Why is the number of anti-Semitic attacks growing in Western Europe and what do the epidemics have to do with anti-Semitism? Mandiner spoke to researcher Jeffrey Kaplan, American researching religious violence and terrorism.
He is currently a visiting researcher at the Danube Institute and a visiting lecturer at the University of Óbuda, and recently published an article in the Hungarian Conservative magazine about the situation of Hungarian Jewry.
Not long ago you wrote an article for the Hungarian Conservative magazine about Jewish life in Hungary. How do you see the issue of anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe and Hungary?
The cases are quite different. Anti-Semitism is obviously a real thing everywhere. It is a pathogen of thousands of years. The history of Hungary is not simple in this field, think of the period of the Arrow Cross and the Holocaust. A decade ago, at the time of the rise of Jobbik, when the listing of Jews was proposed, Hungary’s reputation abroad was very bad. Today, Hungary still has a bad reputation for strong anti-Semitism. (…) The Hungarian government has made great strides in the fight against anti-Semitism.
There has been very little violent atrocity compared to France and the United States (…).
Read the full Hungarian article here.