Two professors, one from Stanford and the other from Columbia University released a study in which they "explored people's responses to the economic collapse and tried to determine how anti-Semitic sentiments might relate to the ongoing financial crisis."
They found that roughly one quarter of the US population thought that Jews were to blame for the current crisis (moderately, a lot, or a great deal) with 15% thinking that Jews were a "little" bit to blame with 60% thinking that no blame whatsoever ought to be ascribed to Jews.
Now, who but Hitlerite nuts would think that "the joos" were to blame? Well 32% of the Democrats did and 18% of Republicans.
In their article in the Boston Review the authors write:
Interestingly, Democrats were especially prone to blaming Jews: while 32 percent of Democrats accorded at least moderate blame, only 18.4 percent of Republicans did so (a statistically significant difference). This difference is somewhat surprising given the presumed higher degree of racial tolerance among liberals and the fact that Jews are a central part of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition. Are Democrats simply more likely to “blame everything” thus casting doubt on whether the anti-Jewish attitudes are real? Not at all. We also asked how much “individuals who took out loans and mortgages they could not afford” were to blame on the same five-point scale. In this case, Democrats were less likely than Republicans to assign moderate or greater blame.
State of the Nation: Anti-Semitism and the economic crisis by Neil Malhotra and Yotam Margalit
May I suggest to the authors that they look into the rise of anti-semitism amoung the American Left over the past 30 years?
Unfortunately the internals of the poll were not revealed. I would love to see a break down (between Republican and Democrat, income level, etc...) of people who selected that the joos had "a lot" or "a great deal" to do with the current economic situation.
