> Skip to content
[]
  • Published: 25 November 2025
  • ISBN: 9780241722909
  • Imprint: Allen Lane
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $55.00

On Antisemitism

A Word in History




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: 25 November 2025
  • ISBN: 9780241722909
  • Imprint: Allen Lane
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $55.00

Also by Mark Mazower

See all

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. Mazower’s timeline is marked by two watersheds a century apart

Kenan Malik, The Observer