Words, 1882–2014
Where the words in these arguments came from, who coined them and who argues over them.
1 event, 2 flagged blanks, 0 open questions. Add an event
- From 1860Missing a language: The word in Arabic and Hebrew
How Arabic writing renders the word (معاداة السامية) and Hebrew (אנטישמיות), when each language took it up, and the argument made in Arabic that Arabs are Semites too. None of it is on the timeline yet.
- 1882to 2014Thin record: The word from 1882 to 2014
How the word spread into other languages and politics, its use under Nazi rule, and the arguments over it after 1945 are barely recorded here. The 1942 letter to Rashid Ali is the only event so far.
- 17 October 1942A Nazi race official tells Rashid Ali the word is aimed at Jews alone
Bernard Lewis quotes a letter of 17 October 1942 from Walter Gross, director of the Nazi Party’s Race Policy Office, to the Iraqi politician Rashid Ali, who had asked whether “anti-Semitism” was also directed against Arabs. Gross wrote that it was aimed only at Jews and that the word was incorrect for that reason. Lewis writes that a committee then proposed saying “anti-Jewish” instead of “anti-Semitic” in Hitler’s speeches and Mein Kampf, and that Hitler refused.
Use & spelling1 source1 independent root