No news from this island — once so cheery — is good these days, but some news is worse than others. A new survey commissioned by the Campaign Against Antisemitism recently disclosed that belief in “the socialism of fools” has risen to the highest levels on record in the U.K. since surveys began; since 2021, it’s doubled.

Some 21 percent of those surveyed agreed with four or more antisemitic statements — such as, “Compared to other groups, Jewish people have too much power in the media” and “Jewish people chase money more than other people do” — compared to 16 percent in 2024. One in five Britons is now thought to be antisemitic.

Among young people the levels are even higher. Almost half of those between 18 and 24 years old are uncomfortable spending time with people who openly support Israel; only 31 percent of young voters agree that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish homeland. Fifty-eight percent of young people believe that Israel and its supporters are a bad influence on our democracy.

That’s compared to 29 percent of the overall population; 60 percent claim that Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews and 42 percent believe that Israel can “get away with anything” because its supporters “control the media.” The latter of which will come as a surprise to the many British Jews who during the whole Gaza campaign — right from the start, when the blood from the pogroms was barely dry — were stunned and intimidated by the extent to which the state broadcaster, the BBC, insisted that a genocide rather than a retaliation was taking place.

Why are young people so prone to the oldest hatred? It seems so contra-intuitive. We oldsters, no matter what our low opinion on everything from the resilience or musical taste of the young,  do like to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the “kindness” they bang on about so much. It’s always been comforting to believe that prejudice will die out with generations who were raised to find it normal, but this trend seems to be bucking that belief.

In 2023 I wrote an essay for the Spectator called “Why Are So Many Young People Antisemitic?” Perhaps a decade before that, I coined the phrase “Fresh’n’Funky Antisemitism” to define a new strain of the disease that had broken free of its stale, pale, male origins and become the belle of Freshers Week balls. Students and thugs now unite in a youthful crusade with echoes of the Salem Trials, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and “Lord of the Rings.”

Peer groups are one reason for this. Because of the vast Muslim immigration of the past few decades, lots of young people will have Muslim friends, but most of them will never have met a Jew. I didn’t until I was 17 and moved to London from the West Country. A recent season of “Big Brother” over here featured a personable young contestant of “Palestinian” descent who made his desire to see his “homeland” consume part of Israel seem like the most reasonable thing in the world.

It’s inconceivable that a young Jew could have put the Israeli case without being thoroughly ostracized and swiftly evicted. There’s also the thrill of the forbidden; a generation to which “bully” is the accusation possibly will now enjoy the thrill of bullying by telling themselves they’re standing up for the bullied.

As Aldous Huxley wrote in “Crome Yellow”: “The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behaviour ‘righteous indignation’ – this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”

Many British Jews have pointed out with reluctance and sorrow that they now feel safer in Israel — despite it being surrounded by wealthy and hostile enemies — than they do in the country where they were born and to which they have shown great allegiance, beyond all other immigrant groups. (How many times have I tutted and tapped my foot at Zionist rallies waiting for my Jewish brethren to finish singing the British National Anthem so we can get to “Hatikvah”)

The pandering of the Labor Party to the ever more powerful Islamic vote was cited as one of the reasons; now, far sadder, is the fact that people are growing up who will over the next decade come into positions of power, who are pre-disposed to dislike — and in some cases, to hate — these most loyal of our adopted citizens. If the news and the surveys are bad now, one shudders to think how they will look in 10 years’ time.