Accounting for Contemporary Antisemitism: A Four-Dimensional Framework and a New Dataset

Existing scholarship on contemporary antisemitism tends to sacrifice breadth for depth, typically focusing on a specific dimension of the phenomenon or a single national or ideological context. This nearsightedness threatens to limit our understanding of current antisemitism because separate parts of a complex picture are studied in isolation, and because crucial questions about temporal and cross-national variation remain understudied. To help remedy this situation, this article introduces a more comprehensive conceptual and empirical framework along with a new dataset intended to encourage the study of antisemitism as a multidimensional, cross-national, and dynamic phenomenon. The framework conceptualizes antisemitism in four core dimensions—attitudes, incidents, cultural imagery, and Jews' exposure—and specifies relevant variables and indicators, thus facilitating future research and data collection efforts. To supplement the framework, the article introduces a new dataset (DIMA—Dimensions of Antisemitism) featuring publicly available data covering three of the four dimensions: attitudes, incidents, and exposure. Based on patterns emerging from these data, hypotheses for further study are suggested. These contributions are intended to prepare the ground for a new and theoretically more ambitious research agenda in the field of contemporary antisemitism research.Accounting for Contemporary Antisemitism: A Four-Dimensional Framework and a New DatasetacceptedVersio

Right-Wing Terrorism and Violence in Putin’s Russia

This article introduces the case of right-wing terrorism and violence in Putin’s Russia into the purview of terrorism studies. The article explores the modus operandi of Russian right-wing militants by analyzing a new dataset, RTV-RUSSIA, which includes nearly 500 violent events covering the period 2000-2017. Compared to their Western European counterparts, Russian right-wing militants have operated more violently (with attacks being more frequent) as well as more purposefully (with a larger share of premeditated attacks). The article offers a historical and a comparative explanation. The first answers the question of why a wave of right-wing violence occurred in the 2000s, stressing the socio-economic turbulence of the 1990s, increasing immigration, ideological radicalization amid restrictive political opportunities and a permissive discursive environment, and the rise of the internet as an arena for spreading violent propaganda. The comparative explanation tackles the question of why Russia has seen so much more right-wing violence than Western countries, highlighting the combination of anocratic regime type, high violence levels, high immigration, and low social stigmatization of extreme-right views

Mellom triumf og tragedie : beleiringen av Leningrad (1941-1944) i sovjetisk og postsovjetisk historiografisk tradisjon

Den sovjetiske erfaringen av andre verdenskrig var preget av to grunnleggende elementer. På den ene siden var overvinnelsens triumf i møte med en formidabel dødsfiende: Sovjetunionen gikk seirende ut av sin "store fedrelandskrig", og bidro slik avgjørende til seieren over Hitlers Tyskland. På den andre siden var tragedien: Seierens pris ble betalt i form av ufattelige menneskelige tap, med 8,7 millioner falne soldater og minst 18 millioner døde sivile. Leningrads skjebne under krigen tok opp i seg dens triumf og tragedie: Byen, som var under en morderisk beleiring i over 16 måneder, fra september 1941 til januar 1943, falt ikke; det militære forsvaret brøt ikke sammen, men sto fast tross ekstreme prøvelser. Men konsekvensene for sivilbefolkningen av den varige mangelen på mat, brensel og strøm, samt stadige artilleri- og luftangrep, var rundt én million døde – det er omtrent dobbelt så mange som omkom i hele Tyskland som følge av allierte luftangrep under hele krigsperioden, og det er nær like mange dødsofre som i Auschwitz. En sovjetisk historiker har da også beskrevet Leningrad under beleiring som "en gigantisk utryddelsesleir". Denne studien er en undersøkelse av hvordan Leningrad-beleiringen har blitt fremstilt, vurdert og fortolket i sovjetisk og postsovjetisk historiografisk tradisjon. Spesielt undersøkes fremstillingen av de tyske krigsmålene og beslutningen om å beleire byen, av "hungervinteren" 1941/42 og av situasjonen i de okkuperte områdene av Leningrad-provinsen. Generelt drøftes beleiringsmytens utvikling og funksjon, fra tilblivelsen under krigsårene og helt frem til reproduksjonen i skrivende stund. Beleiringsmyten forstås her som fortellingen om beleiringen som en triumf -- en heroisk og vellykket forsvarskamp. Denne fortellingens reproduksjon har ikke bare bunnet i dens nytte som politisk instrument (for regimet, med behov for å legitimere sin makt), men også i dens nytte som kulturelt meningsskapende (for mennesker med behov for å skape orden og mening i minnet om fortiden). Studien viser hvordan beleiringsmyten, som var forankret i sovjetisk diskurs, levde videre etter Sovjetunionens fall. Tendensen til bevaring og reproduksjon av fortellingen om "heltebyen" med sine tappert kjempende "helteborgere" synes i det postsovjetiske Russland å være sterkere enn tendensen til sprengning av beleiringsmyten, hvilket forklares både ved den russiske statens historiepolitiske interesser i å drive "patriotisk oppfostring", og ved det russiske nasjonale fellesskapets behov for å identifisere seg positivt med sin fortid

De arabiske jødenes eksodus: bakgrunn og årsaker

I årene etter opprettelsen av Israel utvandret et massivt antall jøder fra den arabiske verden. Hva forklarer at opp mot 900 000 arabiske jøder forlot sine hjemland til fordel for nye og fremmede samfunn i Israel, Frankrike og USA

Antisemitic Violence in Europe, 2005-2015. Exposure and Perpetrators in France, UK, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Russia

How often do incidents of antisemitic violence occur in contemporary Europe, and what trends are showing? How exposed are Jewish populations in different countries? Who commits these crimes? We need to answer such questions as precisely as possible in order to effectively combat and prevent antisemitism in general and violent antisemitism in particular, but we lack the knowledge to do so because systematic studies of the subject are few and far between. As a step towards filling this research gap, the current report presents some tentative findings about violent antisemitism in a sample of European countries and proposes directions for further research. Combining incident data based on police reporting with a 2012 survey on antisemitism carried out by the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), this report tentatively compares the levels of antisemitic violence in different countries. The seven-country sample contains comparable data for France, UK, Germany and Sweden only. Among these countries, Jews’ exposure to antisemitic violence appears to have been highest in France, lower in Sweden and Germany, and lowest in the United Kingdom. Figures for Norway, Denmark and Russia are not directly comparable because of differing data sources. However, Russia clearly stands out with a very low number of incidents considering Russia’s relatively large Jewish population. Russia is also the only case in which there is little to indicate that Jews avoid displaying their identity in public. Available data on perpetrators suggest that individuals of Muslim background stand out among perpetrators of antisemitic violence in Western Europe, but not in Russia, where right-wing extremist offenders dominate. Attitude surveys corroborate this picture in so far as antisemitic attitudes are far more widespread among Muslims than among the general population in Western Europe. The findings presented here are tentative. More and better data as well as more research are needed in order to form a more accurate picture of the nature and causes of antisemitic violence, a prerequisite for determining relevant countermeasures

Identity under Siege: Selective Securitization of History in Putin’s Russia

This article explores state efforts to safeguard national history and identity in Putin's Russia. It is argued that a process of selective securitization has been taking place, whereby elite actors have defined certain (but not all) aspects of Russia's history and identity as vital and existentially threatened interests that need to be forcefully defended. This has paved the way for wide-reaching state policy on the Great Patriotic War and given security actors an important role in its formulation. While the narrative of victory and unity surrounding the Great Patriotic War has become subject to securitization, state policy on the more contentious issue of Stalin's dictatorship has been much more ambiguous. When it comes to Stalin, the state has not sought to unify the population behind a common narrative, but rather to accommodate the value pluralism present among Russian elites and in society at large