EconTalk
Published on December 22, 2025
A world-class physicist makes a shocking claim: across 2,500 years and
every kind of society, there has been a recurring moral exception carved
out just for Jews–the idea that hurting Jews is, in some sense,
legitimate. Most of the time, this doesn’t erupt into pogroms. Instead,
it lives as a background permission: a readiness to excuse, minimize, or
rationalize harm to Jews when it does occur. Listen as Russ Roberts
talks with David Deutsch of Oxford University about what Deutsch calls
“the pattern”: a persistent, global impulse not primarily to attack
Jews, but to justify attacks on Jews–socially, politically, or
physically. The stated reasons shift with the era–deicide,
moneylending, “cosmopolitan elites,” Zionism–but the underlying
permission structure remains disturbingly constant. Unsettling,
challenging, and clarifying, this conversation may change how you
understand antisemitism—and the moral fault lines of our civilization.