German wordsmiths coined these terms centuries ago, and the names stuck in spite of a more nuanced understanding of ethnic/sociolinguistic boundaries:
Meiners' treatise was widely read in the German intellectual circles of its day, despite muted criticism of its scholarship. Meiners proposed a taxonomy of human beings which involved only two races (Rassen): Caucasians and Mongolians. He considered Caucasians to be more physically attractive than Mongolians, notably because they had paler skin; Caucasians were also more sensitive and more morally virtuous than Mongolians. Later he would make similar distinctions within the Caucasian group, concluding that the Germans were the most attractive and virtuous people on earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_raceMarr and others employed the word antisemitism in the largely secular anti-Jewish political campaigns that became widespread in Europe around the turn of the century. The word derived from an 18th-century analysis of languages that differentiated between those with so-called “Aryan” roots and those with so-called “Semitic” ones. This distinction led, in turn, to the assumption--a false one--that there were corresponding racial groups. Within this framework, Jews became “Semites,” and that designation paved the way for Marr’s new vocabulary. He could have used the conventional German term Judenhass to refer to his hatred of Jews, but that way of speaking carried religious connotations that Marr wanted to de-emphasize in favor of racial ones. Apparently more “scientific,” Marr’s Antisemitismus caught on. Eventually, it became a way of speaking about all the forms of hostility toward Jews throughout history.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/WilhelmMarr.htmlThe word "anti-semitism" might be anti-semitic in this sense (or anti-Jewish rather, by relegating Judaism to a "scientific" label like a congenital disorder), but it's hard to find a polite term for this sort of thing (Judaphobia?)
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