In 1781 the German historian August Ludwig von Schlözer gave a family of languages a name: “Semitic”. Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac and Ethiopic all belong to it. Bernard Lewis put it this way in The American Scholar: “‘Semitic’ was first used as a linguistic, not as an ethnic or racial, term.”
In 1860 the scholar Moritz Steinschneider accused Ernest Renan of “antisemitische Vorurteile”, antisemitic prejudices. That is the earliest use of the word I found a source for.
In 1879 the journalist Wilhelm Marr published The Victory of Jewry over Germandom. It went through 12 editions that year, and the noun Antisemitismus entered German politics with Marr and his Antisemites’ League. The IHRA calls it “the neologism ‘antisemitism,’ coined by German journalist Wilhelm Marr in 1879 to designate anti-Jewish campaigns”. A Forward language column says crediting Marr is a mistake, since Steinschneider used the word first. The sources disagree, so both stand on the timeline.
So a word for languages became a word for a race, and then a word for hating one people. The IHRA’s own memo says the term “has, however, since its inception referred to prejudice against Jews alone.”
The Nazis’ race office said the same. Rashid Ali had asked whether it was also aimed at Arabs. In a letter of 17 October 1942, quoted by Lewis, Walter Gross of the Nazi Party’s Race Policy Office answered that the expression was “incorrect since this movement was directed exclusively against Jewry, and not against other peoples who speak a Semitic language.” Lewis adds that a committee then suggested “anti-Jewish” in place of “anti-Semitic” in Hitler’s speeches and Mein Kampf, so as not to offend “our Arab friends”. Hitler did not agree. That fact cuts both ways, and it’s on the timeline for both sides to use.
Today the arguments are about the spelling, and about whether to keep the word at all. The IHRA came out for the unhyphenated spelling in 2015, because the hyphen “allows for the possibility of something called ‘Semitism’”. The AP Stylebook followed in April 2021. In 2020 Stephen D. Smith of the USC Shoah Foundation wrote that “we should retire the term entirely and begin calling it what it really is: Jew hatred.” In January 2025 a US executive order went back to “Anti-Semitism”, hyphen included.
My position: if the word has only ever meant hostility to Jews, the accurate word is “anti-Jewish”. It names who the hostility is aimed at. I’ve put that motion up on Steereh and I’m arguing for it. The other seat is open to anyone who thinks “antisemitism” is the better word.
How Arabic and Hebrew took the word up (معاداة السامية, אנטישמיות) is still a blank on the timeline. If you have sources, add them.
Debate open at: https://steereh.com/debates/6baec2fb-91f5-47f4-9ea2-40de78cc0aa8
Talk about it with us: Ahl Al Falastan (أهل الفلسطن) on Discord, https://discord.gg/y2ZKt8TDwf