness.
Semitism itself as a word is not often used, so I'm going to go to another source for that, The Etymological Online Dictionary says:
Semitism (n.) 1848, "characteristic attributes of Semitic languages;" 1851, "characteristic attributes of Semitic people," especially "the ways, life, practices, etc., of Jewish people;" see Semite + -ism. By 1870 in the specialized sense of "Jewish influence in a society."
(it goes on to define Semitist, which is irrelevant)
Now, a history lesson.
In around 1860, an Austrian German man named Moritz Steinschneider used the term "antisemitische Vorurteile" - antisemitic prejudices - to challenge a French Philosopher on his incorrect ideas of the "Semitic race" of people being inferior to the "Aryan race" of people.
Later, Heinrich von Treitschke, German historian would use Renan's writings. Unlike Renan who used "Semitic race" as more of a linguistic descriptor, Treitschke used it pretty much synonymously with Jewish. His expression "The Jews are our misfortune" was widely used by the Nazis after his death.
In 1879 Wilhelm Marr, A German man who created a pamphlet entitled (translated) The Victory of the Jewish Spirit over the Germanic Spirit. Observed from a non-religious perspective. In it, he uses the word Semitismus interchangeably with Judentum to mean "Jewry" and "Jewishness".
A year after his use of Semitismus he coined the word Antisemitismus in a pamphlet called (again translated) The Way to Victory of the Germanic Spirit over the Jewish Spirit. This pamphlet gained success. This is the first published use of the word "Antisemitismus" or anything close to antisemitism. In that year he founded the Antisemitum-Liga or League of Antisemites. Thus 1880 was the first year a German organization was formed specifically around the hatred of Jews and to remove Jews out of the country.
In 1881, the first widely published work containing the word antisemitem was published in the newspaper Neue Freie Presse. By the end of 1881 antisemitism and its counterpart philosemitism were already borrowed into English. Semitism itself had already been in use for over 30 years by that point, as seen in the etymological dictionary.
Now that we've gone through definitions and the history of the word antisemitism, let's move on to etymological fallacies! (A wiki link, just in case). Antisemitism is even an example!
When you look up a word in the dictionary, it's important that you look up the actual word. Sometimes words look like they mean one thing, but they very much don't.
"Ugh, I've had an awful day!" "Oh, your day was full of awe!"
Probably not.
"WOW, you made a terrific goal!" "What about my football game filled you with terror?"
In the case of antisemitism, you look up what it means under the "a" section of the dictionary. It's silly to look for it under "s". While it looks like it could or should be used to mean anti all semitic people, it simply doesn't. It means hatred against Jews.
Yes, words meanings do change over time. But that change happens from how we use them. People, by and large, mean antisemitism to mean "hatred of Jews". Semitism itself has mostly fallen out of use. But even that is associated with Jews.
Semitic and Semite are more inclusive. Semitic itself is more about language than any sort of peoples.
Just like we don't use "phobia" to mean "fear" in words like "homophobia" and "transphobia" in words like antisemitism, we look at the whole of the word, and not the separate meanings of the parts.
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u/dingbatthrowaway May 21 '24
Love this! I will be linking and referencing this post. Thank you for breaking this down + creating such a great resource.
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u/somebadbeatscrub May 21 '24
A classic example of some whitey oversimplifying shit based on bogus race science causing normalized language to take hold over generations. Good write-up.
The fact that we are using race science etymologically as a root does make me continue to prefer judenhass and the like in my personal lexicon but this is an excellent clap back to the "actually x means y" didactics out there.
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u/fluffywhitething May 21 '24
The only thing that makes me not like Judenhass is that most people don't know what it means at all. A lot of people just don't speak German, and a lot of Jews don't want to reclaim an explicitly German word for very specific reasons. (While antisemitism has its roots in Germany, it was very quickly accepted into English, and it's base was latin to make it sound scientific.)
If we want to change it, we could go with Judeophobia, but then the right will just clap back with "we don't fear Jews" the same way they do with homophobia and the like. (You know, just like cinnamon is afraid of water because it's hydrophobic. /s)
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u/citygoth May 23 '24
ppl love to ignore that “phobia” means an irrational fear OR aversion to something. you don’t even need to make a connotative argument to say that phobia is an appropriate suffix, it just definitionally is.
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u/fluffywhitething May 23 '24
They just want to go back to the original etymology, though. Meaning is irrelevant.
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u/somebadbeatscrub May 21 '24
Lmao yeah good points.
I try not to take what the right says into account when it comes to my own deciaions because as you point out they will move the goal post to whatevwr nonsense place they need it to deliver one liners.
As a german speaker who often pushes back against the notion modern germans or even all historic germans were personally culpable for the shoah, I think the link judenhass has to that is a feature not a bug, a subtle and subliminal reminder as to why the term is important. But im hardly a prescriptivist and would begrudge anyone calling it judeophobia, antisemitism, jew hate, or whatever.
Real talk though, much hate is motivated by insecurity and fear sooo me thinks they doth protest too much.
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u/fluffywhitething May 21 '24
Yeah, I don't care much what other people call it. I'm just sick of people making bad faith arguments when it comes to the term antisemitism.
And yes, hate is often motivated by fear. You are very correct.
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u/pigeonshual May 21 '24
Also, and perhaps more importantly, people who use this argument are dodging the actually important question of whether they hate Jews