Volume 4 No 2 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

418 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:387various forms of anti-Jewish hostility can indeed constitute an explosivemix.” 64As for self-propelling antisemitism, parties that make up this categoryare the parties of “radical continuity.” 65 There are either personal or ideologicallinks (or both) between these parties and the communist past. Suchformations exacerbate the implicit antisemitism inherited from the formerregime and transform it into an explicit one. The transformation is not accidentalbut intentional. Antisemitism, for the members of this category, isinstrumental, serving purposes of mobilization. The purpose no longer is (asin the case of the nostalgics) to merely cleanse the past, but to prepare forthe future. The authoritarian legacy comes into play here in a pivotal role.The instrumentality of antisemitism consequently consists in providingelectorates with “models” that rule out their political adversaries’ alternativedemocratic constructs.Like the nostalgic antisemites, self-propelling antisemites indulge inthe “Judaization” of political adversaries, but unlike them the exercise isaimed at the effective rather than at the affective aspect of politics. The pastis important for the self-propelling antisemites, but its importance derivesfrom its instrumentality.Self-propelling antisemites “propose” alternative models to democracy,though they are usually careful to do so implicitly rather than explicitly.With democracy viewed as a foreign implant aimed at establishingworld Jewish power, “patriotic” figures of the recent past are resurrectedand their rehabilitation is tenaciously pursued; Marshal Antonescu servesthis purpose in Romania. The post-communist political party that best fitsthis category is the Greater Romania Party (PRM). That the generic Jew isinstrumental for no other purpose than power-seeking was demonstrated inthe PRM’s case by the ease in which antisemitism was briefly abandonedshortly before the 2004 elections, when party chairman Corneliu VadimTudor’s electoral campaign was managed by an Israeli spin doctor, and byits reemergence as a central feature of party mass appeal once that EUeyeingrecipe proved inefficient at the polls.Both nostalgic and self-propelling antisemites engage in self-victimizationand in the externalization of guilt. They both seek to present eithertheir own group or the Romanian nation as a whole as being the victimrather than the perpetrator, and to attribute whatever black spots may haveexisted to other internal and/or external forces. They share with nostalgicantisemites the generic Jew in the role of the internal enemy, along othernational minorities such as the Hungarians, just as they share with them64. Kovács, The Stranger at Hand, x.65. Shafir, “Reds, Pinks, Blacks and Blues.”