One third of Austrians think that Jews are trying to exploit the Holocaust and 47% think Jews have too much power, according to the parliament’s third antisemitism report.
According to the report, antisemitism is particularly strong among Turkish and Arabic speakers in Austria.
Austrian National Council President Wolfgang Sobotka presented the report to the parliament. It was compiled by the Institute for Empirical Social Research, which collected data on antisemitic attitudes in the country from 2,000 respondents.
The survey found that more than a third of Austrians think that Jews are “trying to take advantage of being victims during the Nazi era… and at least a quarter of those under the age of 25 believe that as well.
Among Turkish and Arabic speakers, more than half agreed with the statement “completely” or “quite likely.”
More than a third of Austrians also take the view that Jews dominate the international business world, Sobotka pointed out. “It’s not a phenomenon of the political fringe groups, it comes from the middle of society,” he declared. “On the extreme sides, [antisemitism] becomes visible. On the right, we’ve seen extreme groups for years and decades. We haven’t paid attention to the left-wing extremism for a long time and now we see it very clearly as anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism.”
Sobotka said that a third form of antisemitism stems from “those people who came to us for reasons of migration, because they come from countries where antisemitism or anti-Jewish attitudes are part of a kind of raison d’etat.”
