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Antisemitism
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At a glance
Source-by-source
“Prejudice against, hostility toward, or hatred of Jews. … It is important to spell "antisemitism" without a hyphen (for more, see the explanation for the appropriate spelling of antisemitism; Anti-Defamation League, n.d.).”
APA defines antisemitism as prejudice against, hostility toward, or hatred of Jews, and treats it as standard vocabulary. Following the Anti-Defamation League, it directs writers to spell the word without a hyphen — the closed spelling that most major institutions adopted in the early 2020s.
“Antisemitism has deep historical roots and uses exploitation, marginalization, discrimination, and violence as its tools. … The myth changes and adapts to different times and places, but fundamentally it says that Jews are to blame for society's problems.”
Racial Equity Tools, drawing on Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, frames antisemitism as a structural ideology with deep historical roots — one whose adapting mythology fundamentally blames Jews for society's problems. It names antisemitism as a concept communicators should understand and use.
“A prejudice against people of Jewish heritage. It has inspired the Holocaust, physical abuse, slander, economic and social discrimination, vandalism and other crimes. … The unhyphenated spelling is favored by many scholars and institutions, including the World Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.”
The Diversity Style Guide defines antisemitism as prejudice against people of Jewish heritage and traces the spelling shift from "anti-Semitism" to "antisemitism" that AP, the New York Times, and other organizations adopted in the early 2020s, noting the unhyphenated form is favored by the ADL, the World Jewish Congress, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Synthesis
“Antisemitism” is the word to use, and the spelling is now closed, without a hyphen. APA and the Diversity Style Guide define it the same way — prejudice against, hostility toward, or hatred of Jews (DSG: prejudice against people of Jewish heritage) — while Racial Equity Tools describes it as an adapting ideology with deep historical roots. All three treat it as standard vocabulary. APA and DSG both record a spelling rule that consolidated in the early 2020s: APA, following the Anti-Defamation League, directs writers to spell “antisemitism” without a hyphen, and the Diversity Style Guide documents the same shift, noting the unhyphenated form is favored by the ADL, the World Jewish Congress, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The reasoning behind the closed spelling is that “anti-Semitism” implies a coherent thing called “Semitism,” lending false legitimacy to a 19th-century racial pseudo-category; closing it up refuses that framing.
Racial Equity Tools, drawing on Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, frames antisemitism as an adapting ideology with deep historical roots whose core myth “says that Jews are to blame for society’s problems.” That structural reading places antisemitism alongside the commons’ other structural concepts — ageism, ableism, classism, racism — as a system to be named. It pairs with islamophobia, which Racial Equity Tools describes as “entangled” with antisemitism in the same systems of white supremacy and Christian hegemony.
Audience notes
- Journalists and editors. Spell it “antisemitism” — closed, no hyphen. This is now AP, New York Times, ADL, and USHMM style. Use it as a plain descriptor of anti-Jewish prejudice.
- Advocates and internal comms. Name the structure, not just incidents: the sources treat antisemitism as an adapting ideology built on the “Jews are to blame” myth, which gives the term a specific referent.
Related terms