The following article has been published in ABC Religion & Ethics and Times of Israel Blogs.

Julie Nathan

Racism means treating certain people less favour­ably than others because of their race, ethnicity or skin colour. Its purpose is often to keep members of the targeted group “in their place” in an imagined racial hierarchy. Different forms of racism can vary dra­mat­ic­ally in levels of ser­i­ous­ness, from a casual put-down through to delib­er­ate social exclusion and violence. State sanc­tioned racism can include legalised dis­crim­in­a­tion and per­se­cu­tion, slavery and organised mass murder.

While all forms of racism possess char­ac­ter­ist­ics in common, antisemitism has one unique char­ac­ter­ist­ic ― it tends to become genocidal. Other forms of racism have escalated into mass murder in order to serve a more basic purpose, such as the conquest of territory or the acquis­i­tion of resources. With antisemitism, genocide is an end in itself. Jews are perceived and portrayed as evil per se and an exist­en­tial threat to others. Many modern-era racists are not content with measures such as dis­crim­in­a­tion and oppres­sion to subjugate and control Jews, or with expulsion, but aim not just at murdering, but com­pletely anni­hil­at­ing all Jews.

Racists often express their desired solution to the presence of despised and unwanted minority groups. Con­tem­por­ary white suprem­acists dis­tin­guish between Jews and other groups they hate by advoc­at­ing the forced deport­a­tion of the latter and the mass murder of the former. This has often been illus­trated in their graffiti, posters and online posts. Three examples which occurred in Australia over the last two years are instruct­ive.

Racist graffiti was painted on the back walls and doors of buildings housing Asian res­taur­ants in the middle-class leafy Sydney suburb of Epping in March 2019. The graffiti used neo-Nazi themes and symbols, including images of swastikas, the Nazi eagle, Stars of David crossed out, and the texts “Adolf Hitler,” “SS,” “Sieg Heil,” “Skinhead,” “White Power,” “1488” (sym­bol­ising the 14 words of the white suprem­acist creed and the words “Heil Hitler”), “B&H” (Blood and Honour), “KKK” and “6,000,000 Lies.”

The main part of the graffiti named the targets of the hatred: “Gooks fuck off,” “Niggers go home,” “Pakis go home,” “Watch out Jews,” “Fuck Jewish Scum,” “Kill Jews” and (to emphasise the latter, it was repeated) “Kill the Jews.” The message is clear. People of African, east Asian and south Asian back­ground are to go back, either vol­un­tar­ily or forcibly, to their countries of origin or ancestral lands, but Jews are to be treated dif­fer­ently ― instead of being deported, Jews are to be killed.

An online dis­cus­sion on Gab, a Twitter-like platform for the far right, in July 2018 was initiated when a person using the name “Yatzie,” without even men­tion­ing the word “Jew,” announced that the goal is to deport “Asians, Africans and Arabs/Muslims” and to anni­hil­ate all Aus­trali­an Jews. “Yatzie” wrote: “My goal is to … Push to do a Mass Deport­a­tion of Asians, Africans and Arabs/Muslims from Aus­trali­a’s shores.” In response, “Tilly Oakum” wrote: “While you’re deporting all that excess biomass, you missed (((something))) …” using the echoes symbol ((( ))), which is a code to identify someone or something as Jewish, to indicate that “Yatzie” forgot to include Jews in the deport­a­tion plan. “Yatzie” explained that he “Wasn’t going to deport them. Don’t want them nor their children coming back. I hear the deserts are quite nice this time of year.” To which “Tilly Oakum” got quite excited and wrote: “Please ― shark bait, fer­til­izer or landfill.” “Yatzie” replied with, “Gonna make it a surprise.”

The neo-Nazi group Anti­podean Res­ist­ance plastered thousands of posters around Australia over a two-year period from October 2016. Anti­podean Res­ist­ance focussed most of their intense hatred on Jews and homo­sexu­als. The group also focussed on immig­rants of non-European ethnicity. The main anti-immigrant poster was titled “Stop the Hordes,” with derog­at­ory names for different groups of Arab, south Asian, African and east Asian back­ground. The posters demanded that they “Get Out!” in order to “Keep Australia White!” and accused “the Jews” of somehow being respons­ible for their immig­ra­tion into Australia. Anti­podean Res­ist­ance policy is to stop those of non-European ethnicity from immig­rat­ing to Australia and to deport those already living here.

In contrast, when it came to Jews, other Anti­podean Res­ist­ance posters advocated the mass killing of Jews in Australia. One of the posters called to “Legalise the execution of Jews” and glorified an image from the Second World War showing the execution of a Jew during a mass killing, as part of the Nazi genocide of Jews. Another poster was of an image of a Star of David, rep­res­ent­ing Jews, in the fire of a Nazi-style crem­at­ori­um, with the caption “Blaze It.” An online image that was posted is composed of a photo of the bull­doz­ing of bodies at Bergen-Belsen con­cen­tra­tion camp by British troops after the camp’s lib­er­a­tion, but with the bulldozer driver captioned as “Anti­podean Res­ist­ance” and the bodies captioned as “Aus­trali­an Jewry.”

Why the dif­fer­en­tial treatment in these and similar cases? The idea of deporting those of non-European ethnicity, from countries with a European ethnic majority, is perhaps con­sidered the easiest and best solution by racists. It stems from the belief that ethnic-European majority countries should be “eth­nic­ally homo­gen­ous,” without, what they consider, “foreign races,” living in their midst. Their aim, therefore, is to remove those of non-European ethnicity from “European lands” and have them live elsewhere ― “ethnic cleansing” by emig­ra­tion. As to the indi­gen­ous peoples of North America and Aus­tralasia, they are con­veni­ently air-brushed out of the picture.

The genocidal nature of antisemitism is rooted in the maniacal and perverse belief that “the Jews” are innately evil and abso­lutely powerful. This derives from super­sti­tions and myth­o­lo­gies about Jews that have blighted and shamed both European and Islamic civil­isa­tions since medieval times, and which have produced unspeak­able bar­bar­it­ies. Modern-era con­spir­acy theories about “the Jews,” portrayed as nefarious and powerful, plotting to control the world, have added another layer to, and rein­forced, these older theo­lo­gic­al and cultural myths. Jews have been among the most vul­ner­able and per­se­cuted people in history, yet their tor­ment­ors continue to betray their own inner darkness by por­tray­ing Jews col­lect­ively as innately evil and abso­lutely powerful.

The false belief that “the Jews” are evil and powerful, and therefore an exist­en­tial threat to the rest of humanity, produces the idea that murder and genocide are the “solution” to the “Jewish problem.” This is the main reason why modern-era racists tend to advocate that European ethnic majority countries (“white” nations) should deport those of non-European ethnicity (“non-whites”), but anni­hil­ate Jews.

Julie Nathan is the Research Director of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry (ECAJ), and author of the annual ECAJ Report on Antisemitism in Australia.