Volume 4 No 2 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

416 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:387bined effects of several internal and external factors, only one of which isanti-Jewish prejudice.” The transformation of overt or covert “societalmoods” into politically relevant actions “gathers momentum if, in societieswhere anti-Jewish prejudices have been present more or less continuously, a‘culture’ and a language arises that makes use of opinions, myths, andphantasmagorias ‘about Jews’ to interpret situations that are unrelated toJews or the role of Jews in society.” 60 The surveys presented in this articleleave little doubt that such elements are indeed present in Romanian politicalculture. To what extent might they at one point lead to the politicizationof antisemitism in post-communist Romania—as was the case in the emergenceof Jobbik (Movement for a Better Hungary) as a xenophobic,antisemitic, and anti-Roma force in Hungary—is a deeply pertinentquestion.Available data on Romania is, alas, too scarce to match what is availableon Hungary. In what follows, the analysis is qualitative.Back in 2008, I wrote 61 that if antisemitism in post-communist EastCentral Europe may be said to be a dependent variable (i.e., what needs tobe explained), an examination of the reasons for its relatively successfulpost-communist dissemination is bound to reveal a variety of independentvariables (what explains a phenomenon) in the postures of the differentmovements, associations, and political parties displaying evident or lessobvious antisemitic nuances. These might be driven by different, indeedsometimes contradictory, attitudes toward the past (the legacy of theinterwar radical right), present (the legacy of communism), and future (orientationstoward the “well ordered” society). They may be political and/orcultural foes, and the fact that they find themselves in the same boat, disturbingas it might be for the local remnants of the Jewish communities,should not make one jump to the conclusion that the rationality of this stateof affairs is to be sought in the simplistic, blind, ancestral hatred of whatAndrei Oişteanu in Romania called the “imaginary Jew.” 62 My article distinguishedbetween the following taxonomic categories of “producers” ofantisemitism: (a) Self-exculpatory nostalgic antisemitism, or what I havecalled in past parties and movements a “radical return” to models of theinterwar radical right; (b) Self-propelling antisemitism, or what I have60. Kovács, The Stranger at Hand, x.61. Michael Shafir, “Rotten Apples, Bitter Pears: An Updated MotivationalTypology of Romania’s Radical Right Anti-Semitic Postures in Post-Communism,”Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 7, No. 21 (Winter 2008): 149-187, http://jsri.ro/ojs/index.php/jsri/article/view/381. In what follows I make extensiveuse of that article.62. Andrei Oişteanu, Imaginea evreului în cultura română. Studiu despreimagologie în context Est-Central European (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2001).