Societies do not become tolerant of hatred overnight. They get there gradually, as prejudice becomes familiar, outrage fades and decent people convince themselves that someone else will deal with the problem.
That is the most troubling lesson from a new national survey on antisemitism.
Robert Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance Against Hate reports that 30% of Americans now hold antisemitic attitudes — the highest level since the organization began tracking public opinion in 2023. Nearly half of Americans are now considered “unengaged” in combating antisemitism. The percentage identifying as active allies has fallen sharply. A majority now believes Jews can largely handle antisemitism on their own, and nearly one-third no longer considers Holocaust denial to be antisemitic.
Those numbers reveal something more profound than prejudice. They reveal indifference.
The contradiction is striking. Most Americans still say antisemitism is wrong. Most also say they would be disturbed if a Jewish family or business were attacked in their own community. Yet most were unaware of major recent antisemitic attacks, including the deadly Chanukah terror attack in Sydney and the arson attack on Mississippi’s largest synagogue. Only a small minority regards antisemitism as a clear and present threat where they live.
How can both things be true?
The answer is that antisemitism has become a victim of its own familiarity. Since Oct. 7, Americans have witnessed an unending stream of campus demonstrations, synagogue attacks, online abuse, congressional hearings, antisemitic slogans and political arguments over Israel. Many have not concluded that antisemitism has disappeared. They have simply grown accustomed to it.
That is a dangerous development. Democracies depend upon moral attention. Citizens cannot respond to every injustice with equal intensity, but they must continue to distinguish between ordinary political disagreement and hatred directed at an entire people. Once that distinction begins to blur, prejudice becomes just another item in the daily news cycle, competing with inflation, immigration, celebrity scandals and sporting events.
The survey’s finding that 55% of Americans now believe Jews can handle antisemitism on their own is especially revealing. Imagine applying that standard to African Americans, Muslims or Asian Americans. We would immediately recognize such indifference as a moral failure. Yet when the target is Jews, many Americans increasingly regard antisemitism as a Jewish problem rather than an American one.
Politics has only deepened the problem. Too often, antisemitism is filtered through partisan loyalties instead of moral principles. Some minimize it because acknowledging it complicates their views of Israel or progressive activism. Others invoke it only when politically convenient while ignoring prejudice directed elsewhere. In either case, hatred becomes another talking point rather than a civic concern.
History teaches that societies rarely lose their moral bearings because extremists become more extreme. Extremists are a constant. Democracies falter when ordinary citizens stop being shocked by what should shock them. They drift, one rationalization at a time, until the unacceptable becomes merely unfortunate and the unfortunate becomes ordinary.
The survey’s statistics are disturbing. But they are not the real headline. The real headline is that America is in danger of losing something even more precious than tolerance: its capacity for moral outrage. And when hatred no longer shocks us, it has already won.