anti-Semitism

anti-Semitism Whilst Christian hostility towards Jews dates back to the first century, modern anti-Semitism denotes hostility towards the Jewish race or, more popularly, towards Jewish culture and traditions. Its origins go back to the 1870s, when earlier, sporadic outbreaks of anti-Jewish feelings became a permanent phenomenon in European society. In the writings of early anti-Semites, such as the German Wilhelm Marr or the Frenchman Ernest Renan, Jews were identified as a separate race, so that even if they converted to Christianity or assimilated to current cultural values they continued to be considered Jewish. Throughout history, Jews had been made the scapegoats for economic and other misfortunes, but in addition they became identified by conservative populists as the harbingers of progress, industrialization, and international capital, who destroyed the values and livelihoods of an idealized rural peasant society.

Hence, one of the most striking characteristics of modern anti-Semitism especially before World War II was its strength in countries such as Poland and France, where conservatives linked to the Roman Catholic Church were united principally by anti-Semitism in their opposition to economic and social change, even in cases (e.g. France) where there were virtually no Jews resident. In France, this broad coalition of forces resistant to change came together as a result of the Dreyfus Affair, which at the same time revealed the extent of popular (as well as official) anti-Semitism. In Russia, where Jews had settled relatively recently, they began to be prosecuted in pogroms, with the support of officials eager to please the anti-Semitic Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II. Partly in response to the pressures of modernization, anti-Semitism developed in Germany and Austria, too. It was fuelled by widespread Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe into a number of urban centres which already had considerable Jewish populations. In the Vienna of Hitler's years as an apprentice (1909–13), anti-Semitism had been made acceptable in public discourse during Karl Lueger's mayorality (1897–1910), since he was an anti-Semite supported by the growing Austrian Christian Social Union.

In Germany, by contrast, anti-Semites remained on the political fringe before 1918, though it was during the German Empire that the foundations for the extraordinary rise of anti-Semitism in politics and society were laid. The conclusion of the Versailles Treaty, the ensuing widespread economic misery of the Weimar Republic, and its political weakness made many Germans very receptive to the anti-Semitism of the right wing (and of the emerging Nazi Party in particular). Many of the Republic's most ardent supporters, most affluent business leaders, and many influential politicians (such as Stresemann and Rathenau) were Jewish, and became easy scapegoats. What was most striking about the German Third Reich under Hitler was the brutality with which anti-Semitism was brought to its most horrendous and extreme conclusion through the murder of over five million Jews in concentration camps during World War II.

These horrors ensured that for the first decades after the war anti-Semitism became publicly unacceptable not only in Germany (where the denial of the Holocaust became a criminal offence), but throughout most of Europe and elsewhere in the world. At the same time, anti-Semitism was thinly disguised in the USSR, where it was partially encouraged by the state during the 1950s and early 1960s because of fears the Jews might look towards Israel rather than the Soviet Union as their ultimate authority. From the 1980s, in some Western European countries anti-Semitic parties such as the Front Nationale in France and the Austrian Liberal Party generated considerable electoral appeal, even though this was the result more of inherent xenophobic popular moods against immigrants. Furthermore, the appeal of such parties was based on general popular prejudices against Jews rather than on the racial anti-Semitism (with its implications of assumed Jewish racial inferiority) which was current before and during World War II. Since 1945, such anti-Semitism remained the preserve of violent neo-Fascist groups.

Jedwabne Massacre