In my recent article on the celebrated novelist and writer Arthur Conan Doyle's rather troubled relationship with jews. (1) I pointed out that a real problem for his subsequent biographers has been that Conan Doyle, while also an avid supporter of the Zionist ideology propounded by the jewish novelist Israel Zangwill, supported a populist anti-Semitic organization called the British Brothers League. (2)
This little tit-bit of undisputed information has caused a real problem for biographers of Conan Doyle, because he clearly doesn't meet the common popular criteria of being 'anti-Semitic' as he is a supporter of Zionism, but yet at the same time he supported an indisputably anti-Semitic organization at the same time. (3) Lycett simply dismisses any idea his subject was anti-Semitic because he was pro-Zionist, (4) while Coren vaguely states he was 'sympathetic to jews'. (5) His other biographers just completely ignore it, because it is seemingly difficult to explain.
The difficulty however is solved when you view the issue of mass jewish migration into Britain as Conan Doyle's contemporaries did. Few people were in favour of such uncontrolled immigration and even fewer of those living where the jews tended to set up shop in East London (the British Brothers League's place of origin and where a lot of its members lived). As such people tended to look for solution and, in spite of modern assumptions of genocidal intent, this tended to be extremely moral and humane.
Looking at the British Brothers League's propaganda material; the proposed solutions tended to focus either on the jews properly assimilating and abandoning their jewishness totally to become Britons (i.e., assimilationism) or they should have their own jewish state somewhere (i.e., Zionism).
This was a common enough nineteenth/early twentieth century position on the jewish question and was the subject to debates all around Europe with anti-jewish luminaries of vastly opposing worldviews - such as Theodor Fritsch, Wilhelm Marr and Edouard Drumont - weighing in on the issue.
Contrary to modern assumptions there was no genocidal intent in Victorian or Edwardian anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism then was simply the view that the jews were a foreign population that weren't assimilating and that if they didn't assimilate then they should go off and build their own state so they would stop complaining about 'discrimination' in the countries in which they resided.
As such it is not difficult to see that Conan Doyle's support of a Zionist organization and also patriotic anti-Semitic organization is actually reconcilable, because if one was a strong British imperialist and patriot - as Conan Doyle certainly was - (7) at the time then it wasn't unreasonable to want the Ashkenazi jews immigrants (who remember were causing a political crisis for over a decade) (8) to be ejected from the country, while also supporting the creation of a new territorial location to deport them to.
In other words Conan Doyle's support for Zionism was a result of his anti-jewish beliefs, because he wanted a territorial solution to the jewish question (aka the 'Alien Question' as it was known then in Britain) and Zionism created a territory to boot the problematic jews out to.
In other words Conan Doyle's political beliefs on this score were by modern colloquial terminology anti-Semitic, but not out of step for his time.
This is reinforced when one reads Conan Doyle's large corpus of work as while in his 1899 short story 'The Jew's Breastplate' he labels the 'anti-Semitic movement' as a form of lunacy filled with 'monomanics'. This seemingly anti-anti-Semitic criticism is not what it might seem to modern readers as it only really means, when you think about what he is saying in context, that Conan Doyle believed that those people who labelled themselves as anti-Semites at the time were obsessed with the jewish question and saw no other potential causation of the woes of the world.
Hence the reference to 'monomania' (i.e., the obsessive focus one on issue/cause) and the 'lunacy' (i.e., seemingly blaming everything on the activity of the jews alone) of the movement rather than a more straightforward condemnation, which would surely have been the case had Conan Doyle sought to attack anti-jewish sentiment more broadly.
Compare that to Chapter 7 of his 1906 novel 'Sir Nigel' where he makes a character state that he'd rather bargain with a synagogue full of jews as opposed to a sharp man from the north of England. Conan Doyle is necessarily stating by implication here that jews are ruthless traders and merchants who are liable to attempt to defraud and/or con anyone who tries to deal with them.
Hardly a positive description of jews I think we can agree.
Then note that in his 1896 short story collection 'The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard'; he has the main character state that the jews of Poland lead exceeding dull and boring lives due to their religious beliefs and self-imposed isolation.
Later in the same work the main character also speaks of Marshall Andre Massena - who was rumoured to be of jewish origin - (9) as being the first good jew since the days of Joshua.
This last comment in particular is telling, because through it Conan Doyle is effectively stating that there have been no good jews since the days of Joshua to at least the Napoleonic wars and possibly up to 1896.
Now if that isn't an anti-Semitic statement by modern colloquial standards then I don't know what is.
In summary then Arthur Conan Doyle was most certainly anti-Semitic by modern standards and shows distinct traces of anti-Judaism (his comment about the jews of Poland for example) as well. Conan Doyle's Zionist sympathies and support for Israel Zangwill's London Committee of the General Jewish Colonising Organisation were not in opposition to his anti-Semitic sentiments, but were rather than outgrowth of them.
As simple as that.
References
(1) For this see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/arthur-conan-doyle-zionism-and-the
(2) Andrew Lycett, 2007, 'Conan Doyle: The Man who created Sherlock Holmes', 1st Edition, Weidenfeld & Nicholson: London, p. 278
(3) See http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/census/events/britain4.htm for when the British Brothers League was active.
(4) Lycett, Op. Cit., p. 278
(5) Michael Coren, 1995, 'Conan Doyle', 1st Edition, Bloomsbury: London, pp. 129-130
(6) Gerry Black, 2003. 'Jewish London: An Illustrated History', 1st Edition, Breedon: Derby, p. 118
(7) For example his anti-German jingoism and beating of the drum for war. Cf. Julian Symons, 1979, 'Portrait of an Artist: Conan Doyle', 1st Edition, Andre Deutsch: London, pp. 106-113; Daniel Stashower, 2000, 'Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle', 1st Edition, Penguin: London, pp. 297-298; 304-316
(8) Black, Op. Cit., p. 118
(9) Cf. the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which states he was 'said [to be] of Jewish origin.'