"An obscene graffito scrawled on the bathroom wall of bourgeois society"

Another way to think of antisemitism, with its obsession with Jewish physiognomy and its heavy use of racist caricature, is that it’s fundamentally a cartoon ideology. In place of the complexity of social forces and history, it gives a cabal of super-villains, ugly-looking bad guys with a funny voices. It speaks to a fundamentally childish and regressive worldview: a nation or people that was perfect in the past is tarnished by something straightforwardly evil that represents an upsetting and confusing modernity taking away “what they had.” And like a cartoon, it is clear in its outlines and relatively simple to both grasp and transmit. It looks for heroic “savior figures” in the form of strongmen and dictators. To those who don’t share the outlook these appear to be buffoonish types whose attraction is difficult to understand. In fact, the entire doctrine can appear ludicrous and difficult to take seriously. The understandable temptation is to make light of it and associate it with idiocy, which to an extent is true. With comes the bohemian tendency to play around with it “ironically” to signal superiority to both its stupid adherents but also to the bourgeois respectability that reviles it. 

Antisemitism is sort of an obscene graffito scrawled on the bathroom wall of bourgeois society. But it also has something of an air of mystical hocus-pocus and the direct, graphic power of occult symbols, like say, the swastika. Like cartoons, it is also plastic: shapeable and moldable to new conditions and subject to limitless morphological variation. Fans of other simplistic renderings of society will have a tendency gravitate to the world of antisemitic vignettes as providing more vivid and pornographic kicks. (Here it’s worth noting Kanye West’s apparent addiction to pornographic movies and the growth of antisemitism on message boards otherwise dedicated to sharing pornography, and often anime porn at that.) Antisemitism is the real hard-core stuff: the soft-core populist enjoyment of sticking it to elites does not come close to the air of sinister, stalking murderousness one can indulge in with antisemitism. The highs are more intense and satisfying. With antisemitism in one’s possession one can suddenly, with very little effort, terrorize and menace. It can feel like possessing power itself. Rejection by polite society seems to only confirm “the truth” or at least the effectiveness and power of the idea. As such, it will always be a favored technique of charlatans and hucksters who promise to reveal “hidden secrets” about the world.