What the removal of a Netanyahu Hitler painting can tell us about the art world

A painting portraying Benjamin Netanyahu as Adolf Hitler has been removed from a London art fair amid outrage and the outrage was wholly justified. 80 years ago, the actual Nazis prohibited modernist art as “Jewish and degenerate”, replacing it with the obvious and the heroic. Today, in London, the obvious and heroic was back, and it was still antisemitic.

Modern antisemitism offers its caricature of Jews to help its audience understand who is responsible for all that is evil in the world. This is important for fantasies of global conspiracy because the all-powerful evil is necessarily not visible in such fantasies. Antisemitism gives them a human face.

Art has always been a medium by which this emotionally virulent message was rammed home. Medieval images of innocent, saintly children being bled dry by evil Jews resonated with depictions of the innocent Jesus on the cross, taking on all of the burdens of humankind and suffering with us at the hands of those amongst us who stubbornly refuse to work for the redemption of their souls.

Nationalist antisemites accused Jews of betraying the nation, Socialist antisemites accused them of betraying the working class, totalitarians accused them of betraying the people, feminist antisemites accuse them of betraying women and anti-imperialist antisemites accuse Zionists of playing a key role in imperialism. All of these forms have their associated genres of antisemitic art, which re-animate the seductive hatreds of the day with the plausible energy of half-remembered old tropes.