A November 15 protest in Mexico – driven by a right-wing social-media operation – has been miscast as a mass uprising against President Sheinbaum. In reality, the march was small, elite-backed and part of a wider attempt to sow unrest, argues DAVID RABY
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The theological origins of anti-semitism
JAMES CROSSLEY charts how anti Jewish sentiment developed from ancient days and the dawn of Christianity to the Middle Ages, the birth of Protestantism and the sinister era of of the Nazis
Persecution of Jews during the Black Death, unknown artist
Despite new European arrests, the evidence presented so far fails to explain the sabotage of the undersea pipelines – and veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s allegations of US responsibility cannot be easily dismissed, writes ROGER McKENZIE
Groups are urging the US government to secure the 16-year old’s release as his mental and physical health decline dramatically after nine months inside Ofer prison, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
MAT COWARD tells the story of the eccentric founder of a short-lived but striking experiment in ‘vital democracy,’ who became best known for giving away his estate to the nation
As figures from Tucker Carlson to Nigel Farage flirt with neofascist rhetoric and mainstream leaders edge toward authoritarianism through war and repression, the conditions that once nurtured Hitlerism re-emerge — yet anti-war and anti-imperialist sentiments are also burgeoning anew, writes ANDREW MURRAY
As President Javier Milei is set to unveil a radical rollback of Argentina’s labour laws, unions warn of an unprecedented assault on workers’ rights, says BERT SCHOUWENBURG
TODAY, anti-semitism is typically understood as the belief that Jews are an inferior race. This form of anti-Jewish discrimination developed in the 18th and 19th centuries in influential strands of European nationalism. Here, Jews were not seen to share the same culture, language, religion, and history of a given nation. Jews could then be used as a convenient target of blame for a nation’s economic, social and political problems. Cliches about Jews were explained in pseudo-scientific terms as inherited racial behaviour.
Modern anti-semitism was also built on centuries of anti-Jewish discrimination and persecution that predated the rise of capitalism and modern nationalism.
Tracing their ancestry back through the Iron Age kingdoms of Judah and Israel, Jews as a recognisable group in the ancient world developed under various empires (eg, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman). Before the emergence of Christianity, Jews faced discrimination, expulsion and persecution. But this was not unusual for minority groups, religions or smaller territories.
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