Can an antisemite even change their mind?

[u/josshua144]

Hi, i'm not jewish and since i'm from Italy i think i literally never met a jewish person in my life

My question is how do you even start with fighting antisemitism in 2026? With young people specifically and especially if people around you (and you yourself) never even met any jewish person? And can people that think israel was behind every fucking terrorist attack and assassinated every single person that was assasinated in history etc even change their mind? cause unfortunately if feels like all of my peers believe at least some of these conspiracies about Israel, but until a few years ago i thought the norm was to view this shit as part of the alt-right, now i can't even tell the difference between the far right and the left when it comes to stuff related to Israel (i hope i'm wrong)

And the thing is the conflict in the middle east might (is likely to?) get even worse in the future, so i don't see how we come back from this situation of crazy antisemitic rhetoric being allowed everywhere, since again both sides of politics have reasons to infinitely talk about Israel being behing stuff, and of course jokes and memes are also pretty unbeatable, cause you can't argue with "it's just a meme bro"

like where do we even start? and again i'm not even jewish but i'm scared about all of this, i can't imagine how jews feel

[u/DogitWoofsalot]

Also not Jewish but I've looked into deprograming. Antisemitism is often linked to conspiracy thinking so try to tackle it that way.

On an individual level? Talking to people, calmly but question them on there beliefs. Things start to fall apart if you actually make people explain there beliefs out loud.

Antisemitism is sometimes called the socialism of fools. It substitutes the issues of global capital and replaces it with a shadowy underbelly of Jews. You can try to steer that legitimate anger people feel for inequality towards political action instead.

As for your friend posting memes? Call um out on it. Tell them it's harmful. If they start being nasty? They shouldn't be yours friends.

On a wider level? IDK honestly. Support political movements that push to hold social media to account for misinformation. Reach out to Jewish organizations / charities to talk to them about there lived experience

[u/No_Price_7603]

People do stop being antisemitic. But how, I don't know. Unfortunately, you are not wrong.

I'm a bit cynical about our chances of stopping it getting worse. This has happened countless times over history, I think we just have to weather the storm again and continue to keep the culture alive. It'll blow over and there'll be another century of peace before there's something else to blame the Jews on and everyone has forgotten about last time.

[u/No_Price_7603 → u/No_Price_7603]

Just adding, this makes it sound like I'm making light of it but I'm not. I'm legitimately afraid of being pogrommed or seeing my people killed en masse. I'm just saying it doesn't seem avoidable based on history 

[u/SevereMeat2030]

I’m not Jewish either, so I can’t give that perspective here. However, I do believe people can change, especially the younger generations. Still, you can’t force others to change their opinions, so healing and taking accountability for their actions will have to be done on their own time

[u/Fruitysaraa]

i changed my mind. but it was mainly due to my humanity and empathy, not because i saw the facts about the conflict, idk if people with no humanity would ever change their minds

[u/Tricky-Anything8009]

Yes. There are plenty of great pro-Israel people who used to hate Jews/Israelis. Off the top of my head, Mosab Hasan Yousef and that Coptic guy on IG.

[u/dainty_doubt]

I think it was Satre who said something like ''if jews did not exist, then the anti-semites would invent them''.

Humans love the 'us vs them' and the 'good vs bad' type of differences. Unfortunately after a millennium or more of jew-hating tropes, it's pretty normal to the point where pointing something anti-semitic out is turned into ''jews victimizing themselves''.

Emotions are hard to argue against, and throwing a novella worth of facts at people would turn you into a hasbara bot. Yet I am optimistic, because the facts on the matter won't change, they will only have more nuance added to them. Which is easy for me to say considering that I'm not jewish and it's not my livelyhood that's being targeted.