1168: antisemitic Feb 19, 2018

While the concept of antisemitism has been around at least a couple thousand years, the term 'antisemitism' has only been around for about 140. Before then, at least in Germany, the popular term was 'Jew-hatred' („Judenhass“) but to sound more scientific and more euphemistic, Wilhelm Marr coined the term in the late 1870's. Originally, he used the term „Semitismus“ as a synonym for 'Jewish spirit' („Judenthums“), but a few years later published an antisemitic pamphlet using the word we have today: „Antisemitismus“. It quickly became so popular that within the year it was used for the name of the League of Antisemites. It is for this reason—that the term was created almost as propaganda so that bigots would sound more official and the word sounded less direct—that 'antisemitism' does not also describe hatred of all Semitic groups, including Arabs, Assyrians or Amharas. This is also not the first time that Germans have used words to describe many people—mostly Middle Eastern—and applied it to only one, as was also the case with 'Aryan'.