According to the new Thuringia Monitor, a not inconsiderable number of Thuringians represent antisemitic attitudes. According to the scientific study commissioned by the state government, a quarter of Thuringians believe that Israeli politics lead to “having something against Jews”. This emerges from a summary of this year’s study, the results of which are to be presented by the state government this Tuesday.
Of the representative interviewees, 17 percent also agreed with the statement that Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians show “the true face of the Jews”. antisemitism researchers and the local Jewish community have long criticized the fact that hostile attitudes towards Jews are often disguised as criticism of the State of Israel.
At the same time, according to the summary published so far, the study shows that almost half of Thuringians agree with a statement that the researchers classify in the area of so-called defense against guilt – an attempt to relativize German guilt for the Holocaust. The assumption that the persecution of the Jews is always spoken of, while nobody speaks of the suffering of Germans during the Second World War, was agreed by 45 percent of those questioned.
“It is noteworthy that this position is by no means only supported on the right fringes of society, but also by an absolute majority of 54 percent of those surveyed who locate themselves in the political center,” the summary says.
The Thuringia Monitor has been developed annually since 2000 and examines the attitudes of Thuringians to democracy and extremism, among other things. This year it is titled “Democracy in the Corona Pandemic” (Die Corona-Pandemie in Thingen). After that, the number of Corona skeptics has decreased compared to the previous year.
However, a radicalization of the shrinking anti-corona measures movement can also be observed. This radicalization did not go in the direction of classic right-wing extremism, so the result.
