The ADL has long characterized virtually any assertion of Jewish group behavioral characteristics as ‘anti-semitism’, widening the scope of the latter’s definition to hilarious proportions. Should a gentile even mention the word ‘Jew’, they run the risk of having the ADL try to bury them in legal suits.
Well, the ADL has a new report, which finds that… drumroll… 25% of the world (about 1 billion people) is ‘anti-semitic’.
Carried out by First International Resources and commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League, the survey included 102 countries representing 88% of the world’s adult population. In native languages, it asked people whether certain traditionally anti-Semitic statements are probably true or false, including that Jews have too much power over international markets, global media, and the U.S. government; that they “don’t care about what happens to anyone but their own kind,” and that “Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars.”
So, making a sustained and eminently defensible argument (qua Kevin MacDonald) that, say, Jews have a disproportionate influence in global media is an indicator of ‘anti-semitism’.
Got that?
Over at NY Mag, Jesse Singal takes umbrage (“The ADL’s Flawed Anti-Semitism Survey“):
The ADL presented respondents with 11 statements and asked them whether each was “probably true” or “probably false” — things like “Jews are more loyal to Israel than to [this country/the countries they live in]” or “People hate Jews because of the way Jews behave.” If someone said that six or more of the statements were “probably true,” they were counted as harboring anti-Semitic attitudes — five or fewer, and they weren’t.
According to Ryan D. Enos, a political scientist at Harvard who studies inter-group relations, this sort of binary system is problematic. It “creates strange claims, such as a person that expresses these attitudes on five questions about Jewish stereotypes is okay, but a person that answers six affirmatively is an anti-Semite, same as a person that answers affirmatively on 11,” he wrote in an email. “Most people would think that is [a] strange way to label the people holding those attitudes.” Moreover, he argued, “researchers don’t tend to believe that people can usefully be split into people that simply either do or do not have prejudice against another group.” Prejudice “operates on a continuum, not [as] a yes or no.”
