Content changes for the 2026 Census of Population: Ethnic or cultural origins, religion, immigration, citizenship and place of birth

2025/07/05 Leave a comment

The most notable change, IMO, is the decision to collect religious affiliation data ever 5 years, instead of every 10:

Religion

Changes evaluated in the  2024 Census Test

  • Statistics Canada evaluated the inclusion of the question on religion in the 2026 Census to address the increased demand for more frequent data on religious groups (i.e., every 5 years rather than every 10 years).
  • The list of examples was reviewed and updated to ensure relevance for the 2026 Census.

Resulting approach for the  2026 Census of Population

  • The questionnaire will include the same question on religion as the 2021 Census, with an updated list of examples directly in the questionnaire to reflect the highest-frequency responses in the previous cycle.
  • The extensive list of examples provided via hyperlink will remain the same as in 2021.

Why are these questions asked?

A question on religion has been included in the Census of Population every 10 years since 1871, reflecting a long-standing, continuing and widespread demand for information about religious affiliation and diversity in Canada.

Information on the religion of the population is commonly used by governments, as well as by religious groups, denominations and associations across the country. For example, these data support the planning of programs and inform decisions on where to establish places of worship such as churches, synagogues, mosques and temples. Additionally, this information is used to evaluate the need and potential for separate religious schools in some provinces. It also provides insights on the diversity of Canada, highlights the unique experiences of various religious groups and supports efforts to combat hate crimes.

Current trends and data gaps for this topic

Religion is a core dimension of ethnocultural diversity in Canada. Combining religion with other variables, such as ethnic or cultural origins, racialized groups, languages, and immigration data, is essential for conducting intersectional analyses and providing a detailed portrait of the diversity of the Canadian population.

Historically, data on religion have been collected every 10 years, with the most recent data being from the 2021 Census. Statistics Canada heard from key stakeholders and data users that there was an increased need for benchmark data on religious groups to respond to the rapid changes in Canadian society through immigration and the increased diversity of the population, as summarized in 2026 Census of Population Content Consultation Results: What we heard from Canadians. The 2021 Census measured the rapid growth of some religious groups since data were last collected in 2011. For example, the proportion of the population who reported being Muslim, Hindu or Sikh has doubled in the last 20 years. In addition, the share of the population reporting no religious affiliation, or a secular perspective (atheist, agnostic, humanist and other secular perspectives) rose from 16.5% in 2001 to 34.6% in 2021.

To ensure that the census measures important trends in society, continues to produce relevant and high-quality data, and meets the increased demand for more frequent data on religious groups, Statistics Canada considered including the question on religion in the 2026 Census to increase the frequency of data collection. Canada is an increasingly diverse country, and the inclusion of this question on a more frequent basis will better measure the growing religious diversity in the country. One minor change was introduced: the list of examples presented directly in the questionnaire was updated to reflect the highest-frequency responses in the previous cycle.

These changes have been carefully analyzed, discussed with stakeholders and guided by expert advice to preserve the relevance and overall quality of the data on religion, as well as to ensure that legislative and policy requirements continue to be met.

Source: Content changes for the 2026 Census of Population: Ethnic or cultural origins, religion, immigration, citizenship and place of birth

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Une réflexion sur la laïcité dans les cégeps s’impose

2025/07/03 Leave a comment

Discussion of some of the excesses of student organizations:

….« Comment peut-on considérer qu’une salle de prière constitue un droit acquis dans un collège qui doit respecter les articles 2 et 3 de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État stipulant que les principes de la laïcité doivent être respectés en fait et en apparence ? » demandent avec raison les enquêteurs.

En effet, bien que les établissements d’enseignement supérieur ne soient pas soumis à la directive du ministère de l’Éducation (MEQ) interdisant les pratiques religieuses dans les écoles, ceux-ci sont néanmoins tenus de respecter les principes de la laïcité, dont la neutralité religieuse. Mais voilà, l’ambiguïté persiste : la neutralité religieuse consiste-t-elle à accommoder toutes les religions, ou bien à n’en accommoder aucune ? Concrètement, dans le cas des lieux de prière, faut-il, comme le suggère l’agente des services sociaux du collège Vanier, répondre aux demandes religieuses des étudiants de toutes les confessions ou bien, comme l’exprime clairement la directive du MEQ, n’en considérer aucune ?

Dans cette directive du MEQ, on peut lire que « l’aménagement de lieux utilisés à des fins de pratiques religieuses dans une école […] est incompatible avec le principe de la neutralité religieuse de l’État ». L’interdiction de salles de prière y est notamment justifiée par le respect de la liberté de conscience des élèves qui doivent être protégés contre les pressions directes ou indirectes les incitant à se conformer à une pratique religieuse, et parce que de tels accommodements sont de nature à entraver le bon fonctionnement des écoles.

Tous ces arguments sont également valables pour les cégeps. Bien que plus âgés, les étudiants sont pour la plupart toujours mineurs à leur arrivée au collège. Par ailleurs, on ne peut ignorer que ces salles de prière ne sont pas toujours des lieux de recueillement paisibles, mais deviennent parfois des foyers de radicalisation et des lieux de recrutement pour des conflits à l’étranger.

Songeons, par exemple, au collège de Maisonneuve, qui fut, en 2015, le foyer de recrutement d’étudiants pour le djihad en Syrie. Afin de répondre à leur demande, la direction du cégep avait mis à la disposition des étudiants une salle pour les prières du vendredi, ce qui n’a fait qu’alimenter le climat de radicalisation, de repli communautaire et de méfiance réciproque à l’intérieur du cégep.

En conclusion de leur rapport, les enquêteurs recommandent de « mettre en place les mécanismes appropriés afin de s’assurer du respect et de l’application des articles 2 et 3 de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État ». On ne peut que seconder cette recommandation ! Mais encore faut-il que la neutralité religieuse soit clairement définie, non pas comme une porte ouverte à toutes les demandes religieuses, mais bien comme l’absence de toute reconnaissance de celles-ci et du prosélytisme religieux dans les cégeps.

Et pour commencer, aucune accréditation ne devrait être accordée à un club étudiant à vocation religieuse. Du reste, la Loi sur les cégeps ne prévoit aucunement une telle chose.

Source: Une réflexion sur la laïcité dans les cégeps s’impose

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Adams and Parkin: Our elbows may be up, but have Canadians really changed?

2025/07/02 Leave a comment

Notable shift:

…Even more concerning, our continuing social values research has picked up a striking mood shift in Canada over the past two years (originating before the start of Mr. Trump’s second term), in the direction of a more hard-nosed survival-of-the-fittest mindset. We’ve become less willing to prioritize progressive ideals – such as openness to immigration, gender equality and environmental sustainability – ahead of material concerns such as financial security. This is true particularly of younger Canadians, and also of first- and second-generation immigrants whose shift of support to the Conservative Party in the Toronto suburbs cost the Liberals their majority in the recent election (and could cost them victory in the next one if the same mood prevails). 

We arrive then at Canada Day after months of profound anxiety and significant political change that oddly haven’t changed us that much. We are still the same country facing the same centrifugal challenges with new ones added to the mix. If and when the threat from the U.S. subsides, a long list of other thorny problems will come into clearer view.

All the more reason to welcome Canada Day – yes, to celebrate, take a break from politics and world events, and count our blessings in the company of family and friends, but also to rest up and ready ourselves to take on more challenges ahead.

Source: Our elbows may be up, but have Canadians really changed?

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Canada’s multicultural ideal is fraying. This is how we hold on to it

2025/07/02 Leave a comment

Not a bad take:

What does Canada owe its immigrants? And what do immigrants owe Canada? This unspoken contract, rooted in mutual respect and opportunity, has defined our national identity for decades. It now feels strained.

To strengthen it, we must learn to manage contradictions without facing the ruptures seen in other liberal democracies. And we must acknowledge the deepening sense of anxiety, injustice, and exclusion that many Canadians now feel. This requires more than slogans about unity. It demands policies that protect vulnerable communities, education that teaches context, and leaders who resist the temptation to pander to outrage. It also requires moral imagination to make space for different stories, different hopes and different griefs, without turning from the work that justice demands, and without forcing false equivalence. It also requires a daily choice: for Canadians to remain curious about each other’s histories, and for immigrants to invest in the civic fabric of their adopted home.

I write this not as someone who claims to speak for every immigrant. I can’t. My family’s story is just one thread in Canada’s immigrant fabric. But I know what it feels like to carry the weight of a name across continents. I know what it means to feel both grateful and unmoored, proud and uncertain.

Canada does not promise a life without tension. It promises something harder — and better. The chance to sit at a kitchen table, decades from now, with snow falling outside, and to tell your children: We didn’t run from the past. We built a future strong enough to hold it.

Arjun Gupta is a law student at the University of Ottawa. 

Source: Canada’s multicultural ideal is fraying. This is how we hold on to it

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AI Review of “The New Electoral Map and Diversity”

2025/07/02 Leave a comment

Interesting to read an AI Review of my Hill Times article The New Electoral Map and Diversity. Reasonable take:

….Summary of the Work

The manuscript offers a detailed examination of Canada’s reconfigured electoral map—now totalling 343 ridings—and its impact on the representation of immigrants, visible and religious minorities, and Indigenous peoples. It provides a side-by-side comparison of the 2013 and 2023 ridings using data on population percentages. Key insights focus on how demographic shifts, driven particularly by higher immigration rates, have yielded notable changes in suburban regions with an increase in ridings that have between 5% and 20% visible or religious minorities, while Indigenous representation shows a slight downward share of population in certain ridings.

The author highlights how these shifts may manifest in future elections—particularly 2025—when a new cohort of naturalized citizens will become eligible voters. This could lead to both an increase in elected minority candidates and the need for political parties to navigate the interests and tensions of increasingly diverse ridings.

Strengths

  1. Clarity of Data Presentation:
    • The manuscript uses clear tables and figures (e.g., Figures 1 through 7) to illustrate changes across various demographic groups, offering a robust breakdown of regional and group-based shifts.
  2. Timely Focus:
    • With a federal election looming and ongoing immigration trends, the study delivers an immediate perspective on how the new electoral map might influence representation and campaign strategies.
  3. Comprehensive Scope:
    • The analysis considers multiple forms of diversity—visible minorities, religious minorities, and Indigenous populations—providing a well-rounded view of demographic changes.
  4. Relevance for Policy and Electoral Strategy:
    • By noting the shifting landscapes of marginal ridings and growth areas, the manuscript offers insights valuable to policymakers, political parties, and electoral reform advocates.

Areas for Further Development

  1. Methodological Transparency:
    • While the descriptive statistics are informative, clarifying the exact data sources (e.g., census data files and how the boundaries were mapped from 2013 to 2023) would bolster replicability. A brief discussion of how ridings were reallocated from old to new boundaries would further help readers understand the transition.
  2. Intersectional Analysis:
    • The manuscript could benefit from an intersectional lens, exploring how demographic factors (e.g., visible minority status combined with religious identification) may yield complex patterns. Currently, the study addresses religious and visible minorities separately; acknowledging overlaps may provide deeper insights.
  3. Electoral Outcomes and Voter Turnout:
    • Adding potential scenarios or brief references to how these demographic changes may affect turnout or party competition could supplement the descriptive findings. While this is outside the primary scope, a short reflection could give a sense of real-world impact.
  4. Indigenous Context:
    • Further elaboration on how growth in immigrant populations may affect Indigenous communities could strengthen the discussion. These points are alluded to, but additional depth on policy or community-level implications would clarify the evolving political dynamic.
  5. Longitudinal Comparisons:
    • If longer-term data (beyond the 2013 to 2023 cycles) are available, referencing previous realignments or older demographic snapshots could confirm whether the highlighted trends are accelerating, plateauing, or changing in nature.

Style and Structure

The manuscript is mostly well-organized, with clear headings and subheadings. However, some sections can be streamlined for readability:

• Figures and text could be more closely integrated. For instance, highlighting main findings from a figure in the paragraph immediately following that figure helps the reader connect the visuals to the written analysis.
• Where tables and figures convey similar data, consider whether both formats are necessary or whether they could be combined.

Overall Impression

This work significantly contributes to the understanding of how newly created ridings intersect with demographic changes, underscoring shifts for multiple minority groups and offering a snapshot of potential impacts ahead of the 2025 election. By expanding the methodological detail and further situating these findings within longer-term trends or intersectional dimensions of representation, the manuscript would offer an even more robust resource for analysts, political parties, and community stakeholders interested in the evolving face of Canadian democracy.

Source: AI Review of “The New Electoral Map and Diversity”

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Happy Canada Day/Bonne fête du Canada

2025/07/01 Leave a comment

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Le Devoir editorial: Religion et écoles, ce mauvais ménage

2025/06/30 Leave a comment

Classic Quebec overly rigid approach to laïcité in terms of religious symbols, rather than substantive as in the case of Bedford, along with useful background to Quebec history behind laïcité:

Il lui a fallu de la ténacité, de l’audace et bien sûr cette finesse de jugement politique qu’on lui a reconnue partout où elle est passée. En devenant l’architecte de la déconfessionnalisation du réseau scolaire, Pauline Marois a signé une réforme québécoise fondamentale, dont le legs durable a transformé la gouvernance des écoles et ouvert la voie aux débats contemporains sur la laïcité.

La commande était ambitieuse. Et c’est le premier ministre Lucien Bouchard qui la lui donne lors de son premier conseil national du Parti québécois, en 1996. Sa mission ? Remplacer la religion par la langue pour distinguer les écoles primaires et secondaires québécoises, alors toujours divisées selon des critères confessionnels. La réforme de la ministre de l’Éducation d’alors, Pauline Marois, permet la création de 72 commissions scolaires linguistiques, en lieu et place des 154 commissions scolaires catholiques et protestantes.

Cette transformation historique s’inscrit en droite ligne avec le travail amorcé lors de la Révolution tranquille, période charnière de modernisation d’un Québec encore très imprégné des diktats de l’Église catholique. Dans son percutant rapport, le « rapport Parent », diffusé en 1960, la Commission royale d’enquête sur l’enseignement dans la province de Québec exprimait déjà le souhait de remplacer les commissions scolaires confessionnelles. Le Québec des années 1930 en comptait environ 2000.

Forte d’une vision progressiste et de son engagement envers l’égalité des chances, la future première ministre entreprend de rallier le milieu éducatif et la société civile autour de l’idée que l’école publique est ouverte à tous, indépendamment des croyances religieuses. Elle embrasse cette réforme pour quelques raisons majeures, qu’il est intéressant de revisiter aujourd’hui, près de 30 ans plus tard. Comme elle l’explique à l’Assemblée nationale pour convaincre l’opposition en mai 1996, c’est d’abord pour « mettre en place une organisation scolaire susceptible de favoriser l’intégration des immigrants à la communauté francophone ». La loi 101 les oblige à fréquenter les écoles francophones, mais plusieurs s’inscrivent naturellement dans les écoles francophones associées à des commissions scolaires protestantes, « qui sont plutôt de culture et d’environnement anglophones ». Ensuite, pour respecter la réalité et la volonté de la minorité anglophone ; puis, pour alléger les structures ; et enfin, pour assurer un exercice plus démocratique et plus équitable des libertés de conscience et de religion.

La tâche n’est pas mince. Entre autres difficultés, Pauline Marois a dû obtenir de modifier la Constitution de 1867 et son article 93 qui garantissait des droits et privilèges aux écoles catholiques et protestantes. La minorité anglophone a toutefois maintenu son droit inaliénable de gérer ses établissements scolaires. À ce jour, en dépit de la réforme de 2019 qui a aboli les commissions scolaires au profit de centres de services scolaires, les commissions scolaires anglophones ont d’ailleurs maintenu leur modèle.

Le gouvernement de la Coalition avenir Québec a grandement contribué à la poursuite de ce travail de laïcisation des structures, avec l’adoption de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État (loi 21). L’histoire récente nous apprend d’ailleurs que les architectes de ce vaste chantier ont encore du pain sur la planche. Le ministre de l’Éducation, Bernard Drainville, a déposé cette année un projet de loi (94) dont l’objet premier est de « renforcer la laïcité dans le réseau de l’éducation ». Comme sa prédécesseure Pauline Marois en son temps, il croise avec ce projet une certaine résistance, car il propose de franchir un pas de plus dans la laïcisation, notamment avec l’obligation d’avoir le visage découvert en tout temps dans toutes les écoles, et ce, tant pour les élèves que pour le personnel.

En 2024, l’épisode de l’école primaire Bedford a choqué le Québec. À la faveur de reportages chocs, on découvrait que dans cette école, dans d’autres aussi, se jouait une réalité parallèle. Un groupe d’enseignants d’origine surtout maghrébine imposait sa propre loi et ses modes de gestion de classe et de pédagogie, en contravention totale avec les principes de laïcité, de respect de la langue française et d’égalité hommes-femmes. Vendredi, le ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur publiait aussi les conclusions de sa propre enquête sur les tensions religieuses vécues aux collèges anglophones Dawson et Vanier : entre autres conclusions, on y recommande un resserrement de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État dans le réseau collégial. Même si plusieurs obstacles se dressent sur la route du Québec dans sa démarche de laïcisation de l’État, il ne doit pas fléchir.

Les bases sur lesquelles s’appuyait jadis Pauline Marois pour déconfessionnaliser le réseau scolaire demeurent donc d’une totale pertinence, tant pour l’importance de renforcer la langue française que pour celle de participer à l’intégration des communautés culturelles à la société québécoise, en tout respect des valeurs liées à la laïcité.

Source: Religion et écoles, ce mauvais ménage

It took her tenacity, audacity and of course that finesse of political judgment that was recognized wherever she went. By becoming the architect of the de-confessionalization of the school network, Pauline Marois signed a fundamental Quebec reform, whose sustainable legacy transformed the governance of schools and paved the way for contemporary debates on secularism.

The order was ambitious. And it was Prime Minister Lucien Bouchard who gave it to him during his first national council of the Parti Québécois, in 1996. His mission? Replace religion with language to distinguish Quebec primary and secondary schools, then always divided according to confessional criteria. The reform of the then Minister of Education, Pauline Marois, allowed the creation of 72 language school boards, instead of the 154 Catholic and Protestant school boards.

This historical transformation is in line with the work begun during the Quiet Revolution, a pivotal period of modernization of a Quebec still very impregnated with the dictates of the Catholic Church. In its powerful report, the “Parent Report”, released in 1960, the Royal Commission of Investigation on Education in the Province of Quebec already expressed the desire to replace the confessional school boards. Quebec in the 1930s had about 2000.

With a progressive vision and her commitment to equal opportunities, the future Prime Minister is undertaking to rally the educational community and civil society around the idea that public school is open to all, regardless of religious beliefs. It embraces this reform for some major reasons, which it is interesting to revisit today, almost 30 years later. As she explained to the National Assembly to convince the opposition in May 1996, it is first of all to “set up a school organization likely to promote the integration of immigrants into the French-speaking community”. Law 101 obliges them to attend French-speaking schools, but many naturally enroll in French-speaking schools associated with Protestant school boards, “which are rather of English-speaking culture and environment”. Then, to respect the reality and will of the English-speaking minority; then, to lighten the structures; and finally, to ensure a more democratic and more equitable exercise of freedoms of conscience and religion.

The task is not thin. Among other difficulties, Pauline Marois had to obtain an amendment of the Constitution of 1867 and its article 93, which guaranteed rights and privileges to Catholic and Protestant schools. However, the English-speaking minority has maintained its inalienable right to manage its schools. To date, despite the 2019 reform that abolished school boards in favor of school service centers, English-language school boards have maintained their model.

The government of the Coalition avenir Québec has greatly contributed to the continuation of this work of secularization of structures, with the adoption of the Act respecting the secularism of the State (Act 21). Recent history tells us that the architects of this vast construction site still have work to do. The Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, tabled this year a bill (94) whose primary purpose is to “strengthen secularism in the education network”. Like his predecessor Pauline Marois in his time, he encounters a certain resistance with this project, because he proposes to take a step further in secularization, especially with the obligation to have his face uncovered at all times in all schools, both for students and for staff.

In 2024, the episode of Bedford Elementary School shocked Quebec. Thanks to shocking reports, we discovered that in this school, in others too, a parallel reality was being played out. A group of teachers of mainly Maghreb origin imposed their own law and methods of class management and pedagogy, in total contravention with the principles of secularism, respect for the French language and gender equality. On Friday, the Ministry of Higher Education also published the conclusions of its own survey on the religious tensions experienced at the English-speaking colleges Dawson and Vanier: among other conclusions, it recommends a tightening of the Act on the secularism of the State in the college network. Even if several obstacles stand on the road to Quebec in its approach to secularizing the state, it must not give in.

The foundations on which Pauline Marois once relied to deconfessionalize the school network therefore remain of total relevance, both for the importance of strengthening the French language and for that of participating in the integration of cultural communities into Quebec society, in full respect of the values related to secularism.

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Alan Kessel: Genocide, weaponized: How a legal term became a political bludgeon 

2025/06/27 Leave a comment

Important distinctions between crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, and the indiscriminate use of the latter by a former Global Affairs colleague:

…Where genocide targets a group for destruction based on its identity, crimes against humanity focus on widespread or systematic attacks on civilians regardless of group status. The distinction mattered then, and it matters now. When every war crime is labelled genocide, we lose the ability to distinguish between wrongs. And when everything is genocide, nothing is.

This matters especially in the context of Israel, where accusation often precedes investigation, and where “genocide” is used not as a legal charge but as a political judgment—a way of delegitimizing the state itself, not analyzing its conduct. This distortion becomes even more alarming when one considers that both Hamas and the Iranian regime have explicit, stated goals: the destruction of the State of Israel and the annihilation of the Jewish people. To conflate Israel’s response to such existential threats with genocide not only reverses the reality, it erases the intent of those who actually espouse genocidal ambitions. That inversion should trouble anyone who believes in law over propaganda.

More dangerously, it creates fatigue. When the word is used indiscriminately, it loses power. When we label complex, tragic conflicts as genocides without evidence of intent, we weaken our collective capacity to respond when the real thing happens, from Rwanda to Srebrenica to the Yazidis in Iraq. Lemkin gave us a word to name the worst of human crimes. We should not turn it into a slogan.

Words matter. Law matters. Lemkin knew this, and Sands reminds us of it. The victims of actual genocides deserve the dignity of truth, not the distortion of their suffering for contemporary political ends. If we are to honour Lemkin’s legacy, we must use his word with the care, clarity, and weight it demands.

Source: Alan Kessel: Genocide, weaponized: How a legal term became a political bludgeon

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Steep rise in hate toward South Asians in Canada documented through social media posts

2025/06/27 Leave a comment

Disturbing:

Canada has seen a steep rise in hate toward South Asians on social media in recent years, with a large spike occurring during the recent federal election — especially aimed at former NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, according to a new report.

The report, titled “The Rise of Anti-South Asian Hate in Canada” and published by the U.K.-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue, used the social media monitoring tool Brandwatch to analyze posts that mention Canadian cities and regions and South Asians on X.

Between May and December 2023, they found 1,163 posts containing explicitly hateful keywords toward South Asians. During the same period in 2024, that number rose to 16,884 — an increase of more than 1,350 per cent.

A new report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue finds a huge increase in racist posts in 2024, notably in the lead-up to the federal election.

Canada has seen a steep rise in hate toward South Asians on social media in recent years, with a large spike occurring during the recent federal election — especially aimed at former NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, according to a new report.

The report, titled “The Rise of Anti-South Asian Hate in Canada” and published by the U.K.-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue, used the social media monitoring tool Brandwatch to analyze posts that mention Canadian cities and regions and South Asians on X.

Between May and December 2023, they found 1,163 posts containing explicitly hateful keywords toward South Asians. During the same period in 2024, that number rose to 16,884 — an increase of more than 1,350 per cent.

The report says Canada has been singled out as a cautionary tale — in the eyes of far-right influencers and extremists globally — of how immigration policies can lead to an “invasion” of South Asian migrants.

Steven Rai, an analyst at ISD who focuses on domestic extremism, pointed to the American-based X account EndWokeness, which has 3.7 million followers, as one that has made numerous posts about South Asians in Canada “overtaking society.”

“Canada is held up by a lot of racists as the example of what happens to a country when it’s supposedly overrun with South Asians,” Rai said.

“Domestic extremists within Canada are promoting that stereotype and that gets picked up by people all around the world.”

The ISD notes that hate isn’t confined to the online sphere. Between 2019 and 2023, police-reported hate crimes against South Asians in Canada increased by more than 200 per cent, according to Statistics Canada.

The ISD defines domestic extremism as a belief system grounded in racial or cultural supremacy, as well as misogyny, based on a perceived threat from out-groups, which can be pursued through violent or non-violent means….

Source: Steep rise in hate toward South Asians in Canada documented through social media posts

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Gessen: Antisemitism Isn’t What People Think It Is

2025/06/25 1 Comment

Good piece on the risks of “conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Zionism and anti-Zionism with antisemitism:”

What makes these conflations powerful and long lasting is fear. I heard an extraordinary description of how this fear operates in a podcast interview with the Columbia University professor Shai Davidai. If you are familiar with his name, it’s probably because he has been a lightning rod, a hero to those who believe that American universities have become hotbeds of antisemitism. Columbia, for its part, suspended his campus access, saying he had harassed and intimidated other university employees.

Before any of this happened, Davidai identified as left wing, an opponent of the Israeli occupation and a critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A couple of days after Oct. 7, someone showed him an open letter issued by the Columbia chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. It was the kind of strident, tone-deaf letter that student organizations were putting out at the time. It talked about the inevitability of armed resistance as a response to systemic oppression. It did not talk about Jews.

And then Davidai found himself on campus, looking at several hundred students wearing kaffiyeh and, at least as he understood it, celebrating the Hamas attack. A colleague leaned over to him, he said, “and says, ‘This is the antisemitism that our parents and grandparents warned us about, and we didn’t listen.’ And the moment he said that, everything changed for me.” Davidai started speaking out on social media and attracted a great deal of attention.

Davidai described his experience as an epiphany. For many people living in Israel — a nation founded by Jews for Jews — and many American Jews as well, antisemitism is an abstraction, the stuff of stories. (I have to give credit for this observation to my daughter, who moved from a very antisemitic society to New York City at the age of 12.) These stories come from great tragedy, especially for Jews of European origin, many of whom represent the lucky-survivor branches of their families. Seeing something you have only read about suddenly, at least seemingly, come to life is a kind of awakening — the kind that a person in grief and trauma is perhaps particularly open to.

Two recent brutal attacks in the United States have sent more fear through Jewish communities here and elsewhere: the shooting of two Israeli Embassy staff members outside of the Capital Jewish Museum, in Washington, D.C., on May 21 and the firebombing of a rally in support of Israeli hostages 11 days later, in Boulder, Colo. Both attacks have been widely denounced as antisemitic.

That’s no surprise — both were visible and deliberate attacks on public events with a high concentration of Jews. But that isn’t necessarily the end of the story. Daniel May, the publisher of the magazine Jewish Currents (I serve on its board), has argued in a powerful article that neither attacker made any obviously antisemitic statements — unless one considers “Free Palestine” an antisemitic slogan. The D.C. shooter’s 900-word purported manifesto didn’t contain the word “Jew” or even “Zionist.” Of course, someone could still act out of hatred even if he doesn’t shout it in a manifesto, but the absence in that document of any explicit mention does open the possibility that he had a different motive.

Neither of these events was exclusive to Jews, as a synagogue service might be. Both events were inextricable from the war in Gaza. And though the violence in Boulder was wide ranging, the shooting in Washington seems to have been very specifically targeted — at two representatives of the Israeli government.

None of this makes the attacks any less horrific. And none of it should offer any comfort to the victims or their families. The terrible human toll is the same no matter what the attackers’ motivation. But if we are looking to draw larger lessons from this brutality, it’s worth considering that violence that looks antisemitic may — even when it very effectively serves to scare a great many Jews — be something else.

What these attacks can be understood as is, undoubtedly, acts of terrorism. There is no universally accepted definition of terrorism, but scholars agree on some basics: It’s violence committed for political reasons, against noncombatants, with the goal of sowing fear. It’s notable that “terrorism,” a term that in this country has been used and misused to crack down on civil liberties, especially those of brown and Muslim immigrants, has been joined and even supplanted by the term “antisemitism,” wielded in similar ways, for the same purposes.

Terrorists aim to provoke a reaction. A violent and disproportionate response, because it amplifies their message that whatever they have targeted is absolute evil. They got that response in Israel’s devastation of Gaza following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

Terrified people tend to support disproportionate violence. Terrified people make perfect constituencies for politicians like Netanyahu because they can be convinced that the unrelenting massacre and starvation of Gazans is necessary to keep Israel safe, and for President Trump, because they may not question the justification for pre-emptively bombing a sovereign country.

My thoughts keep returning to that conversation with the historian of Stalinism. She studied an era of political terrorism carried out on the premise — crazy yet widely accepted — that the U.S.S.R. was full of people who wanted to kill their leader. Today, we may live in an even more cynical era, when political leaders, instead of acting on their own fears of violence, instrumentalize other people’s fear.

The conflations that underlie most political conversations about antisemitism make it seem as if everyone wants to kill Jews — that antisemitism is not just common but omnipresent. If you believe that the whole world wants you dead, then you are much less likely to stand up for human rights or civil liberties, other people’s or your own.

A casualty of this cynical era is our understanding of the actual scale of antisemitism, defined as animus against Jews as Jews. There are many reasons to think that antisemitic attitudes and attacks are on the rise, but the keepers of statistics often thwart the effort to get hard information, because they insist on conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Zionism and anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

New York City is home to the largest number of Jews outside of Israel. But for all the noise mayoral candidates and their supporters have made about antisemitism, Mamdani is the only one I have heard so movingly acknowledge the emotional toll that the real and imagined threats of antisemitism have been taking on Jewish New Yorkers. I wonder how many people can hear him through all the din.

Source: Antisemitism Isn’t What People Think It Is

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with

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