30. juni 2026
This podcast is in English. Read below:
Et af racismens groveste og mest dehumaniserende greb er at fremstille grupper som skadedyr eller rovdyr. Under folkemordet i Rwanda kaldte hutu-ekstremister tutsierne for kakerlakker, mens nazisterne fremstillede jøder som rotter.
Samtidig er blodmyten om jøder, der drikker børns blod, et af de ældste antisemitiske billeder, der kan spores tilbage til de første korstog.
Det burde være den mest genkendelige form for racisme. Så meget desto mere bemærkelsesværdig var en afgørelse fra en svensk domstol i maj, hvor en person blev frikendt for »hets mod folkegruppe« i en sag om en tegning, der viste en hyæne med en jødisk kalot, der mæsker sig i døde børn.
Ikke så meget på grund af frifindelsen, men mere på grund af begrundelsen. Tingsrätten i Göteborg erkendte, at tegningen var antisemitisk, men mente ikke, at det var almindelig viden, at tegningen ville blive opfattet som antisemitisk.
Hvordan kom vi dertil, at de mest genkendelige udtryk for racisme og antisemitisme er blevet så almindelige?
For at belyse det har vi talt med Christer Mattsson, der er leder af Segerstedtinstitutet på Göteborgs universitet, og som blev brugt som ekspertvidne i sagen.
Han er en af verdens førende eksperter i »contemporary antisemitism«, og i denne podcast udlægger han, hvordan en ny form for antisemitisme – ofte under dække af »kritik af Israel« – er eksploderet siden 7. oktober 2023, og hvordan han har undersøgt det med akademiske metoder. Han fortæller om sit feltarbejde, der både har bragt ham til de propalæstinensiske demonstrationer og ind i decideret nynazistiske miljøer.
Podcasten varer en time og er på engelsk. Den er produceret af Michael Rachlin, redaktør for Jødisk Orientering. Der er tale om en podcast – og ikke Det Jødiske Samfunds officielle holdning.
Find DJS Podcast på Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podimo eller hvor du ellers plejer at lytte til podcast.
One of racism’s crudest and most dehumanizing tactics is to portray groups as vermin or predators. During the Rwandan genocide, Hutu extremists called Tutsis cockroaches, while the Nazis portrayed Jews as rats.
At the same time, the blood libel — the myth that Jews drink the blood of children — is one of the oldest antisemitic images, traceable back to the early Crusades.
This should be the most recognizable form of racism. All the more remarkable, then, was a ruling by a Swedish court in May, which acquitted a person of “agitation against an ethnic group” in a case concerning a drawing depicting a hyena wearing a Jewish kippah, gorging itself on children’s blood.
Not so much because of the acquittal, but because of the reasoning behind it. The Gothenburg District Court acknowledged that the drawing was antisemitic, but did not consider it common knowledge that the drawing would be perceived as antisemitic.
Read more about the case here. (Swedish)
How did we get to a point where the most recognizable expressions of racism and antisemitism have become so commonplace?
To shed light on this, we spoke with Christer Mattsson, Director of the Segerstedt Institute at the University of Gothenburg, who also served as an expert witness in the case.
He is one of the world’s leading experts on “contemporary antisemitism,” and in this podcast he explains how a new form of antisemitism — often disguised as “criticism of Israel” — has exploded since October 7, 2023, and how he has studied the phenomenon using academic methods. He discusses his fieldwork, which has taken him both to pro-Palestinian demonstrations and into explicitly neo-Nazi environments.
The podcast lasts about one hour and is in English. It was produced by Michael Rachlin, editor of Jødisk Orientering. This is a podcast — and does not represent the official position of the Jewish Community in Denmark.
Find DJS Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podimo, or wherever you usually listen to podcasts.
