Modern Antisemitism

Final: Modern Antisemitism

The rise of modern racial antisemitism owes acknowledgement to the new belief of racial theories of history, which became the basis for political and logical movements in most European countries. The idea of modern anti-Semitism thrived, but was not universally accepted and did not affect every political scene that it touched, but the ideology of race became a weapon that could be altered by skillful people against their opponents, especially opponents seen to represent intruding modernism. Different political and economic conditions could lead to very different outcomes, except Germany, because it was the first state in world history whose practice and view was racism, whereas Hungarian Jews were intertwined with the state and never suffered anything but cultural antisemitism. In the face of the historical fact that in Germany antisemitism ended in the Final Solution, it seems difficult to maintain that the similarities between different manifestations of European antisemitism were more important than the differences (The Holocaust History). This is not to accredit to the Germans any national appeal, but merely to acknowledge that in fundamentally different countries antisemitism naturally has a drastic difference in manifestations. Even though anti-Semitism has changed, it still maintains noticeable economic, political and modernization issues in modern society.

The “rise of the Jews” was an act of anti-Semitism stereotyping that remains in modern society. This involves the material wealth and social status of Jews increasing in an unprecedented way, and is "an important prerequisite for the emergence of modern antisemitism" (Cite). The different forms that the rise of the Jews takes in different countries determines the atmosphere of antisemitism in that country. This idea, which is traditional in modern anti-Semitism is rooted in the morals of the Jewish community, which also sparked propaganda against them in the past as a result. The first stereotype that was widespread throughout all of Europe for most of its history, and rested primarily on the myth of the blood libel, and that the Jews were collectively guilty of the murder of Christ (The Holocaust Explained). This was unlike modern antisemitism, because this is no longer one of the most popular stereotypes, but purely a prejudice. It would only surface when people were plagued by anguishes and needed a scapegoat to blame, and the newly risen Jews provided an exceptional target for this. One similarity between most countries pertaining to Jews is that they were regarded as an alien addition, which was not accepted in Europe. Therefore, in countries where Jews attained positions of power and wealth, they were seen as seizing these from the nation, and using them for their own wicked means. Antisemitism would emerge when the rest of the population perceived evidence of this, such as with the Panama Scandal in 1873 (Patterson). The collapse of many Jewish banks in the latter case also seemed to remove the perception of specialness of the Jewish people in financial matters –and hence the necessity to tolerate their ways.

That the outsider attitude of the Jewish people is a factor that is proved when the Jewish population started to rise in Hungary. In Hungary, the rise of the Jews was more spectacular than in almost any other country, especially in Budapest which at one point contained 200,000 Jewish citizens out of a total of 732,000 (The Holocaust History). But many proved themselves willing to merge and make contributions to Hungarian culture, and were accepted. The influx of poorer Jews into Hungary in the 1870s, who refused to assimilate, did not meet such general acceptance, and were seen as a burden on society. Hungarian Jewry was then allowed a relatively peaceful existence because antisemitism in the country was based on culture rather than race, and there was always hope of a future attempt at assimilation. To a racial anti-Semite, it is irrelevant whether a Jew is assimilated or not, because of their blood lines and that can never be changed. This sort of racial antisemitism became a political movement in Austria and Germany, especially in the pan-German ideology which was eventually espoused by Hitler (The Holocaust History). This proved much more unsafe for the Jewish people because of its unrefined and inflexible character.

Austrian antisemitism was not solely based on economic viewpoints, but by the fact that while the working class are the class most effected by the notions of the business cycle, the Social Democrats were the least anti-Semitic party (Patterson). Antisemitism here had two main communities which were the conservatives who associated with the ‘Red Scare’ and the “Jewish Question”, which were similar. The progress of mass politics played an important role in the Jewish communities, because it allowed the Social Democrats to get 75 percent of the Jewish vote which caused anti-Semitism to moderately increase. It seems improbable that any mass party in Austria at the time could have avoided the offers that anti-Semitism presented, because the “Jewish Question” was a prominent public issue. Vienna had seen an exceptional influx of Jews, from 6,000 in 1860 to 40,000 by 1870 and finally 175,000 in 1910 (The Holocaust Explained). Antisemitism in Vienna rose in response to the role of the Jews in the city’s economy, and they were primarily a part of the bourgeois or white-collar class, in a city that was mostly proletarian (The Holocaust History). Although the Jews were criticized on their importance or roles to the capitalists, they thought that they would eventually be required to assimilate because Zionism was a form of unreceptive nationalism, which would disappear when the bourgeoisie slowly decayed into the marsh of the proletariat views.

This identification of Jew with socialist was communal to Russia and France. What was different about French antisemitism, was that it never known place for reactionary anti-Semites in France because they were concerned with maintaining the integrity of their own nation, whereas the pan-Germans in Austria and Germany had revisionist aimed at redrawing the map of Central Europe (The Holocaust History). The pan-Germans, who organized themselves as an international movement dedicated to making the Jews known as a dangerous super-national component, which was undermining the German Reich for their own ends (The Holocaust Explained). They had successfully transformed the German society and were accused of being responsible for its greed and corruption. In Austria, the pan-Germans openly attacked their own state because they identified it as being associated with Jewry.

The political situation in France consisted of two political groups. One is a liberal modern group, and the other being the Catholic group which tries to stay