Posted on 11/01/2003 3:28:08 PM PST by quidnunc
No hatred has as rich and as lethal a history as anti-Semitism — "the longest hatred," as the historian Robert Wistrich has dubbed it. Over the millennia, anti-Semitism has infected a multitude of peoples, religions, and civilizations, in the process inflicting a host of terrors on its Jewish victims. But while there is no disputing the impressive reach of the phenomenon, there is surprisingly little agreement about its cause or causes.
Indeed, finding a single cause would seem too daunting a task — the incidence of anti-Semitism is too frequent, the time span too broad, the locales too numerous, the circumstances too varied. No doubt that is why some scholars have come to regard every outbreak as essentially unique, denying that a straight line can be drawn from the anti-Semitism of the ancient world to that of today. Whether it is the attack on the Jews of Alexandria in 38 C.E. or the ones that took place 200 years earlier in ancient Jerusalem, whether it is the Dreyfus affair in 1890's France or Kristallnacht in late-1930's Germany — each incident is seen as the outcome of a distinctive mix of political, social, economic, cultural, and religious forces that preclude the possibility of a deeper or recurring cause.
A less extreme version of this same approach identifies certain patterns of anti-Semitism, but only within individual and discrete "eras." In particular, a distinction is drawn between the religiously based hatred of the Middle Ages and the racially based hatred of the modern era. Responsibility for the anti-Semitic waves that engulfed Europe from the age of Constantine to the dawn of the Enlightenment is laid largely at the foot of the Church and its offshoots, while the convulsions that erupted over the course of the next three centuries are viewed as the byproduct of the rise of virulent nationalism.
Obviously, separating out incidents or eras has its advantages, enabling researchers to focus more intensively on specific circumstances and to examine individual outbreaks from start to finish. But what such analyses may gain in local explanatory power they sacrifice in comprehensiveness. Besides, if every incident or era of anti-Semitism is largely distinct from every other, how to explain the cumulative ferocity of the phenomenon?
As if in response to this question, some scholars have attempted to offer more sweeping, trans-historical explanations. Perhaps the two best known are the "scapegoat" theory, according to which tensions within society are regulated and released by blaming a weaker group, often the Jews, for whatever is troubling the majority, and the "demonization" theory, according to which Jews have been cast into the role of the "other" by the seemingly perennial need to reject those who are ethnically, religiously, or racially different.
Clearly, in this sociological approach, anti-Semitism emerges as a Jewish phenomenon in name only. Rather, it is but one variant in a family of hatreds that include racism and xenophobia. Thus, the specifically anti-Jewish violence in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, has as much in common with the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia at the turn of the 21st as it does with the massacres of Jews in the Ukraine in the mid-1600's. Taken to its logical conclusion, this theory, would redefine the Holocaust — at the hands of some scholars, it has redefined the Holocaust — as humanity's most destructive act of racism rather than as the most murderous campaign ever directed against the Jews.
Reacting to such universalizing tendencies a half-century ago, Hannah Arendt cited a piece of dialogue from "a joke which was told after the first World War":
An anti-Semite claimed that the Jews had caused the war; the reply was: Yes, the Jews and the bicyclists. Why the bicyclists? asks the one. Why the Jews? asks the other.
George Orwell offered a similar observation in 1944: "However tree the scapegoat theory may be in general terms, it does not explain why the Jews rather than some other minority group are picked on, nor does it make clear what they are the scapegoat for."
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at commentarymagazine.com ...
The values ascendant in today's Middle East are shaped by two forces: Islamic fundamentalism and state authoritarianism. In the eyes of the former, any non-Muslim sovereign power in the region — for that matter, any secular Muslim power — is anathema. Particularly galling is Jewish sovereignty in an area delineated as dar al-Islam, the realm where Islam is destined to enjoy exclusive dominance. Such a violation cannot be compromised with; nothing will suffice but its extirpation.
It's the Islam, stupid!
Despite the differences between them, however, anti-Americanism in the Islamic world and anti-Americanism in Europe are in fact linked, and both bear an uncanny resemblance to anti-Semitism. It is, after all, with some reason that the United States is loathed and feared by the despots and fundamentalists of the Islamic world as well as by many Europeans. Like Israel, but in a much more powerful way, America embodies a different — a nonconforming — idea of the good, and refuses to abandon its moral clarity about the objective worth of that idea or of the free habits and institutions to which it has given birth. To the contrary, in undertaking their war against the evil of terrorism, the American people have demonstrated their determination not only to fight to preserve the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity, but to carry them to regions of the world that have proved most resistant to their benign influence.
Our friends, the Eurosnots!
Florence King (author, used to write for National Review) once said that Ayn Rand's unspoken thesis was a cry against anti-Semitism, and that even though there isn't a Jew in sight in The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged, the hatred of gold (galt), of profit, of intelligence and independence from the larger society is a metaphor for the hatred of those who handle the gold, make the profit, and live intelligently and independently from the very large societies of Christianity, Islam, and Marxism.
Excuse me, but this statement is the most ignorant piece of crap I've seen on Free Republic ever, both for the use of the term habit of usury and most people who hate Jews also hate capitalism...
If you didn't mistype this nonsense then you need to take a look into your soul.
Oh, I don't know about that.
I've seen a great deal of really ignorant crap go by the boards here and there would be really stiff competition.
By the way, I don't agree with all of the statement
Hmm. See any amusing contradictions in your lesson in manners there, boyo?
I'll humor you anyway. I generally don't give a damn how anti-Semitic some folks are except when they couch it in pseudo-polite rationalizations. Habit of usury is patently offensive and implies the money lending of the middle ages leads one to think of the Rothchilds and before you know it we're talking "...Elders of Zion". Now when the poster added in his factoid that Jew haters are pretty much anti-capitalist, I wonder what kind of history (economic and political) the poor child has been exposed to, 'cause it ain't in any lesson plans I've ever seen.
In short the poster comes off as a closet anti-Semite and without a more balanced query on your part I guess I would lump you into the same category.
Hmm... First of all, I don't have a soul, I'm an atheist. But to the more important issues... is it the idea that Jews allow usury that is "ignorant" or that usury is an element of capitalism? Or that those who hate Jews tend also to hate capitalism? If you're going to insult me, you'll have to be more specific or I can't really help you.
I disagree. Hatred of Jews predates the formal elucidation of capitalism, and is seen since the beginning of civilization.
As for the bit about usury, don't fall prey to Shakespearan anti-Semitism. Usury was practised by all races and creeds of people since the beginning of time. It was not invented by Shylock.
LOL! This is getting pretty funny. Okay, let me be clear: I'm so pro-Israel I offend people. I don't think the Palestinians should EVER have a state, I think all of Israel should belong to the Jews, and if I weren't an atheist I'd convert to Judaism if only to make a statement.
Moreover, as a pretty hardcore Objectivist, I don't consider "usury" to be a bad thing.
Now, as for the fact that you've never seen "hatred of Jews" and "hatred of capitalism" grouped together on a syllabus... "boyo"... has it occurred to you that we pick up some information not sitting in a classroom but living out there in the real world, watching how people act? Look at the people who hate Israel. Now look at the Marxists who want the US to fail, who want the UN to rule the world.... notice something? They're the same folks, by and large. Pat Buchanan's a lone wolf, but overall...
But anyway, I'm sorry, I didn't meant to interrupt your trashing of total strangers and "lumping in" exercise. You're obviously having fun. I hate to interrupt someone in full-on ego masturbation.
(i.e., not a blooming idiot; you've made the majors).
Sure. One of them had to come first. Does it matter which one?
As for the bit about usury, don't fall prey to Shakespearan anti-Semitism. Usury was practised by all races and creeds of people since the beginning of time. It was not invented by Shylock.
It was, but the Shylock character is an excellent example of how Christians managed to take advantage of the system but blame it on the Jews. Think about it. They needed someone to handle money, someone to do the dirty side. But they don't want to be seen touching it. It's like superstars who hire accountants, managers, and body guards, and then pretend they have no awareness of money, schedules, or security.
Well.... thing is.... they really didn't ever "tolerate" Jews. I know we've been told that in the golden age of Islam it was a Wonderland of multiculturalist bliss, but such is not the case. Muslims considered Jews (and Christians) to be "dhimmis" and made them live under the equivalent of Jim Crow laws.
No, I'm convinced that Judaism, capitalism, and American Protestantism are all variants of an individualist ethos that is very efficacious and as such, is virulantly hated by collectivists whether they be Marxist or some Socialist realization of Christianity or Islam.
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