Rotten Apples, Bitter Pears: An Updated Motivational Typology Of Romania’s Radical Right’s Anti-Semitic Postures In Post-Communism

Abstract

Post-communist anti-Semitism in Romania and elsewhere in East Central Europe is not necessarily driven by the same motivations. Basically, each of the categories I employ in the taxonomy (updating earlier endeavors) acts out of a different motivation and has a different temporal orientation. What they all share, however, is precisely the attempt to respond to the need to produce what Benedict Anderson called an “imagined community,” in albeit significantly different positive terms of reference. A distinction is made between the following taxonomic categories of “producers” of anti-Semitism: a) “Self- exculpatory nostalgic anti-Semitism;” b) “Self-propelling anti-Semitism”; c) “Neo-populist mercantile anti- Semitism”: d) “Utilitarian anti-Semitism”; e) “Reactive anti-Semitism; and, finally, f) “Vengeance anti-Semitism.”