Antisemitism as oppression of Jews as Jews

BISA seminar (recorded: 26/05/26) - Public debate about antisemitism tends to focus on individual prejudice and acts, while scholarly work has often focused on antisemitism as an ideology, especially in the contemporary context. In this seminar, Mareike Riedel (Macquarie Law School) proposes an alternative: understanding antisemitism as a structural and intersectional phenomenon. She offers a minimal definition of antisemitism as the oppression of Jews as Jews that shifts the focus from individual bias or ideological content toward questions of power and structural injustice. While structural antisemitism differs in its manifestations from structural racism affecting Black, Indigenous, and people of colour, this should not place it beyond the purview of theories of oppression. Drawing on the work of Iris Marion Young and others, Mareike Riedel will outline what such a critical approach to antisemitism could look like, how it illuminates under-studied facets of antisemitism, and what this means for how we think about fighting antisemitism.