Review: Anti-Semitism: Here and Now by Deborah Lipstadt — an ancient prejudice is still with us
A historian of the Holocaust seeks to understand the resurgence of anti-semitism
Review by Dominic Lawson
Rub it out: this offensive mural in London was ordered to be removedMICHAEL KEMP/ALAMY
The Sunday Times, January 27 2019, 12:01am
When Deborah Lipstadt writes a book about contemporary anti-semitism, it has a special resonance in this country. The American's earlier work, Denying the Holocaust, was the target of a notorious libel action brought by the no less notorious historian David Irving. As recently depicted in the film Denial — with Rachel Weisz as Professor Lipstadt — her identification of Irving as an outright Holocaust denier was resoundingly vindicated when his libel action failed in the High Court.
Lipstadt's latest work is idiosyncratically organised as a series of letters between herself and two imaginary people — "Abigail", one of her Jewish students, and non-Jewish "Joe", an academic colleague. Both ask lots of questions about the nature of anti-semitism based on their own experiences, and Lipstadt supplies all…