Abstract

Even if theoretical and empirical research on antisemitism has been making further progress in recent decades, the findings associated with this expertise in social sciences do not represent a specific point of reference for contemporary approaches to Critical Social Theory. This assessment is surprising for at least two reasons. Firstly, with the intention to shed light on the internal relationship between manifestations of antisemitism and the structures of modern liberal or fascist societies the early tradition of the Frankfurt School had explicitly placed a critical analyzation of it at the center of its research program in the 1930s and 1940s. Secondly, it can be stated that intersectional approaches as well as the critique of structural forms of racism have already come into focus of interest for Critical Social Theory. However, this has been largely done without critically addressing antisemitism as a specific and relevant phenomenon of contemporary societies. In the following, this article shows that this non-thematization can be explained by highlighting some misdirected premises in the newer critical conceptions concerning the social structures of domination and oppression as well as to reductionists approaches to racism which miss to address the specific characteristics of antisemitism.