Antisemitism, according to Steven Spielberg, is “standing proud” for the first time since Adolf Hitler ascended to power in the 1930s.
The 76-year-old ET filmmaker recently examined his own antisemitic experiences in his semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans, starring Michelle Williams and Paul Dano.
The Spielberg-inspired figure is the subject of antisemitic abuse in one scene in the film, which has been nominated for seven Oscars, including best picture.
During an appearance on Thursday’s The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the Jurassic Park director was asked if he was shocked by the increase of racism in the United States and throughout the world.
‘I find it very, very surprising,’ the Indiana Jones director responded.
‘Antisemitism has always been there, it’s either been just around the corner and slightly out of sight but always lurking, or it has been much more overt, like in Germany in the 30s.
‘But not since Germany in the 30s have I witnessed antisemitism no longer lurking, but standing proud with hands on hips like Hitler and Mussolini, kind of daring us to defy it.
‘I’ve never experienced this in my entire life, especially in this country.’
The Fabelmans follows Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle), an ambitious young filmmaker who grew up in a Jewish family with his mother Mitzi (Michelle) and father Burt (Paul).
The film is billed as a coming-of-age tale about “a young man’s discovery of a devastating family secret and an examination of the power of movies to help us realise the truth about each other and ourselves.”
Steven has spoken about how he was tormented in his last years of high school in a Universal Pictures All-Access behind-the-scenes look at the film, claiming “it doesn’t define” his life and “lead to knowledge of antisemitism,” which he has addressed in later films.
He also told host Colbert, 58: ‘Somehow, the marginalising of people that aren’t part of some kind of a majority race is something that has been creeping up on us for years and years and years.
‘Yet somehow, from 2014 to 2016, hatred became a form of membership in a club with more members than I ever imagined was conceivable in America.
‘Because hatred and antisemitism are inextricably linked; you can’t have one without the other.’
When asked what gives him optimism that hatred will fail, Steven stated, ‘To quote Anne Frank, I think she’s right when she said: “In most people there is good” … And I think essentially, at our core, there is goodness and there is empathy.’
In The Diary Of Anne Frank, she wrote: ‘In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.’
Frank was discovered after hiding in Amsterdam when Hitler’s Nazi party ascended to power, and he died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen detention camp in Germany.
Schindler’s List, Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film, chronicles the tale of an industrialist who saved about 1,000 primarily Jewish Jews during the Holocaust.
He also directed The Final Days, a film about Hungarian Jewish people who were taken to extermination camps.
The documentary was produced by the USC Shoah Foundation, which he founded after Schindler’s List to document the Holocaust.
He launched the institution in 1994 to capture and preserve interviews with Holocaust survivors and other witnesses.