The Rotten Roots of Antisemitism
Why Western extremists target Jews
Since the crucifixion, the Jews have been accused of killing a God.
This was wrong.
Christians will leave out their God was a Jew, as were his disciples. Christianity spread far beyond Judea. But, it began within it.
It tried to divorce itself from Judaism, but – right down to its holy books – Christianity never was.
Saint Augustine (354-430), among the most influential Christian theologians, wrote in his City of God:
“Judaism, since Christ, is a corruption; indeed, Judas is the image of the Jewish people: their understanding of Scripture is carnal; they bear the guilt for the death of the Savior, for through their fathers they have killed Christ.”
In Medieval Europe, the Jews became the other.
They were an out-group, although their integration varied through history. The Jews were also successful. According to some scholars, this resulted from a religious emphasis on education.
With Jewish success came Christian envy.
The Jews were banned from Christian guilds. Christians in turn, were prohibited from lending money. This left a niche for the Jews to fill: banking.
From their wealth came the stereotype of the greedy Jew.
As Christian antipathy increased, so did Jewish demonization.
With the First Crusade (1096-1099), Christianity became more warlike and the Jews suffered the consequences. Crusaders, looking to slay infidels, found enemies close to home. In Europe, thousands of Jews were murdered and others were forced to convert.
Shortly after, the first instances of blood libel emerged.
William of Norwich, an English boy, was murdered and local Jews were blamed. A rumor spread that at Passover, the Jews crucified Christian children. This accusation stuck and, through tale and song, spread throughout Europe.
It haunts them to this day.
In the 12th century, the Inquisition was founded in Rome.
It officially condemned the Talmud (a central Jewish text) in the 13th and began persecuting Jews. Mass burnings at the stake first ensued in France. In the 15th century, the Jews were entirely expelled from Spain.
The Catholic church attempted Abrahamic fratricide.
But, both faiths draw from Cain and Able.
They know that neighbors; brothers; humans, covet each others' blessings to the point of murderous intent. They also know those who slay their kin to lose God’s grace. Still, Christian antisemites were seduced – by envy – into unholy acts.
Cain and Able war within us all.
Had he looked hard enough, the Christian would have found in the Jew his religious brother. Instead, he slew him. But, the Christian cutting down the Jew is like a flower cutting the stem from which it grew.
As the West secularized, antisemitism only worsened.
In France, the Dreyfuss affair (1894-1906) exposed the depth of European Jew hatred. A Jewish artillery officer was wrongly accused of treason. This enflamed national antisemitism.
But, the worst conspiracy theories emerged from Russia.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were published in 1903. The work detailed a fictitious Jewish plot for world domination. Although grotesque, it successfully fanned the flames as translations spread throughout the Western world.
Once religious, antisemitism was now increasingly political.
Far-left and far-right zealots began to weaponize it.
On the far right, reactionaries framed the Jews as a huckstering race: secret stewards of society. On the far left, revolutionaries framed them as a capitalist class: also, secret stewards of society. Both channeled the Protocols: delusions of a grand conspiracy.
This led to unprecedented atrocities in the 20th century, including the Holocaust.
The Nazis persecuted the Jews through outright war, but antisemitism in the Soviet Union was more subliminal.
The Soviets veiled theirs in euphemisms: anti-capitalist, anti-cosmopolitan, and anti-Zionist. Still, Jews were barred from holding prominent positions. Their traditions eroded under enforced atheism.
Karl Marx, himself a Jew, wrote:
“What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. [...] An organization of society which would abolish […] the possibility of huckstering, would make the Jew impossible.”
In Marx’s “utopia”, there was no place for Jews.
The far left has yet to shake off this prejudice.
Modern critical race theory (a quasi-Marxist doctrine) insists the Jews set up, protect, and exploit hidden power structures. This echoes the Protocols. The common view that Israel is the product of Western imperialism was one widely held by the Soviets.
Far-right bigotry is brutal, but far-left bigotry is insidious.
To extremists, the enemy of the enemy is typically a friend; or at least a useful idiot. Revolutionaries have (cynically) allied themselves with Islamists. Since the former are usually atheists, it is an unholy marriage.
History rhymes; and Islam is just another Abrahamic flower.
The year 1840 marks the emergence of blood libel in the Middle East. In Damascus, another murder was blamed on the Jews. Since then, the same accusation spread throughout the Islamic world.
It has haunted Israel ever since.
Vasily Grossman, a Jewish journalist, wrote in his book Life and Fate (1980):
“Antisemitism is always a means rather than an end; it is a measure of the contradictions yet to be resolved. It is a mirror for the failings of individuals, social structures, and state systems. Tell me what you accuse Jews of — I’ll tell you what you’re guilty of.”
The Swiss psychiatrist Carl G. Jung wrote in Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1931):
“Projection is one of the commonest facts of psychology. […] Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbor, and we treat him accordingly.”
Demonization is not Jewish, Christian, or Muslim; it is human.
So long as the individual cowers from his own shadow, he projects it on his neighbor. To the Westerner, the Jew represented the eternal other. Whenever the former denied his shortcomings, the latter was there to blame.
Antisemitism symbolizes the West’s lifelong struggle with itself.
…Because we are the Jews. Christ did not hate them; he was them. Still, Christians did. They hated Jews whenever they hated themselves. But, those who dehumanize others, lose their humanity instead.
Whenever we - Westerners - destroy them, we destroy ourselves.