In the 20th century, Europe was haunted by a specter of its own imagining: Judeo-Bolshevism. Fear of a Jewish Bolshevik plot to destroy the nations of Europe took hold during the Russian Revolution and spread across the continent. Paul Hanebrink shows that the myth of ethno-religious threat is still alive today, in Westerners' fear of Muslims.--

"Accusations that Jews ritually killed Christian children emerged in the mid-twelfth century, following the death of twelve-year-old William of Norwich, England, in 1144. Later, continental Europeans added a destructive twist: Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood. While charges that Jews poisoned wells and desecrated the communion host waned over the years, the blood libel survived. Initially blood libel stories were confined to monastic...

"In medieval Europe, Jews were not passive victims of the Christian community, as is often assumed, but rather were startlingly assertive, forming a Jewish civilization within Latin Christian society. Both Jews and Christians considered themselves to be God's chosen people. These dueling claims fueled the rise of both cultures as they became rivals for supremacy. In How the West Became Antisemitic, Ivan Marcus shows how Christian and Jewish competition...