Last week, Bari Weiss’s newspaper, the Free Press, ran the headline, “Last Night’s Pogrom in Amsterdam.” Two days later, Fox News informed its online readers that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “condemn[ed]” the “antisemitic pogrom in Amsterdam.”
Right now, a one-word Google search for pogrom gets you headline after headline about the same event, many accompanied by videos of fans of the Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team being attacked on the streets of Amsterdam.
The narrative logic seems simple enough. What happened after the match between Maccabi and Amsterdam’s Ajax was (a) a riot where (b) the victims were Jewish and (c) the perpetrators were not. Hence, it was a “pogrom.”
But what actually happened in Amsterdam? When we take a closer look, we see that there is no remotely meaningful sense in which it was a “pogrom.”
The term “pogrom” stirs profound memories of Jewish trauma, evoking a history of brutalization at the hands of dominant ethnic communities. Yet to apply this term to recent events is a grave error, one that distorts the true meaning of pogroms as they emerged historically, especially during the transition from feudal to capitalist civilization.
Pogroms were not isolated incidents of violence. They were calculated assaults to keep Jews locked firmly in their social place. Pogroms were a tool wielded by the majority against a racialized minority that was denied full political and civil rights.
While their primary purpose was maintaining hierarchy, scholars of pogroms such as Professor Hans Rogger…
Auteur: Ben Burgis
