Why does anti-sentiment exist?

There is a long, long history as to why this exists, but it ultimately comes down to Christianity. Medieval Christians had three trains of thought when it came to the Jews.

1.) "The killed Jesus"

2.) Medieval banks and financial institutions (treasuries, loan offices) were considered 'unclean' as working with money and lending was sinful. But you still need those things in order for society to function. So who does it? Non-Christians. This is where the stereotype of Jews having money of controlling the banks comes from. In order to survive, Jewish families made financial guilds so generations of Jews would have reliable jobs. Thus, the Jews were working in unclean businesses.

3.) Jews were pushed into cloistered off communities and thus became like foreigners in their own countries. This cause Christians to treat them like such.

All of those factors over centuries made distrust for Jews very normal and commonplace in most European communities for a long time. It still is there, though it's decreased severely since the Holocaust.

/r/NoStupidQuestions Thread