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2: the word ‘antisemite’ was popularised by German trade unionist and pamphleteer Wilhelm Marr who wanted to have a fancier, and thus more acceptable, scientifi
by vogon_laureate 5y ago
2: the word ‘antisemite’ was popularised by German trade unionist and pamphleteer Wilhelm Marr who wanted to have a fancier, and thus more acceptable, scientific name for Judenhass (‘Jew hate’). The word has only ever been used to refer to anti-Jewish racism.
The word ‘Semite’ is a product of the abhorrent ‘race science’ of the time in Europe that purported to divide up peoples according to pseudo-scientific fashion of the time. It is only now used in the field of linguistics where eg. Arabic and Hebrew are both Semitic languages. This has nothing to do with antisemitism.
This is also why we write it as one word rather than hyphenated with a capital S.
- joecool1029 5y ago> The word ‘Semite’ is a product of the abhorrent ‘race science’ of the time in Europe that purported to divide up peoples according to pseudo-scientific fashion of the time. Nope. The word Semite was coined in 1771 by August Ludwig von Schlözer to refer to a family of languages and their people. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/18229/summary https://muse.jhu.edu/article/18229/summary
- vogon_laureate 5y ago‘And their people…’ Schlözer was a member of the Göttingen School of History which is credited with “two fundamental groups of terminologies of scientific racism” one of which is the biblical terminology for race (eg. Semitic, Hamitic, etc). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göttingen_school_of_history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göttingen_school_of_history
- elliekelly 5y agoI think a lot of linguistic terms were stolen and repurposed as a way to lend credence and legitimacy to racist ideology. The same is true of the term “Aryan” which originally referred to people who spoke Indo-European languages:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_race https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_race From the wikipedia article, the gentleman who first used the term “Aryan race” (in the context of language, not ethnicity) later said: > These two sciences, the Science of Language and the Science of Man, cannot, at least for the present, be kept too much asunder; [...] I must repeat, what I have said many times before, it would be as wrong to speak of Aryan blood as of dolichocephalic grammar.
- joshuamorton 5y agoYes, and the word antisemite was later coined to only refer to Jews. Both statements are true. Language is often weird like that.
- yardie 5y ago> the word ‘antisemite’ was popularised by German trade unionist and pamphleteer Wilhelm Marr Thank you. This is the kind of information I come for on HN.
- roundTwoFight 5y agoBeing separated by pseudoscientific categories of race is very backwards. It's much more scientific to be separated into 33,000 psychometric bubbles that can fold instantly into narrative-compliant political frames based on whoever can pay journos to write headlines that game SEO and HFTs instead.
- CodeGlitch 5y ago> abhorrent ‘race science’ of the time in Europe that purported to divide up peoples according to pseudo-scientific fashion of the time Reminds me of something... Oh yes the current race/gender ideology sweeping the West at the moment.