Anti-Semitism must be properly understood as an ancient virus before it can be confronted and defeated.

NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE O n Saturday, a white supremacist attacked the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, murdering eleven people, specifically targeting the elderly and the infirm. In the aftermath of the attack, two separate narratives emerged regarding anti-Semitism. The first acknowledged the different nature of anti-Semitism; the second attempted to obscure that nature. The first narrative argued that anti-Semitism is a special sort of evil: a shapeshifting evil tied inextricably with conspiratorial thinking, an evil dedicated to the proposition that a shadowy cabal of ethnically tainted or religiously motivated villains have been manipulating the levers of power. The second narrative argued that anti-Semitism …