In modern society, education has almost the status of a panacea. It should enable social advancement, guarantee income and a good life, impart knowledge and skills, promote participation in social life and the formation of political will and, on top of that, educate people to be better members of society. Education is considered the best remedy against prejudice and resentment, against intolerance and exclusion. And as more and more people are able to enjoy higher education and even university studies, such ugly things should gradually disappear.
But they don’t – and that requires a sociological explanation. For example anti-Semitism. The public acknowledges that there is (again) anti-Semitism in German society, but this is a problem for marginal groups: anti-Semites, who are uneducated members of the lower classes or incorrigible right-wingers. The effective means of combating anti-Semitism would then have to be educational campaigns, offerings for schools and young people and raising public awareness in the fight against anti-Semitic attitudes.
Four manifestations of anti-Semitism
Now there is a new study that casts doubt on this narrative. The representative survey, carried out from March to April in North Rhine-Westphalia with 1,300 participants, aims to shed light on the “difficult dark areas” of anti-Semitism in German society and, in doing so, to understand the attractiveness of anti-Semitic stereotypes.
The study distinguishes between four manifestations of anti-Semitism: religious, modern or traditional, Holocaust-related and Israel-related. A distinction is also made between three “communication forms” of anti-Semitism: open, camouflage and tolerated. In summary, the authors of the study come to the conclusion that, depending on the form and mode of communication, eight to 24 percent of those surveyed had “firm” anti-Semitic attitudes.
Anti-Semitism in German society has many facets. For example, 21 percent said they would never enter a synagogue. Twelve percent believe that the Jewish religion legitimizes violence against children. And 43 percent said they could “understand” that the Holocaust left many people indifferent. Almost a third of those surveyed find convictions for Holocaust denial “unfair”. And nearly half perceive “excessive Jewish influence in the world.”
Only “weak prejudice-reducing influence”
However, three findings from the study particularly stand out: Overall, anti-Semitic attitudes are distributed more evenly across all age groups. But it is the youngest participants, i.e. the sixteen to eighteen year olds, among whom anti-Israel anti-Semitism is the strongest. If the respondents are differentiated according to their religious affiliation, it becomes clear that anti-Semitism is most pronounced in all dimensions among Muslims in Germany.
And the education? The authors found that anti-Semitism was widespread across all educational levels, and tolerated anti-Semitism in particular was not uncommon, even among people with a university degree. Muslim anti-Semitism also does not have any mitigating effects on education. In their study, education only has a “weak prejudice-reducing influence” on all forms of anti-Semitism.
In the case of religious, openly modern and secondary anti-Semitism, this already weak effect is even neutralized when “socially desirable response behavior” is controlled for. This means that the presumed “unreported figure” of actual anti-Semitism is much higher. Higher educated respondents in particular are aware that their anti-Semitism is not socially acceptable. That is why they are more likely to hide the social undesirability of their actual attitudes in anti-Semitism surveys from interviewers than people with lower educational qualifications.
Agreement with anti-Semitic statements even increases with increasing education, even if the effects of this “communication latency” of anti-Semitism were previously eliminated in the interviews in the study. But if anti-Semitism actually increases with education, doesn’t it seem a bit helpless when the authors put “specific educational offers” against anti-Semitism at the top of their list of recommendations for action?
