The phenomenon of antisemitism, sometimes termed "the longest hatred", has been in existence for 2,000 years in different cultures and parts of the world. Can distinct aspects of antisemitism be identified? Can one refer, for example, to the most extreme aspect of the phenomenon? Such as the racial aspect, which arose in the 19th century and was so prominent in Nazi ideology? Or perhaps the claim that there is a global Jewish conspiracy to take over the world? A discussion on this subject, like any discourse regarding this age-old phenomenon, requires a historical context.
With the rise of Christianity in the ancient era, various new negative approaches towards the Jews began to take shape, including the charge of deicide – the crucifixion of Christ. The Jew was perceived as the ultimate "other" in the Christian world, someone who loves money, and whose sole loyalty is to himself and his religion. However, for various reasons, including the philosophy of St. Augustine (according to which the Jew's role in the Christian world is that of witness, and the Jews' lack of comprehension of Scripture meant that they were not even aware of the crucifixion, as expressed in the blindfolded figure of Synagoga), while the Jews suffered from restrictive legislation, until the 11th century they were not the victims of violence on a large scale.
These attitudes became more extreme towards the end of the Middle Ages, with the Jew being perceived as a killer of children, a poisoner of wells, the devil personified. This religious hatred led to violent persecution throughout Europe, in the course of which Jews were often forced to convert to Christianity. Those who did not conform were massacred or expelled. In the late Middle Ages, there were almost no Jews in Western Europe, as they had been expelled gradually from England, Spain, France, Portugal and Italy. In the beginning of the Modern Era, most of the world's Jews lived in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in Eastern Europe.
Different trends and processes in the Modern Era led to a change of attitude towards the Jews and to the reopening of the gates of Western Europe. Some began to leave the Jewish centers in Eastern Europe, and sought to integrate themselves in the West, sometimes jettisoning their traditional Jewish way of life in the process. Humanism and the Enlightenment movement, followed by the French Revolution, called for a new approach to "the other", and even for granting equal rights to all individuals, including Jews. This led to the Emancipation; Jews were officially granted equal rights for the first time in France in 1791, and then in several other countries, including England, Ireland, Austro-Hungary and large parts of Germany.
For the first time, Jews could be accepted to schools and universities, could serve as officers in armies, and work in professions such as medicine and law. This was the first period in which Jews officially became citizens with equal rights in their countries, and could advance socially. By the end of World War I, Jews had even been granted equal rights in Poland and the USSR. Their integration was extraordinary. Many Jews became leading figures in research, banking, journalism, art, literature and politics.
There were also those who voiced opposition to the Jews' rapid integration into European society. Some claimed that their entry into society had to be accompanied by the total eradication of Jewish distinguishing markers and customs, and others opposed the integration of Jews under any circumstances. These tendencies merged with broader trends of dissatisfaction with the changes being wrought in modern society, such as the Industrial and Urban Revolutions, and the gradual processes of secularization, increased women's rights and democratization. The voices calling for a return to the old guard, and the romantic movements calling for a reversion to traditional country life, were often coupled with the demand to remove Jews from society and to repeal the Emancipation, partly because Jews were attributed with the negative aspects of modern life. Jews were blamed for the rise of capitalism on the one hand, and the rise of socialism and communism on the other. Jews were accused of monopolizing employment opportunities and for disloyalty to their country. This charge of betrayal was the backdrop for the trial in France of Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus, who was unjustly accused of treason. This period also brought with it a new, modern name for Jew-hatred – antisemitism, a term attributed to the German publicist Wilhelm Marr, and designed to lend Jew-hatred, perceived in many circles as a throwback to the Middle Ages, a scientific validity.
Modern antisemitism also had racial aspects, influenced by the rise of modern science and scientific racism, which sought to classify humans according to race. While the Aryans were perceived as the superior race, antisemitic thinkers such as composer Richard Wagner and author Houston Stewart Chamberlain claimed that the Jews were a sub-race that was destroying culture. Jewish characteristics were now attributed to biology, resulting in the perception that they were not capable of change. This was a substantial difference from previous approaches. Unlike earlier, when Jews were sometimes offered the possibility of conversion as a way to redeem themselves and integrate into society, now the Jew was considered a Jew even after conversion. Modern antisemitism also had political manifestations. For the first time, openly antisemitic institutions were established, such as the International Anti-Jewish Congress in Dresden, the Antisemitic League in France and the antisemitic parties in Germany. Some of these institutions had lost momentum or disappeared by the eve of World War I.
Modern antisemitism reached one of its peaks in Tsarist Russia before World War I: the violent pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th century and the dissemination of the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", which was first published in 1903 by the Tsar's secret police and espoused the conspiracy theory that Jews were bent on world domination. Despite the fact that the "Protocols" were exposed as a forgery early on, they were translated and disseminated rapidly throughout the world, first in Europe and later on in the US, the western world and even Japan. The document was very influential in Nazi Germany, and was published in no less than 23 editions between the years 1923 to 1933. The effects are mirrored in dozens of speeches given by senior Nazis, as well as in Hitler's infamous address to the Reichstag on 30 January 1939, in which he declared:
"If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe."
The question sometimes arises as to whether those voicing antisemitic tropes actually believe these theories, or whether they are just a political tactic to drum up support. However, when reading different documents written by Hitler and senior Nazi officials – private letters, diaries and even wills - their belief in what they voice is evident. This comes across forcefully in Hitler's political testament, which he signed a day before committing suicide in the bunker in Berlin, and in which he chose to devote a significant section to the Jews: "Nor have I left any doubt that if the nations of Europe are once more to be treated only as collections of stocks and shares of these international conspirators in money and finance, then those who carry the real guilt for the murderous struggle, this people will also be held responsible: the Jews!"
Hitler concluded his testament with a call to the nation's leadership and to those who would follow "to observe the racial laws most carefully, to fight mercilessly against the poisoners of all the peoples of the world, international Jewry."
According to renowned Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer, the antisemitic conspiracy theory influenced the Nazi leaders' decision to invade Poland in 1939.
In his book, "The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust", American Jewish historian Jeffrey Herf demonstrates how the Nazis relied on antisemitic conspiracy theories to explain the global processes that took place after the outbreak of war and the invasion of Poland, particularly the military pact between the USSR, the USA and Britain. Only the Jews' power could explain why the communist, totalitarian state made a pact with democratic countries, which they so opposed and which represented capitalism. Furthermore, Herf demonstrates that the German leadership made sure to disseminate this message amongst the German people. When German cities were bombarded, resulting in mass casualties, German citizens were told that while the bombing pilots were American, the Jews were behind them. Thus, the Nazis' actions against the Jews were justified as a defensive war against a demonic force that had to be exterminated:
“[...] the propaganda of the Nazi party and Nazi regime presented Hitler and Germany as merely responding to the initiatives, injustices, and threats of others. It was a propaganda that trumpeted innocence and self-righteous indignation and turned the power relations between Germany and the Jews upside down: Germany was the innocent victim; Jewry was all-powerful." (p.5)
According to Herf, this propaganda represented the actual viewpoint of the Nazi leadership. In addition, Herf claims that the ideology behind the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust was not the racial laws, as is often taught in Israeli high schools, but rather the conspiracy theory regarding the Jews' aspiration for world domination, this constituting the most extreme and dangerous aspect of the antisemitism phenomenon:
"The core of the radical antisemitism that justified and accompanied the Holocaust was a conspiracy theory that ascribed not inferiority, but enormous power, to what it alleged was an international Jewish conspiracy that sought the destruction of the Nazi regime and the extermination of the German population.”
According to Herf, the racial aspect of Nazi antisemitism was extremely dangerous, but it wasn't sufficient to lead to mass murder. Unlike other racist societies that alienated groups socially, the Nazis genuinely feared the Jews, and therefore came to the decision in late 1941/early 1942 that all Jews and all things Jewish throughout Europe and beyond, if possible, needed to be exterminated. As far as they were concerned, this was a war to redeem the world, as historian Saul Friedlander explained with his coining of the term "Redemptive Antisemitism".
Regrettably, the conspiracy theory regarding the Jews' immense power did not disappear with the Nazis in 1945; it can be found amongst the radical right, the radical left and the Islamists, where it is combined with radical Muslim anti-Jewish attitudes such as those expressed by the Iranian regime (that semi-officially promotes antisemitism and Holocaust denial), and the Hamas charter of 1988, where it states, inter alia:
"They stood behind World War 1, so as to wipe out the Islamic Caliphate. They collected material gains and took control of many sources of wealth. They obtained the Balfour Declaration and established the League of Nations in order to rule the world by means of that organization. They also stood behind World War II, where they collected immense benefits from trading with war materials, and prepared for the establishment of their state. They inspired the establishment of the United Nations and the Security Council to replace the League of Nations, in order to rule the world by their intermediary. There was no war that broke out anywhere without their fingerprints on it, [as it is written in the Koran]: '...As often as they light a fire for war, Allah extinguishes it. Their efforts are for corruption in the land and Allah loves not corrupters.'"
Can antisemitism be vanquished? Can the Jew-hatred expressed for millennia by so many cultures be eradicated? Very doubtful, and certainly not without a preliminary understanding of the various different aspects of the phenomenon.
