Why are we failing to effectively fight antisemitism?

When New York Times columnist Bret Stephens sparked a furor by making the case, earlier this month, that it’s time for the Jewish community to stop prioritizing that fight — because we’ve invested so much in trying to educate people about antisemitism, yet there is still antisemitism — he got the fundamental issue wrong.

The question is not whether we should try to fight antisemitism. It’s how. What if we took Stephens’s premise — that these efforts aren’t working — and imagined what could?

Since Stephens’ speech, our communal reaction has been too focused on the smaller-scale issues he raised. Was his critique of the ADL reasonable? Was he right that Jews are hated because of our “virtues and successes,” and that antisemitism is too powerful for appeals to tolerance and education to work? By focusing on such questions, we risk missing the bigger picture. Antisemitism will never be fully eradicated. Still, if, as one study suggests, some 45% of Republicans under the age of 44 feel that Jews are a threat to the American way of life, the answer can’t be to shrug.

But the fact that we have yet to make meaningful 21st-century strides in reducing antisemitism — and that, per most polls and studies, we’re going in the opposite direction — means that we need to rethink how to combat it in 21st-century terms. Here are three ideas for how to begin.

Invest in media literacy

Given that we know that antisemitism and conspiracy theories work together to sow distrust and paranoia and induce nihilism, perhaps Jewish leaders should spend more time pushing for greater investment in media literacy — not only about antisemitism, but in general.

A 2022 Stanford study found that “high school students who received only six 50-minute lessons in digital literacy were twice as likely to spot questionable websites as they were before the instruction took place.” At first glance, media literacy isn’t “about” or “for” Jews. But a 2025 study from Chapman University found that young people, like the rest of us, are being pushed by social media into echo chambers. Increasingly, and relatedly, they believe all information is suspect, or at least equally agenda-driven — a reality that makes pushing back on conspiracy theories more difficult, particularly when research has also found that teenagers are likely to believe content if they see it over and over again.

A country in which more people are taught how to be on guard against conspiracy and untruths is one in which people are more prepared to identify and critically react to the antisemitism being sprinkled into their media diet.

Rethink how we teach about the Holocaust

In his address, Stephens also essentially said that Holocaust education hasn’t worked. After all, we tried it, and yet, per the Claims Conference, “nearly 20% of Millennials and Gen Z in New York feel the Jews caused the Holocaust.”

But is it that teaching about the Holocaust doesn’t work — or that we need to teach it differently?

Some studies suggest that learning about the Holocaust increases tolerance toward minorities and people with different viewpoints. They also suggest, however, that mandating Holocaust education as an isolated item — rather than as part of a broader education in history and bigotry — doesn’t do much to help improve students’ knowledge.

The lesson here is that how we are teaching and learning about the Holocaust matters. Some, like scholars Jennifer Rich and William L. Smith, have suggested moving from a “learn from” approach to a “learn about” approach. Rather than use the Holocaust to teach students why they shouldn’t be antisemitic, the thinking goes, we should use it to teach them about the societal conditions that allowed the Holocaust to happen, and what actually transpired during it.

In other words, if we are too focused on Holocaust as an overarching moral lesson, we may fail to teach its concrete takeaways — about how hatred builds in a society, and the devastation that can follow — effectively.

Map the full network of hate

Finally, maybe we can’t fight antisemitism if we think about it in isolation. Our identity — and the suffering that can accompany it — does not exist in a silo.

There are good reasons to think that it’s more effective to fight antisemitism in tandem with other hatreds. In a 2016 study, researchers Maureen A. Craig and Jennifer A. Richeson looked at what they called “stigma-based solidarity.” What they found is that certain social conditions can push stigmatized group members to turn against other stigmatized groups, while other conditions can encourage them to turn toward one another. Consider how some Jewish and Muslim students became suspicious of one another during the Gaza war — and also how, as the Forward recently reported, some have found deeper connections since.

“One way to bridge the category divide,” Craig and Richeson wrote, “is by making an explicit connection between the in-group and another stigmatized group.…Common experiences or challenges are also associated with more coalitional attitudes among stigmatized groups.”

That means that pointing out the ways in which, say antisemitism and racism can play off each other can build solidarity between the targets of those hatreds. It is true that antisemitism is in some ways exceptional: it often functions in ways that look different from other forms of bigotry. But stressing its exceptionality may be working directly against the solidarity other minority groups feel for us.

In addition to hopefully building solidarity, explicitly drawing the link between antisemitism and other hatreds — and between Jews and other members of society — would be more honest and accurate. Antisemitism doesn’t only have negative consequences for Jews. We are seeing across the country, for instance, how the great replacement theory villainizes Jews and immigrants alike. When we embolden those who push conspiracy theories and nihilism, they hurt Jews, but they do not hurt Jews alone.

The pain of many persecuted groups in this country are bound up together. Maybe our way forward is, too.

The post We’re losing the fight against antisemitism. Here’s how to turn the tide appeared first on The Forward.