Hello. I’m having trouble understanding several things related to antisemitism (such as anti-communism, Nazism, Zionism…) and it’s because I don’t actually understand how antisemitism itself functions. The explanations I can find online tend to be idealist.
Jews have been the most consistent target of scapegoating in Europe due to their strange (relatively speaking) languages, customs, faiths, values, and cultures when compared to those of their host countries.
The poor Jews were criminals & freeloaders while the rich Jews were conspirators & manipulators.
The only people you could trust were your own nation; especially if they were Christian and doubly so if they were aristocrats, bougies, or clergy who were the only ones keeping the Jews in check and stopping them from taking over.
This was an almost entirely European phenomenon that was later imported to the Islamic world; particularly in areas that had been colonized.
In short: xenophobia used to dismiss the need for reform & distracting from real issues by uniting the common people against a manufactured foe. This tactic would be adopted by fascists later on.
europe imagines itself as the inheritor of roman and greek societies, and so it inherited/borrowed their fear and hatred of “the orient” (see greek self-myths about thermopylae and rome’s obsession with carthage. or rome’s own “troubles” with jews).
jews were the most visible “orientals” in europe until very recent times.
you can see this dynamic in play when for example they start a crusade to go kill muslims in the middle east, realize that they have jews much closer to home and so just do a big pogrom.
Yeah, you can actually notice a rise in Judeophobia after the failure of the Crusades. The inability of European leaders to successfully defeat, conquer, and colonize Muslim realms forced them to reorient their xenophobia toward Jews. Then they discovered the Americas whose civilizations were far behind in military technology and they just repeated the Crusades with greater success. Anti-Jewish sentiment somewhat dwindled thereafter until, sure enough, Europe ran out of places to colonize and so it ramped right back up again.
but it’s also not like they had to rediscover antisemitism, they had that all along, inherited and gradually transformed, but alive and well.
i think the late 19th / early 20th century antisemitism (dreyfuss affair to holocaust) was at least partly caused by mid-to-late-19th century emancipation of jews, which a) made them legally equal and b) unleashed a tide of european jewish assimilation unlike anything before. this meant that by 1930, you had vast multitudes of europeans jews who didnt even look like jews.
to put it even more starkly (and i think this is relevant, given the “they’re taking our women” shit white nationalists go on about in the US, the bastard child of european madness), european fathers could no longer be sure the very nice suitor their daughter brought home wasnt jewish. who knows, maybe he was.
Anti-multiculturalism.
Its not really that complex. The ruling class have always used Jewish communities as a scapegoat. Every pogrom that happened in europe up to and including the holocaust was preceded by crisis caused by the greed and/or ineptitude of the ruling class. The churches in conjunction with the monarchs kept the hate simmering so it could be deployed at a moment’s notice.
Jews are just an easy target. Fascists need an in-group and an out-group to function. When they get rid of one out-group, they have to pivot to a new one.
Jews are an easy target because they’re a minority with “weird” views. Just like socialists, romani, gay people, etc.
I’ve just skimmed this so far but this looks very helpful. I am always frustrated by the “bourgeoisie just needed a scapegoat” answer because it does not explain why the European bourgeoisie picked Jewish people as a scapegoat, what continuity there is between early and modern antisemitism, what material conditions it arises from, how it relates to anticommunism, whether a similar discourse can be weaponized against other groups, the role of Zionism, Jewish status as a nation, why Jews were racialized, conflict between bourgeois and proletarian or Eastern and Western European Jewish communities, restrictions on jobs and land ownership, contemporary antisemitism, and so on.
I think it’s gotta do with the renaissance in Jewish social mobility and acceptance into secular society in 19th century western capitalist society
To summarize, the framework of antisemitism is essentially based around the reactionary preconception that their social mobility would lead to the ‘subversion’ of the imperialist and capitalist West, by these historically disenfranchised peoples, with not only their newfound ‘surreptitiously acquired power’ but its foreign values that justify it.
Consequently, this preconception acts as not just a justification of discrimination, but a violent movement against them. And this logic is then extrapolated to other peoples of the world, especially and purposefully revolutionaries, who were challenging those same ruling classes.
The logic of antisemitism, far from being banished with the Nazis, became completely naturalized in the West. From Lord of the Rings to The Dark Knight Rises we hear the same story again and again and again: {according to the ruling classes,} swarthy hordes are surreptitiously manipulated behind-the-scenes by crooked wizards and deceptive illusionists — often hiding in plain sight, in our midst! — and lay siege to everything that is balanced and well-rounded and pure and good and holy and white and which by rights should be eternal. The manipulators do so for no discernible reason other than greed and ressentiment.
The tragic cycle begins to appear eternal: innocent, well-meaning, hard-working folks are, time and again, viciously tricked by the scapegoating of a new rogue in the gallery — Indigenous, Black, Spanish, Jewish, Soviet, Vietnamese, Cuban, Serbian, Muslim, Libyan, Syrian, Korean, Venezuelan, Russian, Chinese.
Sourced from:
https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/#george-orwells-very-british-antisemitism
(Edit: I prolly didn’t summarize and write this, as succinctly as I could, maybe later I will)
Thanks. I think I read that Red Sails article a while ago but found it hard to understand. I will try to reread that section.
The confusion I have is about how this conspiratorial thinking needs to target a “marked” (for example, racialized) group of outsiders (as I understand it, this group doesn’t have to be Jewish people but often is). I think there is an elemental form of this reasoning you can see when defenders of capitalism blame “corporatism” or “crony capitalism” for capitalism’s woes. For those to exist, “corporatists” and “crony capitalists” and perhaps “speculators” or “usurers” — as the Nazis liked to call them — also need to exist, but in this basic form it hasn’t crystallized into a defined group of people. How does that group of people end up being Jewish people?
When Marxists talk about other forms of discrimination we can always pinpoint an economic relation that generates it like colonialism or the gendered division of labor. What, then, is the material basis of 21st-century antisemitism? The destruction of Europe’s Jewish community and the creation of a Jewish settler colony seem to me like the main contributors today, but how specifically do they contribute? Is it that Israel helps reify Jews’ status as “non-European”?
The logic of antisemitism, far from being banished with the Nazis, became completely naturalized in the West. […] The tragic cycle begins to appear eternal: innocent, well-meaning, hard-working folks are, time and again, viciously tricked by the scapegoating of a new rogue in the gallery — Indigenous, Black, Spanish, Jewish, Soviet, Vietnamese, Cuban, Serbian, Muslim, Libyan, Syrian, Korean, Venezuelan, Russian, Chinese.
Is it correct to understand that antisemitism itself is one possible manifestation of the logic of antisemitism and the logic should not be viewed as exclusive to Jewish people?
Well, I’m a bit confused on that too and it’s weighin’ on my conscience
Is it correct to understand that antisemitism itself is one possible manifestation of the logic of antisemitism and the logic should not be viewed as exclusive to Jewish people?
Yes…
Now on the first question, regarding their role in political economy, take my info with a grain of salt as I try my best to explain the origins of medieval judenhass:
The role of Jews in medieval political economy (taking England for an example) was to do the employment that Christians weren’t specialized in, religiously forbidden to do, etc. due to the fact that Jews were originally outsiders, both in faith and foreign nature.
In this case, the initial role of merchant and the later role of moneylender seemed to define them, as they evolved to fit the necessary economic niches to be filled during those times. {not that they had much choice, since medieval society barred them from others}
Also, regarding England:
Nonetheless, they were kept as a necessary economic ‘evil’
It was only when the contemporary rise of proper international banking from Italy competed with their role as moneylenders, that the European kingdoms in the 1300s finally started to exile the Jews, alongside the increasing local judenhass (often encouraged), which made the Jews economically obsolete in their political economy.
Historically, the vast majority of people were de facto small landholder subsistence farmers. It is not unusual for people with a “foreign” culture to be dispossessed of their land, and such people either move to the cities (where you don’t need to own land to support yourself) or leave for a “home country”. Or in the case of the Roma, adopt a nomadic lifestyle, but that’s beyond the scope of your question.
Under the Medievalist mode of production (which existed in some form until the early 1900s in much of Europe), consolation and profit-seeking are not present the way they are under Capitalism. Peasants farm enough that they can feed their families, pay their taxes, and sell a little bit on the market to buy what manufactured goods they desire that they cannot make at home; despite owning land (sometimes quite a bit of it!), they tend to remain relatively poor.
However, in cities, there was more potential for a common person to consolidate wealth and power through trade, banking, and professional jobs (lawyering, doctoring, etc.), as well as primitive ownership of the means of production (in this time period, often Mines and urban real estate, since agricultural land was still the purview of nobles and peasants). Especially if those common people were part of a relatively insular community within the city that fostered a culture of brotherhood and helping each other, as well as a culture of excelling in these urban positions since they were fully dissociated from agricultural production because of their race. Especially before the Reformation, Jewish people also excelled at these roles because of Catholic prohibitions against usury and a general disdain for the private accumulation of wealth.
Antisemitism stems from a broader trend in the time of disdain towards city folk - as opposed to peasants who were morally upright, content, and loyal to the crown, city folk were seen as morally loose, greedy, and harboring radical ideas. The Jews receive a special element of hatred for being “different” in a distinctive way, and when they achieve high positions in professional and bourgeois circles, gentiles see this as a threat - upstarts taking what is rightfully theirs.
And this is off-topic, but this post reminded me of the idea that Suburbanites are modern-day peasants of a late-stage capitalist world where taxes and rents require that even small landholders leave their yards fallow to take up more productive work within factories, offices etc. With advances in transportation, the jobs that used to be relegated to the city-dwellers (lawyers, doctors, bureaucrats, etc.) are now taken to by Suburbanites (modern-day peasants) who commute to work every day. Leaving the question of what work is left for our actual city-dwellers - typically impoverished black and brown people. Especially as public transport is cut and working-class jobs are moved outside of the city center.
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