Sartre’s most famous formulation appears in Anti-Semite and Jew (1946; originally published in French in 1944): “If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.” He meant that antisemitism does not arise from real knowledge of Jewish people; it invents a scapegoat onto whom the antisemite projects social anxieties and resentments.wikipedia+1

He also wrote, in a frequently cited passage, that antisemites often know their arguments are weak or absurd but use them in bad faith—not to reach truth, but to intimidate and unsettle people who try to reason with them.goodreads+1

A related, more controversial Sartrean claim is: “The Jew is one whom other men consider a Jew … it is the anti-Semite who makes the Jew.” Sartre was emphasizing the social situation imposed by persecution and exclusion, rather than denying Jewish religion, history, culture, or self-defined identity. Critics have argued that this framing can reduce Jewish identity too much to an identity produced by antisemitism.primolevicenter

He ended the essay with an emphatic universal claim: no French person is fully free or secure while Jews lack full rights or can fear for their lives.ueaeprints.uea