EditBerlin’s Left victory and the German consensus on antisemitism
How Die Linke’s election success united parties from AfD to the Greens - and what Mark Mazower’s history of a shifting word reveals about the charge itself
The victory of the left-wing Die Linke in the election to Berlin’s House of Representatives has brought almost all other parties together in a coalition of the concerned and alarmed, writes Günter Seufert.
Günter Seufert is the former Founding Director of the Centre for Applied Turkish Studies at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. He wrote this op-ed in personal capacity.
Politicians from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the conservative Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), the Christian Democrats (CDU), the Liberals (FDP), the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, have warned of antisemitism and antisemites within the Left.
Beatrix von Storch of the AfD says that Die Linke has “used hatred of Jews to mobilise voters”. “No taxpayers’ money for antisemites,” demands CSU leader Markus Söder, who wants to curb Berlin’s payments under Germany’s system of fiscal equalisation among the federated states. Minister of State for Culture Wolfram Weimer sees an “openly flaunted antisemitism” within the Left and wants to limit cultural funding for Berlin. Former Berlin SPD mayors Michael Müller and Walter Momper have ruled out exploratory talks between their party and Die Linke. Cem Özdemir, the Green Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg, has also weighed in, calling for antisemites to be expelled from the left-wing party. According to Özdemir, Germany’s Jewish community must be persuaded by Die Linke’s claim that it is not antisemitic. The Central Council of Jews in Germany had previously declared that Die Linke’s participation in government would endanger Jewish life in Germany.
When politicians from such different – indeed opposing – parties adopt the same position on a term, in this case antisemitism, and act virtually in unison, one might assume that they are clear about its meaning and that the term itself is unambiguously defined. Yet, according to the historian Mark Mazower, the opposite is true. Mazower’s new book, On Antisemitism: A Word in History, examines the shifting meaning and political uses of the term.
Mazower is an internationally renowned historian of Jewish descent whose work has focused primarily on the fate of Jews in Europe. Five of his books have appeared in German, published by Fischer, C.H. Beck and Suhrkamp. He teaches at Columbia University in New York, which has been the site of major student protests against Israel’s conduct in Gaza, as well as police crackdowns on those demonstrations ordered by Donald Trump.
On Antisemitism traces the emergence of “antisemite” as a self-description adopted by anti-Jewish movements in Europe. In 1879, the German journalist Wilhelm Marr founded the Antisemites’ League in Berlin. His book, The Victory of Judaism over Germanhood, called for the revocation of Jews’ legal equality with Christians – their so-called emancipation. Marr shifted hostility towards Jews from a religious to a racial framework. In his September 1942 speech at Berlin’s Sportpalast, Adolf Hitler still used the term antisemitism positively, praising the waves of antisemitism spreading across Europe from one people to another.
Only after the end of the war, under the shock of the Holocaust, did antisemitism come to be understood in negative terms: as discrimination against Jews and as the threat faced by Jewish minorities at the hands of ethnically and/or religiously defined majorities. In Europe, the victorious powers compelled states to repeal laws that discriminated against Jews. In the United States – now home to the world’s largest Jewish population – Jewish organizations fought discrimination in universities and public administration. As the Cold War intensified, American Jewish associations worked closely with the government to secure the right of Jews in Warsaw Pact countries to emigrate to Israel.
At that time, antisemitism was understood exclusively as a phenomenon affecting the Jewish diaspora and was not linked to one’s political position on Israel. David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, who led the country until 1963, regarded Israel as the solution to the problem of antisemitism. For the Israeli leadership of that era, Israel represented the construction of a modern, secular nation – a European beacon in the Middle East. As late as 1989, then Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir maintained different obligation of Israel and the Jewish diaspora. The State of Israel was responsible for the security of its citizens, while organized Jewry in the United States were called upon to fight antisemitism.
During those years, many major Jewish organizations in the United States maintained a degree of distance from Israel. Some deeply religious Jewish communities regarded the establishment of a Jewish state as heretical, while many well-integrated American Jews feared that identification with Israel could cast doubt on their loyalty to the United States.
It was only in the 1970s that Israel’s leadership began to frame its conflict with the Palestinians as one between Jews and Arab antisemites. This shift followed the rise to power of right-wing, conservative and religious parties that placed greater emphasis on the Jewish character of the state. Since the early 2000s, Mazower argues, successive Israeli governments have promoted a definition of antisemitism that places criticism of Israeli policy and of Zionist ideology under suspicion of antisemitism.
Summarizing this shift in the meaning of the term Mazower writes: “A term that began as a way to describe the hostility faced by Jews as a minority struggling for their legal rights is now used to defend a state with a Jewish majority that deprives the minority within it of theirs.”
In Mazower’s view, this serves neither Israel’s interests nor those of the Jewish diaspora. Israel’s current policies, he argues, are isolating the country both regionally and internationally. And a struggle against antisemitism that focuses on criticism of Israel while neglecting far-right violence against Jews does not make Jewish life in the diaspora any safer.
One may hope that one of the three publishers that have previously translated Mazower’s work will find the courage to publish On Antisemitism in German. The book could help move the present entrenched positions towards a more civil debate about what antisemitism should mean today.
Caption: The Left Paty (Die Linke) Members of the Bundestag Gregor Gysi (L) and Luigi Pantisano (R) with Co-chairman of The Left Party Ines Schwerdtner (C) attend a parliamentary debate at the Bundestag in Berlin, Germany, 23 September 2026. The debate, requested by the AfD, focused on allegations of antisemitism and clan ties against the Berlin branch of The Left Party (Die Linke). EPA/CHRISTOPH RUTENKOLK
Updated: September 28, 2026 - 06:08
