  We investigate some aspects of the history of antisemitism in France, one of
the cradles of modern antisemitism, using diachronic word embeddings. We
constructed a large corpus of French books and periodicals issues that contain
a keyword related to Jews and performed a diachronic word embedding over the
1789-1914 period. We studied the changes over time in the semantic spaces of 4
target words and performed embedding projections over 6 streams of antisemitic
discourse. This allowed us to track the evolution of antisemitic bias in the
religious, economic, socio-politic, racial, ethic and conspiratorial domains.
Projections show a trend of growing antisemitism, especially in the years
starting in the mid-80s and culminating in the Dreyfus affair. Our analysis
also allows us to highlight the peculiar adverse bias towards Judaism in the
broader context of other religions.
