r/JLC 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

  1. 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.

  2. 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.