After 10/7: Normalization of Antisemitism in the West

The October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks against Israel (10/7) represented the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. However, almost immediately after the attacks, celebrations of the pogrom and protests against Israel broke out in cities around the Western world. The author argues that the upward sweep of antisemitism witnessed since 10/7 cannot be satisfactorily explained in terms of radicalization or simplistic stage models. By definition, radicalization is an increase in extremist attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral intentions relative to default societal norms. Thus, the radicalization hypothesis implies that the output of radicalization (in this case, antisemitism) is not normalized. This is unambiguously contradicted by evidence collected from Jewish victims of antisemitism before and after 10/7. Taken together, the evidence indicates that antisemitism has been renormalizing long before 10/7 and it is that process which set the preconditions for its explosive rise witnessed after 10/7. There is a danger in misattributing the current wave of antisemitism to radicalization as such explanations can inadvertently serve to minimize the breadth and severity of the problem.