6 ms·

Anti-Semitism as a 19th century development doesn't seem historically accurate. While anti-Semites in the 19th century glommed on to racial theories as backing

by greedo 3y ago

Anti-Semitism as a 19th century development doesn't seem historically accurate. While anti-Semites in the 19th century glommed on to racial theories as backing for their hate, the origins of anti-Semitism are millennia old.

arp242 3y ago
It's not; anti-Semitism as we know today is very much rooted in racial science (well, "science") of the 19th century. Before that it was an anti-religious thing: anti-Judaism, which was a markedly different and similar to Anti-Catholicism, anti-Protestantism, and things like that. Especially in the context of the Nazi ideology, this really matters. Recall that the Nazis killed more Slavs than Jews, who were also considered racially inferior, and the plan was to kill many more. Nazis treated the Danish, Dutch, French, English, etc. much better (no mass executions of prisoners of war, and the occupation of those countries was markedly different from the occupation of Slavic countries).
- bsder 3y ago
  Um, please explain The Merchant of Venice. c. 1600 in an England which basically had no Jews. Or the Edict of Explusion c. 1290. Or the Jews being under the direct whim and jurisdiction of the king. c. 1066 I can go further and further back ... Anti-semitism is old.
  - arp242 3y ago
    Again, anti-Judaism is not the same thing. This is just "normal" religious persecution that has been around since forever and that many (if not all) religious groups have experienced at some point or another. Does this matter? Well, in the context of discussing Nazi world-views it does. None of this is especially controversial among mainstream Jewish historians, as far as I know.
    - reissbaker 3y ago
      I think you're trying to draw a hard line distinction where only a blurry evolution exists. While antisemitism in the 19th and 20th centuries had some unique characteristics that co-evolved with other forms of racism, antisemitism existed before the 19th century and there are clear evolutionary roots e.g. "Jewish badges" [1] that date back to the 1100s, which the famous "Jude" badge from the Nazi era was a continuation of. I don't know of many mainstream Jewish historians who would agree that antisemitism didn't exist prior to the 19th century. They would agree that racial antisemitism developed largely during the 19th century alongside pseudoscience about race in general, but that religious and economic antisemitism has existed for over a thousand years, and that the latter two also informed the development of the racial version. [2] For example, the Rhineland massacres in 1096 are generally considered to be antisemitic [3] and part of a sequence of historical mass murders of Jews that lead to the Holocaust, despite Europe not then having a clear concept of race. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_badge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_badge 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhineland_massacres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhineland_massacres
      - arp242 3y ago
        > I don't know of many mainstream Jewish historians who would agree that antisemitism didn't exist prior to the 19th century. Depends on your your definition of "antisemitism"; if you mean "general prejudice against Jews", then sure, obvious that existed. But if you you mean "anti-Semitism against the Semitic race (as opposed to the Aryan race)", then that's quite a different thing. I don't think it's a hard-line distinction; obviously there's overlap and nuance. But the move from more or less generic religious persecution to racial-based persecution was a very marked and notable shift that many many people have commented on, and that's really not very controversial. Does this distinction matter? Well, it seems to me that it does. I don't think the holocaust would have happened without this. And all of this strongly shaped Nazi world-views, which was really the point I wanted to make.
        reissbaker 3y ago
- tptacek 3y ago
  There's a lot of weird things in this comment, but the weirdest is the claim that antisemitism is a 19th century innovation; Google "expulsion of the Jews from" and see where it autocompletes for you. Similarly: pogroms in the Pale of Settlement were not motivated by (and predate) 19th century race science.
  - arp242 3y ago
    I didn't claim that "antisemitism is a 19th century innovation", I claimed that Anti-Semitism in the sense of "against the Semitic race", as I described in my previous comment, is a 19th century invention. A distinction I made to describe a specific part of the Nazi world view. This is not "weird thing", it's a mainstream view that I got from mainstream Jewish authors on the history of Jews. But hey, maybe those are also weird *shrug* And your extremely condescending attitude is not appreciated.
    - tptacek 3y ago
      So, I didn’t read you that way, and, fair enough. But that’s still not true. Antisemitism was racialized in Spain, too, and I think you can find sources for earlier strains. And all “scientific racism” will of course stem from the 1800s, along with science itself.
      - arp242 3y ago
        Actually I believe it was invented in France, although I could be misremembering that. It was certainly big in France for a time. I didn't mean to imply it was uniquely German.
  - mmorriso 3y ago
    While the impact on Jewish individuals was the same, it's true that Nazi style antisemitism focused on them as a racial group (Their ancestry), whereas previously they were targeted as a faith group (What they believed). Your example of the Pale actually makes the point; Converting to Russian Orthodox actually released you from the rules imposed on Jews within the Pale. Conversion wouldn't save you from Nazis.
- greedo 3y ago
  But you're assuming Nazi ideology was coherent, when it clearly wasn't in almost anything. The "racial" anti-Semitism was merely a fig leaf provided by quack science of the times. And yes, the Nazis viewed the Slavic peoples as "Untermensch", but didn't harbor as much animus towards them. They were simply in the way of the Nazi expansionist policy of Lebensraum. Whereas anti-Semitism was extremely widespread through German society and further inflamed by the Nazis. And no, "anti-Semitism as we know today is very much rooted in racial science" is not accurate one bit. The majority of today's anti-Semitism is purely religious in nature. Oh, some white supremacists might try to invoke some bullshit the racial inferiority of the Jews, but the real hate is religious in nature. Combine that with anti-Zionism (which is often a mask for anti-Semitism) and it all falls apart. And it's incredibly disingenuous to trot out the usual arguments about how the Nazis killed more Slavs than Jew, etc etc. These are part of the playbook that attempts to minimize the Shoah. Finally, the bit about how the Nazis treated the Western countries much better, EXCLUDES the Jewish citizens of those countries. I'm pretty sure you're not arguing in good faith at all, but you seem to be wanting to keep this going.
  - arp242 3y ago
    > But you're assuming Nazi ideology was coherent I very explicitly said it's not: "A lot of the Nazi rhetoric isn't even internally consistent and it was all a load of bollocks" Are you even reading what I'm writing? Your unhinged ridiculous accusations which directly contradicts what I wrote suggests you're not. I did not mention or talk about contemporary antisemitism. Don't try to twist things. And yes, obviously "they treated the Dutch, English etc. better" excludes Jews. It also excludes communists, and gays, and some other groups. This is a boring "gotcha" type argument.
    - greedo 3y ago
      You literally said: "It's not; anti-Semitism as we know today is very much rooted in racial science (well, "science") of the 19th century." So yes, you were talking about contemporary anti-semitism.
      - 3y ago
paganel 3y ago
Anti-semitism wasn't a major factor in European history until the (second-ish part) of the 19th century, for the simple reason that the European Jewish population wasn't that big of a presence for hundreds of years. Once the Enlightenment and French Revolution happened and once the Jewish population started to get some rights (which gets us into the 19th century) then things changed. Yes, I do know about the very unfortunate anti-semitic acts carried out in German cities as part of the First Crusade, but that kind of proves my point, starting with the 1200s-1300s the Jewish population throughout (what would later be called Western) Europe stopped being a thing.
- WolfCop 3y ago
  Yes, “very unfortunate”.
- seabass-labrax 3y ago
  I wouldn't agree with the assertion that it wasn't a major factor. The repeated violence against Jews and their expulsion from various areas is not a singular event, but forms a significant common thread across European history. It has happened so many times that the idea of persecuting Jews became a part of European culture, and thus gave the Nazis their inspiration for the Holocaust. The massacre at York in 1190 took the lives of about a hundred Jews, whilst the population of York at that time was somewhere around 7000. As a proportion of the population, that makes it as bloody, possibly considerably more so, than the Holocaust within their respective scopes. I would posit therefore that antisemitism was a very major factor, but the decentralised, often pastoral political geography of pre-industrial Europe makes it harder to see the extent of that antisemitism.
  - paganel 3y ago
    I did include the caveat "starting with the 1200-1300s", and I did have the expulsion of the Jewish population from England in mind when writing that down. After that I wouldn't say that there were"repeated" violences against Jews (when it comes to Western Europe) for the simple reason that there were almost no Jews around against whom to have that violence anymore. All that changed starting with the 19th century.
adastra22 3y ago
It’s true in a very strict sense: before the 19th century it was called Jew hatred. “Antisemitism” was an attempt to dress it up in a veneer of science.l, and that does date to the late 19th/early 20th centuries.
woooooo 3y ago
As a modern, industrial phenomenon about specifically jews as an ethnicity its unique. People generically hated every religion that wasn't theirs for millenia. The idea of hating a Semitic race after God was pronounced dead is different.

by greedo 3y ago

arp242 3y ago

It's not; anti-Semitism as we know today is very much rooted in racial science (well, "science") of the 19th century. Before that it was an anti-religious thing: anti-Judaism, which was a markedly different and similar to Anti-Catholicism, anti-Protestantism, and things like that. Especially in the context of the Nazi ideology, this really matters. Recall that the Nazis killed more Slavs than Jews, who were also considered racially inferior, and the plan was to kill many more. Nazis treated the Danish, Dutch, French, English, etc. much better (no mass executions of prisoners of war, and the occupation of those countries was markedly different from the occupation of Slavic countries).

bsder 3y ago
Um, please explain The Merchant of Venice. c. 1600 in an England which basically had no Jews. Or the Edict of Explusion c. 1290. Or the Jews being under the direct whim and jurisdiction of the king. c. 1066 I can go further and further back ... Anti-semitism is old.
- arp242 3y ago
  Again, anti-Judaism is not the same thing. This is just "normal" religious persecution that has been around since forever and that many (if not all) religious groups have experienced at some point or another. Does this matter? Well, in the context of discussing Nazi world-views it does. None of this is especially controversial among mainstream Jewish historians, as far as I know.
  - reissbaker 3y ago
    I think you're trying to draw a hard line distinction where only a blurry evolution exists. While antisemitism in the 19th and 20th centuries had some unique characteristics that co-evolved with other forms of racism, antisemitism existed before the 19th century and there are clear evolutionary roots e.g. "Jewish badges" [1] that date back to the 1100s, which the famous "Jude" badge from the Nazi era was a continuation of. I don't know of many mainstream Jewish historians who would agree that antisemitism didn't exist prior to the 19th century. They would agree that racial antisemitism developed largely during the 19th century alongside pseudoscience about race in general, but that religious and economic antisemitism has existed for over a thousand years, and that the latter two also informed the development of the racial version. [2] For example, the Rhineland massacres in 1096 are generally considered to be antisemitic [3] and part of a sequence of historical mass murders of Jews that lead to the Holocaust, despite Europe not then having a clear concept of race. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_badge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_badge 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhineland_massacres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhineland_massacres
    - arp242 3y ago
      > I don't know of many mainstream Jewish historians who would agree that antisemitism didn't exist prior to the 19th century. Depends on your your definition of "antisemitism"; if you mean "general prejudice against Jews", then sure, obvious that existed. But if you you mean "anti-Semitism against the Semitic race (as opposed to the Aryan race)", then that's quite a different thing. I don't think it's a hard-line distinction; obviously there's overlap and nuance. But the move from more or less generic religious persecution to racial-based persecution was a very marked and notable shift that many many people have commented on, and that's really not very controversial. Does this distinction matter? Well, it seems to me that it does. I don't think the holocaust would have happened without this. And all of this strongly shaped Nazi world-views, which was really the point I wanted to make.
      - reissbaker 3y ago
tptacek 3y ago
There's a lot of weird things in this comment, but the weirdest is the claim that antisemitism is a 19th century innovation; Google "expulsion of the Jews from" and see where it autocompletes for you. Similarly: pogroms in the Pale of Settlement were not motivated by (and predate) 19th century race science.
- arp242 3y ago
  I didn't claim that "antisemitism is a 19th century innovation", I claimed that Anti-Semitism in the sense of "against the Semitic race", as I described in my previous comment, is a 19th century invention. A distinction I made to describe a specific part of the Nazi world view. This is not "weird thing", it's a mainstream view that I got from mainstream Jewish authors on the history of Jews. But hey, maybe those are also weird *shrug* And your extremely condescending attitude is not appreciated.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    So, I didn’t read you that way, and, fair enough. But that’s still not true. Antisemitism was racialized in Spain, too, and I think you can find sources for earlier strains. And all “scientific racism” will of course stem from the 1800s, along with science itself.
    - arp242 3y ago
      Actually I believe it was invented in France, although I could be misremembering that. It was certainly big in France for a time. I didn't mean to imply it was uniquely German.
- mmorriso 3y ago
  While the impact on Jewish individuals was the same, it's true that Nazi style antisemitism focused on them as a racial group (Their ancestry), whereas previously they were targeted as a faith group (What they believed). Your example of the Pale actually makes the point; Converting to Russian Orthodox actually released you from the rules imposed on Jews within the Pale. Conversion wouldn't save you from Nazis.
greedo 3y ago
But you're assuming Nazi ideology was coherent, when it clearly wasn't in almost anything. The "racial" anti-Semitism was merely a fig leaf provided by quack science of the times. And yes, the Nazis viewed the Slavic peoples as "Untermensch", but didn't harbor as much animus towards them. They were simply in the way of the Nazi expansionist policy of Lebensraum. Whereas anti-Semitism was extremely widespread through German society and further inflamed by the Nazis. And no, "anti-Semitism as we know today is very much rooted in racial science" is not accurate one bit. The majority of today's anti-Semitism is purely religious in nature. Oh, some white supremacists might try to invoke some bullshit the racial inferiority of the Jews, but the real hate is religious in nature. Combine that with anti-Zionism (which is often a mask for anti-Semitism) and it all falls apart. And it's incredibly disingenuous to trot out the usual arguments about how the Nazis killed more Slavs than Jew, etc etc. These are part of the playbook that attempts to minimize the Shoah. Finally, the bit about how the Nazis treated the Western countries much better, EXCLUDES the Jewish citizens of those countries. I'm pretty sure you're not arguing in good faith at all, but you seem to be wanting to keep this going.
- arp242 3y ago
  > But you're assuming Nazi ideology was coherent I very explicitly said it's not: "A lot of the Nazi rhetoric isn't even internally consistent and it was all a load of bollocks" Are you even reading what I'm writing? Your unhinged ridiculous accusations which directly contradicts what I wrote suggests you're not. I did not mention or talk about contemporary antisemitism. Don't try to twist things. And yes, obviously "they treated the Dutch, English etc. better" excludes Jews. It also excludes communists, and gays, and some other groups. This is a boring "gotcha" type argument.
  - greedo 3y ago
    You literally said: "It's not; anti-Semitism as we know today is very much rooted in racial science (well, "science") of the 19th century." So yes, you were talking about contemporary anti-semitism.
    - 3y ago

paganel 3y ago

Anti-semitism wasn't a major factor in European history until the (second-ish part) of the 19th century, for the simple reason that the European Jewish population wasn't that big of a presence for hundreds of years. Once the Enlightenment and French Revolution happened and once the Jewish population started to get some rights (which gets us into the 19th century) then things changed. Yes, I do know about the very unfortunate anti-semitic acts carried out in German cities as part of the First Crusade, but that kind of proves my point, starting with the 1200s-1300s the Jewish population throughout (what would later be called Western) Europe stopped being a thing.

WolfCop 3y ago
Yes, “very unfortunate”.
seabass-labrax 3y ago
I wouldn't agree with the assertion that it wasn't a major factor. The repeated violence against Jews and their expulsion from various areas is not a singular event, but forms a significant common thread across European history. It has happened so many times that the idea of persecuting Jews became a part of European culture, and thus gave the Nazis their inspiration for the Holocaust. The massacre at York in 1190 took the lives of about a hundred Jews, whilst the population of York at that time was somewhere around 7000. As a proportion of the population, that makes it as bloody, possibly considerably more so, than the Holocaust within their respective scopes. I would posit therefore that antisemitism was a very major factor, but the decentralised, often pastoral political geography of pre-industrial Europe makes it harder to see the extent of that antisemitism.
- paganel 3y ago
  I did include the caveat "starting with the 1200-1300s", and I did have the expulsion of the Jewish population from England in mind when writing that down. After that I wouldn't say that there were"repeated" violences against Jews (when it comes to Western Europe) for the simple reason that there were almost no Jews around against whom to have that violence anymore. All that changed starting with the 19th century.

adastra22 3y ago

It’s true in a very strict sense: before the 19th century it was called Jew hatred. “Antisemitism” was an attempt to dress it up in a veneer of science.l, and that does date to the late 19th/early 20th centuries.

woooooo 3y ago

As a modern, industrial phenomenon about specifically jews as an ethnicity its unique. People generically hated every religion that wasn't theirs for millenia. The idea of hating a Semitic race after God was pronounced dead is different.