Thread by @BrendanMcGeever

The violence in Amsterdam last night has been widely described as a pogrom against Jews. This is not only misleading but politically dangerous. A thread.

As a scholar of pogroms, I have been struck by the way the word 'pogrom' has been used over the last year to describe Jewish experiences in the here and now.

In the immediate aftermath of October 7th, there was a 900% increase in search volume for the word ‘pogrom’. In the last 24h, a 650% increase.

The word 'pogrom' evokes histories that are etched in Jewish collective memory. Clearly, many are reaching for it as a way to make sense of recent events. But it is wrong and misleading.

The word pogrom, derived from the Russian verb gromit – to plunder, destroy – passed into common usage in the English language in the early 20th century as news spread of atrocities carried out against Jews in Imperial Russia.

The pogroms were violent acts by sections of the majority population against a racialised minority lacking in rights or state protection. The intention was to keep that minority 'in their place'.

In the Civil War of 1917-1921, more than 100,000 Jews were murdered in what was then the most ferocious wave of antisemitic violence in modern Jewish history. quest-cdecjournal.it/?issue=15&ref=…

There is a wealth of scholarship on pogroms. What are the prevailing definitions? For historian Hans Rogger, pogroms occur in a context in which the mechanisms of long-term structural exploitation of a minority population begin to be relaxed or challenged.

For David Engel, pogroms involve "collective violent applications of force by members of what perpetrators believed to be a higher-ranking ethnic or religious group against members of what they considered a lower-ranking or subaltern group”

In other words: pogroms occurred against Jews in regions of Europe where they were structurally discriminated against, where laws prohibiting their full participation in civic and political life, and where Jews were deemed to be carriers of alien values and ideology.

Describing the violence in Amsterdam last night as a pogrom is wrongheaded for four reasons. First, from the footage I have seen, Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were attacked not as Jews but as Israelis. The word pogrom, then, is doing the work of conflating antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

Second, earlier in the day Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were filmed shouting “Finish the Arabs! We’re going to win!”. A Palestinian flag was set on fire. A taxi driver attacked. This context has been widely overlooked. A pogrom involves victims and perpetrators; this was not a pogrom.

Third, describing the violence of last night as a pogrom encourages us to ignore the vast difference between the status of Jews in Europe a century ago and their place in Israel today where they constitute the majority in a state boasting one of the world’s most formidable armies

The analogy of the pogrom leads us to imagine a world populated in perpetuity by beleaguered Jews and their powerful enemies. The reality today is different, as Israel’s devastating war on Gaza shows, a war described by respected scholars of the Holocaust as a genocide.

Fourth, the word 'pogrom' has been shamefully put in the service of racist dog-whistling. Instead of combatting antisemitism, all this does is further entrench racism.

The word 'pogrom' is not only ill-suited to the task of explaining last night, it does a disservice to Jewish history and prevents us from comprehending the multiple atrocities being carried out in the here and now.