Antisemitism in New Zealand

Curia did a poll of 1,000 New Zealanders for the NZ Jewish Council to try and measure how prevalent certain anti-Semitic tropes are in New Zealand. The full 102 page report is here.

Sir Peter Gluckman gives an overview:

For 2000 years, Jews have suffered from stereotyping, stigmatisation, ghettoisation and persecution. The origins of classical antisemitism lie in religious doctrine highlighted by examples such as the 12th Century York massacre and the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions of the 15-17th Centuries. Then in the 19th Century, antisemitism took a nationalistic and racial turn highlighted by the Dreyfus affair, then by Nazi ideology and the ultimate tragedy of the Holocaust. This antisemitism has re-emerged as these incompletely eradicated memes and Holocaust denial become conflated with conspiracy theories and alternative-right politics. And an even more recent trend has been the global emergence of left-wing associated antisemitism with its own internal paradoxes – for this group, for whom most forms of
discrimination are unacceptable, antisemitism does not appear to count.

We see antisemitism with the far right and the far left.

Given the question “Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind” only 52% disagreed with that proposition, 13% directly agreed with it and the remainder (some 35%) claimed they don’t know. Is that genuine ignorance or is it a convenient way to avoid an answer that they might otherwise have given?

Rather sad only 52% disagreed.

Some of the findings are:

• 17% said Jews have too much power in international financial markets
• 19% said Jews talk about the Holocaust too much
• 15% said Jews in NZ are more loyal to Israel than New Zealand
• 16% said Jews are not indigenous to Israel
• 6% said the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves and 20% were unsure if they did!

There was also an interesting correlation between types of anti-semitism:

This survey found there is a relationship between those holding Zionophobic views and those who hold classical antisemitic views. It shows the more extreme anti-Israel sentiment someone has, the more classical antisemitic tropes they will believe in, and vice versa. For example, there is only a 25% chance that someone who holds four classical antisemitic views will hold no anti-Israel antisemitic views, and only a 29% chance that someone who holds four anti-Israel antisemitic views will hold no classical antisemitic views. This is consistent with a United Kingdom study which also showed a clear empirical link between the two forms of antisemitism.

And finally knowledge on the Holocaust is woeful, with only 42% able to cite the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust as six million.