Antisemitism in the UK in 2024
Think tank: The Henry Jackson Society
Author(s): Dr Theo Zenou
April 16, 2024
This report from UK think tank the Henry Jackson Society identifies four contemporary sources of antisemitism.
Antisemitism is spiking in the United Kingdom.
Ever since the Hamas pogroms of October 7 2023, which sparked the ongoing war in Gaza, there has been a huge rise in antisemitism. In the last year alone, there was a 589% increase in antisemitic incidents in the country, according to the Community Security Trust (CST). That translates to a total of 4,103 incidents, or about 11 per day. It is the highest figure ever recorded by CST since it started collecting data forty years ago.
Antisemitic speech on social media has risen dramatically since the Hamas attacks. On X, in the week following October 7 alone, there was a 919% surge in anti-Jewish posts. Other platforms have seen similar trends.
Merely worrying about antisemitism, or denouncing it, is not enough. We need to understand it. More specifically, we need to understand it not in the abstract but in the current context. What are the contemporary sources of antisemitism? And what could be the solutions to stem them?
This research brief identities four contemporary sources of antisemitism: l Far-right antisemitism l Islamist antisemitism l Conspiratorial antisemitism l The new respectable antisemitism.
