Volume 4 No 2 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] POLLS AND ANTISEMITISM IN POST-COMMUNIST ROMANIA 417called in past parties and movements a “radical continuity” based on modelsprovided by exacerbated national communism 63 ; (c) Neo-populist mercantileantisemitism, in which antisemitism is either used or discarded as afunction of perceptions of what “sells” and what does not at both nationaland international levels; (d) Utilitarian antisemitism, which shares somecharacteristics with category (c) but is nonetheless distinguished from it bythe fact that it is employed by parties, movements, and personalities whoare on record as being “anti-antisemitic”; (e) Reactive antisemitism, basicallyexplained in terms of the “competitive martyrology” between the Holocaustand the Gulag; and (f) Vengeance antisemitism, represented by thatcategory driven by the inherent hatred of Jews for whatever they do orrefrain from doing. Of these, categories (a) to (e) are particularly relevantfor examining political antisemitism. Category (f) is less relevant, as itappears that everywhere in East Central Europe (and perhaps not only)there would be a number of individuals who simply and incurably hateJews.The “nostalgic” attribute is warranted by the fact that the categorylooks upon the interwar authoritarian past as a model for solving the transitionalproblems of the present and constructing the country’s future.These political (and “cultural”!) formations would be the Romanianpenchant for a reactionary political group such as Jobbik. But none of thesemovements ever made it to parliament—or was even close to making it.Among them one can mention the (now deceased) Movement for Romanialed by Marian Munteanu, founded in 1992; Radu Sorescu’s Party ofNational Right, founded in 1993; and the neo-Iron Guardist Everything forthe Fatherland Party (Totul pentru Patrie), founded in 1993, a party thatdecided in 2011 to take off its mask and restore its interwar name, Everythingfor the Country (Totul pentru Ţară).In most cases, however, an apologist explanation accompanies somedistancing from the interwar period—enough to provide justification formeritorious intellectuals of a center-right political persuasion to lend theirprestige by regularly contributing to publications explicitly or implicitlylinked to such political formations and thereby legitimize antisemitism andextremism. Even if yet “in the bud,” one is reminded of Kovács’s explicitwarning that “If, in addition to the antisemites, other people who feel nopersonal antipathy toward Jews are inclined to use the vocabulary of thislanguage for debating changes, conflicts, decisions, and existential issues,and if antisemitic arguments become, for such people, a considerable,though not necessarily acceptable, explanation of different events, then the63. Michael Shafir, “Reds, Pinks, Blacks and Blues: Radical Politics in Post-Communist East Central Europe,” Studia politica, Vol. 2 (2001): 397-446.