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On Antisemitism
  • Published: 2 December 2025
  • ISBN: 9780241722909
  • Imprint: Allen Lane
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $55.00

On Antisemitism

A Word in History

Formats & editions
Hardback
2 Dec 2025
EBook
23 Sept 2025
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What do we mean when we talk about antisemitism?

For most of history, antisemitism has been understood as a menace from Europe’s political Right, the province of blood-and-soil ethno-nativists who built on Christendom’s long-standing suspicion of its Jewish population and infused it with racist pseudo-science. Such threats culminated in the nightmare of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

The landscape is very different now, as Mark Mazower argues in this piercingly brilliant book. More than four-fifths of the world’s Jews now live in Israel and the United States, with the former’s military dominance of its region guaranteed by the latter while the loudest voices decrying antisemitism see it coming from the Left not the Right.

Mazower clearly and carefully shows us how we got here, seeking to illuminate rather than blame. Very few words have the punch of ‘antisemitism’ and yet no term is more liable to be misunderstood in ways affecting free speech and foreign policy alike. On Antisemitism is a vitally important attempt to draw a line that must be drawn.
  • Published: 2 December 2025
  • ISBN: 9780241722909
  • Imprint: Allen Lane
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $55.00
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Praise for On Antisemitism

An immense contribution... In tracing the evolving meaning of ‘antisemitism,’ [Mazower] demonstrates persuasively how we might turn it from a weapon back into a word... Rigorous and lucid

Lily Meyer, The New Republic

Excellent and timely

Ian Buruma, The New Yorker

Mazower’s book contains many distinctions – subtle twists of the lens that bring different shades of personal and ideological animus into focus... For Mazower to provide any respite of clarity on a topic befogged in rage and confusion is achievement enough

Rafael Behr, The Guardian

An illuminating new book... On Antisemitism does not seek to define the concept but more usefully tracks how its meaning has changed over time

Kenan Malik, The Observer

A rigorous account... Mazower’s meticulous deep dive reveals how ideological war is waged on the semantic level. The result is an elegant and illuminating glimpse of how politics shapes language itself

Publisher's Weekly

One of the many virtues of Mazower’s excellent and timely book is his effort to restore historical context to a word that has become a generic term of condemnation... In this lucid survey, Mazower shows that the history of anti-Jewish sentiment is a story of varied accusations, hatreds, and fears—as entangled with the rise of modernity as it is with our present politics

The Best Books of 2025 So Far, New Yorker

Clear, comprehensive and nuanced... A book that can contribute to honest discussions that are desperately needed in a new age of racism, war and genocide... this book is a welcome attempt to offer some clarity

Dr Brian Hanley, Irish Times