Presented by Paris Papamichos Chronakis, University of Illinois at Chicago.
In scholarly and lay circles today, anti-Zionism is commonly perceived as the most recent variant of a resurgent, bi-partisan antisemitism. Such a presentist view, however, obscures its much longer and variegated history. This talk unearths the widespread Christian hostility to Zionism in interwar Greece and links it to Liberal politics, anti-Slavic anxieties, minority policies, and authoritarian state-building. Anti-Zionism was the prevalent form of anti-Jewish hatred in Greece, but its popularity was less a clear sign of time-honored traditional Judeophobia or resurgent racist antisemitism and more an indication of a broader, state-endorsed anxiety about the place and management of ethnic difference in a modernizing Greece.
This event is sponsored by the Departments of History, Classics, and History of Art and The Global Mobility Project at Ohio State.
For questions about the event, please contact Emily Neumeier (neumeier.25@osu.edu).