That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Anti-Semitic by Steve Cohen (No Pasaran Media, £7.99) and Antisemitism by Hermann Bahr (Rixdorf Editions, £9.99)

In his moving Chanukah message to Britain’s Jews, Boris Johnson spoke of “dark, resurgent antisemitism.” These two very contrasting books  reflect this.   

Steve Cohen’s exploration of antisemitism on the left was first published in 1984 and is now available in a new edition, ten years after the author’s death. Cohen spent his adult life in various fringe groups on the left and this short book is an attempt by a lifetime socialist to explain left-wing antisemitism. It is part history, part polemic. The history falls into two parts: the left’s attacks on wealthy Jewish financiers and immigration during the heyday of imperialism at the turn of the century, and then the attacks on Zionism since the war. 

The polemical parts of the book are more interesting. How can the left deny its antisemitism in case it helps the Tories? How can it still equate Jews with capitalism and mix up antisemitism with anti-Zionism? And, finally, “denialism” — how can left-wingers simply deny their antisemitism, despite all the evidence to the contrary?

Cohen’s book is, alas, even more timely than it was in the 1980s. And, though it is written in the tiresome argot of small left-wing sects, this, given the now familiar language of left-wing students and Corbynistas, makes it feel horribly up to date. But not fully so, lacking as it does reflections on Labour antisemitism under Jeremy Corbyn. 

Hermann Bahr (1863-1934), was an Austrian writer, playwright and critic. He wrote widely on central European literature, from Modernism and Symbolism to Expressionism. But he is probably best known today for his short book, Antisemitism, published in 1894, just as the Dreyfus Affair was exploding in France and two years before Herzl published Der Judenstaat. 

Now reissued by Rixdorf Editions, it is an important text from the high point of late 19th-century antisemitism, using interviews with key figures of the time to explore a newly relevant issue dividing European writers and intellectuals. 

Bahr spoke to an extensive range of people: economists and anarchists, preachers and writers, including the British women’s rights activist Annie Besant, the French novelist Alphonse Daudet and the German socialist August Bebel. 

His interviews address antisemitism from all kinds of angles. Why do Jews get better marks in universities? Why is antisemitism part of the new demagoguery of the late 19th century? Is antisemitism more attractive to small traders and landowners and why do “the negative effects of capitalism always appear in the guise of the Jew”? 

The book offers a bewildering array of  explanations, coming from the countryside to the great cities of central Europe, from high finance to immigration from the Russian Pale. 

While Cohen’s book is interesting, and Bahr’s is a fascinating historical text, if you are looking for the roots of Labour antisemitism today, the new edition of Dave Rich’s The Left’s Jewish Problem is still the best guide, free of jargon and bang up to date.

David Herman is a senior JC reviewer