ExtremismSurvey of 18 European Countries: Hardcore Anti-Semitic Attitudes Remain Pervasive

Published 27 November 2019

About one in four Europeans polled harbor pernicious and pervasive attitudes toward Jews, according to a new global survey on anti-Semitism commissioned by ADL (the Anti-Defamation League). While anti-Semitic attitudes held mostly steady in Western Europe, the poll found hateful notions about Jews are rising in Eastern and Central European countries polled.

About one in four Europeans polled harbor pernicious and pervasive attitudes toward Jews, according to a new global survey on anti-Semitism commissioned by ADL (the Anti-Defamation League). While anti-Semitic attitudes held mostly steady in Western Europe, the poll found hateful notions about Jews are rising in Eastern and Central European countries polled, where long-held tropes about Jewish control of business and finance and of “dual loyalty” remain widespread.

The poll of 18 countries, which is part of the ADL Global 100: An Index of Anti-Semitism, was fielded between April and June 2019 in Eastern and Western Europe, Canada, South Africa, Argentina and Brazil. European and other countries with significant Jewish populations were selected for the 2019 survey. Using an 11-question index that has served as a benchmark for previous ADL polling around the world since 1964, the survey of more than 9,000 adults found that anti-Semitic attitudes in Argentina, Brazil, Poland, Russia, South Africa and Ukraine have seen marked increases since the last ADL Global 100 survey.

In the Eastern and Central European countries surveyed, the trope of “Jewish power” in business and the “dual loyalty” canard are especially widespread, and many people in those countries also believe that Jews still talk too much about the Holocaust.

In Poland, where restitution of Holocaust-era Jewish property and a controversial law on Holocaust speech were widely debated in recent years, anti-Semitic attitudes rose to 48 percent of the population, up from 37 percent in 2015. Roughly three out of four respondents in Poland agreed that “Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust.”

In Hungary, where a nationalist government ran anti-immigrant billboard campaigns featuring Jewish financier George Soros, 25 percent of the population believes “Jews want to weaken our national culture by supporting more immigrants coming to our country.” Hungary had an overall index score of 42 percent, compared to 40 percent in 2015.

“It is deeply concerning that approximately one in four Europeans harbor the types of anti-Semitic beliefs that have endured since before the Holocaust,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “These findings serve as a powerful wake-up call that much work remains to be done to educate broad swaths of the populations in many of these countries to reject bigotry, in addition to addressing the pressing security needs where violent incidents are rising.”