Anti-Semitism in December 2016

Al Jazeera English's UpFront ran a program this week on The rise of anti-Semitism 12/23/2016, focusing on the US and Europe:

From the article:

Since Donald Trump's election victory in November, anti-Semitic attacks have been on the rise in the US, with swastikas and other Nazi imagery increasingly popping up.

Has far-right anti-Semitism been energised by Trump's election win?

"It's not so much that this anti-Semitism didn't exist before; it probably did exist but it was under the radar," says Haaretz senior columnist Chemi Shalev. "The candidacy of Donald Trump brought forth or emboldened all sorts of anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish groups who nobody paid attention to any more."

Hadas Gold, a media reporter for Politico magazine, says: "Some of my colleagues got actual letters to their personal addresses at home - it was rather frightening. I mean, it's never pleasant to see your face with a bullet hole through it. These direct threats were something new, and they were almost always directly connected to Donald Trump."

Perils for the Clinton campaign of looking too hard for things to be insulted about

When I first saw headlines like this, my first thought was, oh, that's easy to believe: Donald Trump's "Star of David" Hillary Clinton Meme Was Created by White Supremacists by Anthony Smith News.Mic 07/03/2016. It fits in with what we know about Trump. And it's positive for the Clinton campaign against Trump.

But even-the-hardline-Clinton-supporter Steve M at No More Mister Nice Blog 07/03/2016 took some time to do some original research. And he concludes that while the image in question originated at a hardline rightwinger Twitter account, there's no obvious reason to conclude that either the account itself or the particular image was intended to be anti-Semitic as such. (No, That Trump "Star of David" Tweet Didn't Originate at A White Supremacist Message Board 07/03/2016)

In an update, Steve M points to this article by Gideon Resnick, Trump’s Star of David Hillary Meme Was Made by Racist Twitter User Daily Beast 07/03/2016, which shows another anti-Hillary theme from the same Twitter account that uses a swastika composed of images of Hillary Clinton's face. Ugly, sleazy stuff, no doubt. But Steve M raises this plausible point:

Why would a Hillary-hater call Hillary a Nazi if he thinks Nazis are good?

Remember, the non-anti-Semitic wing of the right hates all Democrats for not being sufficiently pro-Jewish or pro-Israel (flip side: they think Democrats are too pro-Muslim).

To me, this is a reminder of the hazards of relying too much on offensive moments from Donald Trump. After all, he provides no shortage of perfectly legitimate reasons to be outraged at his behavior and actions.

In this case, it's also striking that Clinton supporters in this case are reaching to accuse Trump of being anti-Semitic - against the Methodist Christian Hillary Clinton!

It was notable in the primary campaign that while the Clinton campaign and her supporters were quick to accuse Sanders supporters of being sexist "BernieBros," the campaign of Jewish candidate Bernie Sanders refrained from using accusations of anti-Semitism against Clinton and her campaign. And that's mostly a good thing.

Still, traditional notions of hardball politics might have suggested employing it in at least one point in the campaign: the May 17 anathema against Sanders and his supporters issued by DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz over some false and other still-unproved allegations of violence by Sanders supporters in connection with the Nevada state party convention the previous weekend. After all, one of the most common anti-Semitic tropes is that Jews are not behind the great fortunes of the world but are also behind scheming, violent revolutionaries. The Clinton campaign's clumsy attempt to portray Sanders as the leader of a violent rabble could have easily been spun by the Sanders campaign as an anti-Semitic attack on him.

Who knows if that would have gotten any traction? It could even have backfired. The Clinton campaign would presumably have responded with more charges of sexism and may have doubled down on the violence allegations.

Campaign talking points obviously don't have to be true to be effective. But even against a nasty piece of work like Donald Trump, grasping for insults to be outraged over has its risks.

Sources for Hitler's racial theories in Mein Kampf

A new critical edition of Hitler's Mein Kampf has been published this month in Germany. It's the first edition allowed to be published legally there after the expiration of the postwar ban on its publication. (Alison Smale, Scholars Unveil New Edition of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ New York Times 12/01/2015; "Mein Kampf". Hitlers Buch wird neu aufgelegt Focus Online 04.01.2016)

This has occasioned new research into the book and its significance. One example is Roman Töppel's
"„Volk und Rasse“. Hitlers Quellen auf der Spur" Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 64:1 (2016). Töppel investigates the likely sources of the racial ideas elaborated in the "Volk und Rasse" chapter of Mein Kampf. And he gives every evidence of having approached the task with stereotypical German thoroughness.

In the process, he finds that the following are the most likely influences on the racial ideas in the "Volk und Rasse" chapter.

• Paul Bang (1879–1945), author of Judas Schuldbuch. Eine deutsche Abrechnung (1919)
• Erwin Baur (1875–1933)
• Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), one of the better-known anti-Semitic racial ideologues, author of The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1911)
• Heinrich Claß (1868–1953), author of Wenn ich der Kaiser wär(1912)
• Dietrich Eckart (1868–1923), who was an ideological mentor for Hitler in Munich, an early editor of the Völkischen Beobachter and author of Der Bolschewismus von Moses bis Lenin (published 1927)
• Hans F. K. Günther (1891–1968), author of Ritter, Tod und Teufel (1920)
• Eugen Fischer (1874–1967)
• Theodor Fritsch (1852-1933), author of Handbuch der Judenfrage (1907)
• Otto Hauser (1876–1944), author of Geschichte des Judentums (1921)
• Julius Langbehn (1851–1907), author of Rembrandt als Erzieher (1906)
• Fritz Lenz (1887–1976)
• Alfred Rosenberg (1893-1946), longtime editor of the Nazi Party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter
• Richard Wagner (1813-1833), the brilliant but notoriously anti-Semitic composer, author of "Das Judenthum in der Musik“ ("Judaism in Music") (1850)

Yes, it's a real rogues' gallery.

Baur, Fischer and Lenz were all three geneticists, who published a 1923 study called, "Grundriß der menschlichen Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene“ ("Outline of human hereditary tenets and racial hygiene"). They promoted such ideas as the notion that the less valuable races breed more prolifically than the more valuable ones, a notion that White Power politicians like Pat Buchanan still promote. They also advocated the idea that "true genius" was inherited and never the result of upbringing and education. That concept will be all too familiar to anyone who has listened to the tedious "heredity vs. upbringing" assertions typically of white racists in America. I learned long ago that when someone poses the rhetorical question "What's more important, inheritance or upbringing?" that you're about two sentences away from a lesson on how "us white folks sure are smarter than them blacks."

Dietrick Eckart (1868-1923), one of the nasty characters who influenced Hitler's racial propaganda in Mein Kampf

That's part of the reason I have to admire someone who can wade through this gutter literature and then write about it coherently and professionally. Because that's mostly what Hitler scooped up into his writing and speeches. There's no doubt that Hitler was shrewd and extremely talented as a politician. But his literary talents were not marked by brilliance. What he provided in Mein Kampf was a propagandist recycling of the anti-Semitic and radical right nationalist idea that he absorbed particularly in prewar Vienna and postwar Munich.

And as Töppel emphasizes repeatedly, it's not easy to track exactly which influences were most important for Hitler at the time he wrote Mein Kampf. Hitler's own claims are unreliable. He claimed, for instance, that all during his service in the German Army during the First World War, he carried around the five volume of Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea in his backpack. But Töppel explains that there is little evidence that Hitler had much if any direct acquaintance with the 19th-century philosopher's work. And that he probably learned much of what he did know of him before writing Mein Kampf was through Dietrich Eckart.

Töppel argues that the scholarship on Hitler's racial ideology has tended to overestimate the influence of several mostly unsavory characters: "geopolitical" theorist Karl Haushofer (1869-1946),; the American segregationist Madison Grant (1865-1937), at least not for the "Volk und Rasse" chapter; French anthropologist Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936); Joseph Adolf Lanz, aka, Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels (1874-1954), leader of a small Austrian esoteric racist religious sect he called the New Templar Order; and, Viennese occultist Guido von List (1848-1919). The groups of Lanz von Lebenfels and of List used the swastika as a favorite symbol; the swastika was adopted more widely by German-nationalist groups in Austria in the years before the First World War. As Brigitte Hamann notes in Hitlers Wien. Lehrjahre eines Ditators (1996), there is some evidence that Hitler may have been particularly impressed by List's valuation of the swastika as a Germanic symbol.

Töppel also rejects the idea that the novelist Karl May, who wrote cowboy-and-Indian stories set in the American Old West, was any significant influence on Hitler's racial ideology. Hitler's own claim to have read many Karl May novels as a child is totally credible. Because Karl May was incredibly popular among young German and Austria readers. To this day, any German or Austrian under 50 or so probably grew up reading Karl May stories. And those younger are familiar with him through the TV and movies based on his tales, like those of his American Indian character Winnetou.

Töppel stresses that Hitler was highly selective in the ideas he drew from his sources. He took the ones that fit the framework of his notion of the superior "Aryan" race whose most important enemy was the Jewish race. Töppel cites several instances in which sources important for him on some points explicitly rejected other ideas on which Hitler's racial narrative depended. And Hitler didn't care whether there was any actual scientific basis for the ideas on which he relied. He was doing hate propaganda, not scholarly work.

Töppel also notes, "„Mein Kampf“ enthält im Vergleich zu Hitlers Reden und zu völkischen Schriften des späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts weder überraschend Neues noch viel Originäres." ("In comparison to Hitler's speeches and to völkish writings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Mein Kampf contains neither anything surprisingly new nor much original.")

Hitler's racial propaganda was particularly focused on making "the Jews" the scapegoat for all resentments:

So entwickelten sich „Jude“ und „jüdisch“ letztendlich zu Chiffren für alles, was die Nationalsozialisten bekämpften. Laut einer Aufzeichnung des Unternehmers Eduard August Scharrer (1880–1932) sagte Hitler bereits im Dezember 1922: „Kampf gegen das Judentum ist eines der Hauptmomente in der Orientierung der Massen der nationalsozialistischen Partei. Dieses Schlagwort kann nicht aufgegeben werden, denn dadurch wird erreicht, daß die Massen in jedem Gegner, der aufgezeigt wird, ihren Todfeind sehen und sich danach einstellen.“

[So "Jew" and "Jewish" developed in the end to code words for everything that the National Socialists were fighting against. According to a record of the businessman Eduard August Scharrer (1880–1932) said that Hitler as early as December 1922 said: "Fighting against Judaism is one of the chief moments in the orientation of the masses of the National Socialist Party. This slogan cannot be given up, because through it will be achieved that the masses will see their mortal enemy {the Jews} in every opponent that is designated {for them} and then direct their fire at them.]

Trump as Radical Right agitator

Digby takes another pass at Donald Trump's demagoguery today in Donald Trump’s campaign of terror: How a billionaire channeled his authoritarian rage — and soared to the top of the polls Salon 08/21/2015

It’s easy to dismiss Trump’s ramblings as the words of a kook. But he’s tapping into the rage and frustration many Americans feel when our country is exposed as being imperfect. These Republicans were shamed by their exalted leadership’s debacle in Iraq and believe that American exceptionalism is no longer respected around the world — and they are no longer respected here at home. Trump is a winner and I think this is fundamentally what attracts them to him:

I will be fighting and I will win because I’m somebody that wins. We are in very sad shape as a country and you know why that is? We’re more concerned about political correctness than we are about victory, than we are about winning. We are not going to be so politically correct anymore, we are going to get things done.

But his dark, authoritarian message of intolerance and hate is likely making it difficult for him, or any Republican, to win a national election, particularly since all the other candidates feel compelled to follow his lead. (Those who challenged him, like Perry and Paul, are sinking like a stone in the polls.) And while Trump’s fans may want to blame foreigners for all their troubles, most Americans know that their troubles can be traced to some powerful people right here at home. Powerful people like Donald Trump.

Still, history is littered with strongmen nobody took seriously until it was too late. When someone like Trump captures the imagination of millions of people it’s important to pay attention to what he’s saying.

Back in 1945, Leo Lowenthal was working with Max Horkheimer's project on prejudice for the American Jewish Committee (AJC), that later became famous especially through the book by Theodor Adorno and other collaborators on the projects, The Authoritarian Personality (1951). Lowenthal co-authored with Norbert Guterman, Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator (1949). I posted on that book in six parts, beginning with Studies in Prejudice: Prophets of Deceit (1 of 6) 05/14/2011.

In a field report during his research, Lowenthal wrote a memo to Horkheimer dated 10/09/1945, on the topic "Christian Front Meeting in Queens Village, Oct. 8, 1945." (Available on the AJC Digital Archive as "Surveillance report on a Christian Front meeting in New York")

Devices: All speeches proved clearly our previously offered theory that fascist agitation rests on the handling of a relatively small number of stimuli devices which recur ever so often. I enumerate a few of them:

(a) the persecuted agitator (finds no printer; encounters travelling dif[ficulties?]
(b) the agitator as a little guy (wants to go to the movies, have his glass of beer)
(c) the agitator as messenger. "I have to speak because nobody else does it"
(d) the necessity of "awakening" America
(e) the enemies as wolves in sheep' [sic] clothes ("they cry persecution and are the persecutors; they ask for tolerance and are the most intolerant)
(f) indirect antisemitic devices (agitator and his people are "crucified"; the phrase of the Asiatic hordes; the phrase of "anti-something" and so on)
(g) the simple-mindedness of the agitator (difficulty in pronouncing high-falluting and foreign words)
(h) the secret machinations ("a lot of things are going on in this country" etc.)
(i) the veiled threat of violence ("I am strong, I can take it up with everybody", etc.)
(j) direct antisemitic references (Jewishness of the New Deal, Jewish monopoly of mass mediae [sic]: newspapers, radio, movies.

Trump, like all the Presidential candidates, poses as a victim of so-called "political correctness" imposed by the Mean Libruls. (In a crackpot far-right theory, it was actually the Frankfurt School of thinkers around the Institute for Social Research of which Horkheimer was head and Adorno and Lowenthal part of the core group that invented political correctness.)

I usually try to avoid use the "fascist" description for groups operating today. Polemical use of the terms over decades has resulting in its meaning in ordinary political conversation or analysis in the US being considerably more blurred than it was in 1945.

Trump hasn't made even indirect anti-Semitic appeals that I'm aware. But his "threat of violence" is hardly "veiled."

Lowenthal included an unflattering description of the Christian Front speakers in a section called "Physiogonmy of Speakers":

Almost every speaker represented an outspoken or nearly outspoken example of those psychopathic types which can be found in the American as well as the European camp of fascist agitators.

There was Kurtz, the stocky, brutal, pycnio [a rust fungi reference?], maniac [sic] depressive type switching from grinning, clowning, to somber threats and outbursts of yelling. His grin which is always in readiness has an almost psychotic note as can be observed in the facial expression of violent insane maniacs. His whole bodily appearance has a faint resemblance to Goering's body type.

There was Maertz who with his little mustache and the studied fierce looks imitates the Hitler pose. He was by far the most effectful [sic] speaker equipped with the intensive and fanatic voice of the schizoid demagogue. Of all the speakers he was the only one who probably would have the power to create an atmosphere of hate and fury.

There was Kister, a boyish-looking man, the type of thin-lipped fanatical followers of a fanatical leader, a watered-down miniature edition of people like Rudolf Hess.

There was Mrs. Brown and her secretary, homely women of the middle fifties' with nothing to boast but real or imaginary sons, symbols of frustration for corresponding female listeners.

Finally one general observation on the outward appearance of the speakers and their henchmen: almost everyone of them was so-to-say a biological stepchild. Kurtz and his chief aide obese; Kister somehow crippled; the women speakers and their female audience were ugly, most of them wearing glasses; among the male followers a one-armed old man, several short-sighted younger people. It was a "racial elite" in reverse.

Racists and paranoids and Christianists, oh my!

A November 2012 report by Arie Perliger on the violent Radical Right in the US, titled Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America's Violent Far-Right and published under the auspices of the Combating Terrorism Center At West Point (with a stock disclaimer, "The views expressed in this report are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the Combating Terrorism Center, U.S. Military Academy, Department of Defense or U.S. government") is causing quite a bit of grumping among people who pass for "conservatives," it seems. David Sirota reports on the grumbling in Right-wing terrorism is real Salon 01/22/2013.

I'll say here at the start that I have questions and reservations about an Army institution doing this kind of research on domestic political groups. But that's not the main topic of this post. Military educational institutions are generally recognized for maintaining high academic standards. And this paper certainly doesn't read like some kind of PR publication.

I would also note that the military has reason to know something about the characteristics of violent Radical Right groups, because they can not only cause serious problems if they enlist. The military also doesn't want to be providing weapons and explosives training to people whose aim is to overthrow the Constitutional government.

Perliger's paper provides a history of the violent Radical Right in the US over the last couple of decades. He devotes some time to the academic task of defining his subject, which provides an always useful reminder that there is both continuity and constant change and evolution on the far-right scene. He concentrates in this study on American groups that are violent or heavily oriented toward violence.

He characterizes them into three broad ideological categories: the racist/white supremacy movement (KKK, National Socialism/Nazism, Skinheads); the anti-federalist movement (Patriot Militia groups); and, Christian fundamentalist groups (Christian Identity, anti-abortionist).

I found his discussion of the doctrinal roots of Christian Identity particularly interesting. It apparently was spawned in the same historical moment in which John Nelson Darby's (1800-1882) theories of the end of the world offered a religious justification for British colonial ambitions in the Middle East. The trend that led eventually to today's Christian Identity was a special mixture of white racism, identification with the Jews of the Old Testament and undisguised hatred of the real existing Jews of the present.

The fact that some of these theories are complex don't mean they should be counted as sophisticated if mistaken views of the world. Neurotic symptoms can be complicated and creative, as well. But that doesn't mean they are either healthy or desirable or the product of good reality-testing.

But the religious element appears to be sincere, if sincerely fanatical:

The exploitation of biblical texts to promulgate racial and other ideological notions is a common practice in the ideological construction of the Identity movement. Another example is the Identity movement’s interpretation of God's revelations to Abraham and his sons of the transformation of Israel into a dominant, flourishing and powerful nation as an indication of the destiny of the Aryan people. Two further related trends are worth mentioning. The first is the use of apocryphal historical revisionism to associate each architectural achievement of ancient times to the white race, i.e., Egypt's Middle Kingdom pyramids, Wiltshire’s Neolithic post-and-lintel structure of Stonehenge, or the 17th century Mughal mausoleum, the Taj Mahal. The second is the inclination to associate the non-Aryan seed-line with anti-Christian historical events, in particular the persecution and murder of Jesus. (pp. 35-36)

I was also intrigued to see that Gerald K. Smith, one of the most notable far-right figures of the 1930s, was also a significant figure in the development of Christian Identity thought. Perliger notes that he was one of several leaders who continued the crackpot "British Israelite" theology:

Cameron and Rand's followers after WWII, especially the preachers Gerald K. Smith, Wesley Swift, Richard Butler and William Potter Gale, continued to develop the British-Israelite ideological paradigm in their respective Identity churches and groups (such as Church of Jesus Christ Christian, and The US Christian Posse Association), consistently employing theological analysis to further proselytize extreme anti-Semitism, notions of white supremacy and racial segregation, and to exult in apocalyptic visions, transforming the British Israelites into the current day Identity movement. (p. 33)

He adds this biographical summary:

This new coalition of groups moved further from the British-Israelite ideological tradition with the rise of Gerald K. Smith to a leadership position within the movement. Smith was a Southern political operative who was the main aide to Louisiana Senator Huey P. Long during the Great Depression. He moved to Los Angeles in the early 1950s and quickly became the major organizational force behind the emerging Identity movement via its own organization, The Christian Nationalist Crusade. Smith magnified the importance of anti-Semitic ideas in the movement’s ideology and worked intensively to tighten its ties with the American political far-right by recruiting the movement for campaigns against the Civil Rights Movement and the perceived communist threat. He was also able to mentor and nurture a new cadre of political and religious leaders such as Conrad Gaard, Jonathan Perkins, Bertrand Comparet and Wesley Swift. (p. 74)

He also discusses the phenomena of "lone wolves" and "leaderless resistance." And he makes the important point that mass-casualty incidents should be seen as the tip of an iceberg whose base is made up of a multitude of less deadly incidents.

One of Perliger's more intriguing findings is his analysis of the correlation between political violence and partisan strength nationally:

The number of Democratic senators (α=-.271*)355 and congressmen/women (α=-.411**) is negatively correlated with the number of attacks per year, whereas positive correlation of the latter exists with the number of Republican senators (α=.222*) and representatives (α=.413**).356 An additional multivariate (stepwise) regression analysis reveals that the single most significant factor is the number of Republicans in the House (β=.41**, R2=.17**). [my emphasis]

This is counterintuitive to common theories that associate a rise in far-right violence is a response to Democratic/liberal political hegemony.

Perliger suggests some possible interpretations of this finding that shows "the level of [far-right political] violence is positively correlated with a conservative political environment":

The correlation between increased conservative political power and far right violent activism need not imply causality. It is possible that far-right groups may feel that conservative political authorities are more tolerant of their activities, or believe that their actions have the potential to embolden their representatives to pursue an extreme right agenda. It is equally possible that increased levels of violence might be caused by relative deprivation, which occurs when the high expectations of far-right activists during a conservative legislature are not fulfilled. The deprivation explanation is less likely to occur under Democratic-controlled legislature since the expectations are low.

In the case of the Republican Party since at least the "Gingrich Revolution" House crew of 2005, the kind of rhetoric in which elected officials and respected Republican figures like Rush Limbaugh indulge could certainly contribute to violent extremists deciding they had a relatively permissive environment in which to commit acts of violence.

For instance, Orrin Hatch, who served as Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee ... and was one of the most prominent Republicans during Clinton's Presidency, said as far back as 1982 that having guns is "the right most valued by free men." (Quoted in Carl Bogus, The Hidden History of the Second Amendment U.C. Davis Law Review 31/2; Winter 1998; p. 312)

There are weaknesses in Perliger's paper. One the annoyance level, he uses the FOXist partisan grammar of "Democrat" as an adjective, e.g., "Democrat presidents." (p. 90)

In discussing theories of violence, he doesn't always make clear the difference in what is being studied. For instance, he writes:

... as in the case of the study of far-right activism, scholars initially focused on the personal/psychological traits which characterize those who joined militant far right groups. Adorno's "authoritarian personality" is probably the most renowned study in this context and, like the ones that followed it, argued that those who tend to support far-right ideology have unique mental and personal traits. The mixed empirical support for Adorno's approach, and the dramatic rise in the power of the European far-right during the 1980s and 1990s, led to the emergence of a long list of theories and explanations that departed from the individual-psychological approach ...

But the Authoritarian Personality study published in 1950, which was part of a larger Studies in Prejudice project directed by Adorno's Frankfurt School colleague Max Horkheimer and sponsored by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), was a study directed toward understanding individual psychological traits that would lead people to sympathize with authoritarian political movements, not specifically toward understanding individuals directly engaging in far-right political violence.

Much of the historical background Perliger provides is based on secondary sources. The original research in the paper comes from the analysis of the database of incidents constructed for the research. I found myself doing a double-take on a couple of the sources used. He cites a 1967 report on the Ku Klux Klan from the House Un-American Activities Committee (p. 47). HUAC is more known for its hackwork than for the care of its investigative studies, though that means that the source should be used with particular care rather than disregarded. He also cites a piece from the Fortean Times as a source (p. 10) on Timothy McVeigh. The Fortean Times, seriously? The Fortean Times is a British magazine that publishes stories of weird phenomena in the credulous tradition of Charles Fort. A "weird news" magazine, in other words, not especially scrupulous about ideals of journalistic professionalism. I wouldn't take as well-established a claim that I could only source to the Fortean Times, entertaining as some of their items might be to read. Does West Point's Combating Terrorism Center really consider the Fortean Times a valid source for information like this?

But Perliger's paper provides us a useful contemporary source on far-right violence in the US.

Tags: anti-semitism, domestic terrorism, christian identity, radical right, white racism

Christian Right conspiracy-mongering

(Note 12/16/2012: this was a post of mine from around 2004-5 that somehow seems to have become lost in cyberspace. I'm re-posting it now.)

One of the more notable manifestations of Christian Right conspiracy theorizing was Pat Robertson's book The New World Order (1991). In it, he described a conspiratorial theory of Western history in which dark forces have been working against God and his Christian people since the French Revolution or so.

Michael Lind reviewed this tract in 1995 for the New York Review of Books: Rev. Robertson's Grand International Conspiracy Theory 02/02/95 issue (the online version is available only in the subscription archive). It's a shame the Review doesn't make this essay freely available on the Web, because it's a very good description of the dark side of the Christian Right brand of Christianity. Robertson's book is a collection of favorite far-right tales about the centuries-long conspiracy. If there are "classics" of such things, this could probably be considered a classic of what Richard Hofstadter famously described as "the paranoid style in American politics." And, as Lind points out, Robertson's brand of it, along with the organizational clout of his Christian Coalition group, has attracted some respectable Republican admirers (or at least panderers):

Among the conservative politicians and polemicists who have addressed the Christian Coalition's "Road to Victory" conferences are Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, Jack Kemp, Oliver North, William Bennett, William Kristol, Jesse Helms, David Brock, and Dinesh D'Souza. Not only do mainstream conservatives avoid criticizing Robertson and his movement, they rush to their defense in print. When the Anti-Defamation League, in 1994, issued a report critical of the religious right, conservatives like William Bennett, Irving Kristol and his son, William, and Midge Decter denounced the supposed "anti-Christian" and "anti-religious" bias of the ADL and of the media in general. Bennett, for example, has written that "Christians active in politics are now on the receiving end of an extraordinary campaign of bias and prejudice."

William "I love Vegas" Bennett's comment about the "bias and prejudice" against Christians is one of the endless examples of the victimization whining by white Christian Republicans that is not only an example of the "paranoid style", but incredibly tedious as well as amazingly callous toward Christians in countries like Saudi Arabia or china where they really are persecuted. But, oh, what a Faustian bargain the country-club Republicans have made with Christian Right:

The chief motive for conservative appeasement of Robertson and the religious right is strategic; as the editor of a leading conservative magazine explained to me in 1992, "Of course they're mad, but we need their votes." Such conservatives are so impressed with the political power of the Christian Coalition that they even refrain from criticizing the religious right's "biblical" economic proposals, like the banning of usury and the abolition of debts in a periodic "year of jubilee." In addition, many Jewish neoconservatives value fundamentalist support for American military and economic subsidies to Israel. Writing in Commentary in 1984, Irving Kristol called on American Jews to recognize that American Protestant fundamentalists are "strongly pro-Israel." Excusing an evangelical leader who said that God does not hear the prayers of Jews, Kristol wrote: "Why should Jews care about the theology of a fundamentalist preacher?... What do such theological abstractions matter as against the mundane fact that this same preacher is vigorously pro-Israel?"

In fact, the "pro-Israel" position of the Christian Right normally translate into support for the settler movement (the biggest obstacle to a Middle East peace), advocacy for the hardlines positions of the Israeli Likud Party and bitter opposition to any meaningful attempt by an Israeli government to achieve a practical peace agreement with the Palestinians. But, in fact, the fundamentalist Christian supposed love for Israel is based on very traditional Christian attitudes toward Jews. Attitudes which historically have borne some very poisonous fruit. Lind quotes the Rev. Robertson's book:

Indeed, it may well be that men of goodwill like Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and George Bush, who sincerely want a larger community of nations living at peace in our world, are in reality unknowingly and unwittingly carrying out the mission and mouthing the phrases of a tightly knit cabal whose goal is nothing less than a new order for the human race under the domination of Lucifer and his followers.

This Luciferian conspiracy to bring peace to the world began, in Robertson's view, with a group called the Illuminati, which successfully took over the Freemasons. Hofstadter credits the Anti-Masonic Party with being the first organized manifestation of the paranoid style in politics in the US. And how did peace on earth, good will to men and all that become a Hellish goal? With funding from Jewish financiers, the Illuminati/Masons caused the French Revolution. As Robertson describes it:

The slaughter that followed was not merely an assault on the king and the aristocracy—what was called the ancien regime - it was an assault against everyone, even the leaders of the Reign of Terror that followed on the heels of the revolution. The satanic carnage that the Illuminati brought to France was the clear predecessor of the bloodbaths and successive party purges visited on the Soviet Union by the communists under both Lenin and Stalin.

Then the Illuminati/Masons - with Jewish money, of course - incited the European revolutions of 1848, in this view. The Revolutions of 1848 are not that well known in the US, but those revolutions came close to sweeping away much of the old monarchical order in continental Europe. Even the Habsburgs had to abandon Vienna to the democratic revolutionaries for a while. These revolutions are one of the most important milestones in the history of democracy, in Europe and the world. To Robertson, they were a Luciferian plot bankrolled by Jewish money. In this paragraph, Lind points out one of the standard slimy verbal tricks of the Radical Right, one to keep an eye out for if you are ever trolling around the sewer to far-right ideology:

Marx and Engels, though, were given direction by another Jew, who happened also to be one of the early advocates of a Jewish state: "The precise connecting link between the German Illuminati and the beginning of world communism was furnished by a German radical named Moses Hess" (p. 69). (Note Robertson's use here, as in his descriptions of other Jews later, of the adjective "German" rather than "Jewish." This does not necessarily mean much, since the adjective "German" or "European" frequently refers to Jews in the American literature of anti-Semitism.) Just as the Rothschilds presided over the marriage of Illuminism and Freemasonry, so Moses Hess, the secret Illuminist, is the true father of world communism. This is the first mention in Robertson's book of that longstanding anti-Semitic myth, the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy. It is not the last.

One of the more vomit-inducing aspects of Robertson's account of the American struggle with this Jewish conspiracy is that he tries to make Andrew Jackson (who was a Mason, by the way) and Abraham Lincoln heroes of the fight against the Jew/Mason/Illuminati plot. Lind elaborates:

What was the goal of these international bankers who were controlled, ultimately, by Satan, through the invisible but powerful Illuminated Freemasons? Robertson's answer comes close to endorsing one of the gravest anti-Semitic slanders of all - the claim that wealthy, cosmopolitan Jews incite wars in order to make money as war profiteers.

And he quotes Robertson on this topic:

The money barons of Europe, who had established privately owned central banks like the Bank of England, found in war the excuse to make large loans to sovereign nations from money that they created out of nothing to be repaid by taxes from the people of the borrowing nations. The object of the lenders was to stimulate government deficit spending and subsequent borrowing. War served that purpose nicely, but from 1945 to 1990 the full mobilization for the Cold War and the resultant massive national borrowings accompanied the result just as well without a full-scale shooting war. [p. 122, emphasis added {by Lind}]

Yes, according to Robertson, even the Cold War was part of the Big Jewish Plot. Well, you get the drift. The Council on Foreign Relations, one of the stock bogeymen of the John Birch Society crowd, figures in Robertson's theory as one of the main instruments of the grand conspiracy, which unites international (Jewish) banking to Communism and war profiteering. Quoting Robertson again:

In fact, is there not a possibility that the Wall Street bankers, who have so enthusiastically financed Bolshevism in the Soviet Union since 1917, did so not for the purpose of promoting world communism but for the purpose of saddling the Soviet Union with a totally wasteful and inefficient system that in turn would force the Soviet government to be dependent on Western bankers for its survival?

Are you following this? Yes, this is how one of the most influential Christian Right leaders in America sees the grand sweep of history. It's worth listening closely whenever Christian Right types start talking about Jews. In The New World Order, Robertson says that the Holocaust was a warm-up job by Satan for what he intends to do to Christians in America, a process Robertson thought was well under way in the US in 1991. This would be back when Old Man Bush was president. And the apocalyptic notions promoted by the Christian Right - based on a reading of the Scriptures that is anything but "literal" - is often the vehicle for some of their most appalling notions. Lind:

In his book The New Millennium, published in 1990, Robertson explicitly set forth his views about Jews and Israel. In the rapidly approaching Last Days, Israel will be destroyed: "That tiny little nation will find itself all alone in the world. Then according to the Bible, the Jews will cry out to the one they have so long rejected...." The destruction of Israel will only be possible, however, because of American acquiescence: "One day a vote against Israel will come in the United Nations when the United States neither abstains or uses its veto in the Security Council to protect Israel."

The US will abandon Israel, it seems, because American Christians, despite warnings by their leaders against anti-Semitism, will turn in wrath against the "cosmopolitan, liberal, secular Jews" who want "unrestricted freedom for smut and pornography and the murder of the unborn." Robertson writes of "the ongoing attempt of liberal Jews in America to undermine the public strength of Christianity" and notes that "the liberal, wealthy Jews voted for Democratic candidates Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis, not Reagan and Bush." ... Robertson's argument is that the destruction of Israel in the near future, though ordained by God, may be hastened if "wealthy" and "cosmopolitan" Jews foolishly provoke America's Christian majority, which is represented today, it must be presumed, by Robertson's own Christian Coalition.

And Lind also observes about fundamentalist apocalyptic thinking:

Apart from its emphasis on the United States rather than Nazi Germany, Robertson's elaborate conspiracy theory of world politics differs from populist and fascist conspiracy theories in one significant respect: it does not resort to overt anti-Semitism. This last reflects the influence of premillennial Protestant fundamentalism, which holds that the reestablishment of the State of Israel is the prelude to the Last Days, when most Jews will be destroyed and when the remnant will convert to Christianity. But the conservative Jews who defend Robertson in Commentary apparently do not realize that fundamentalist support for Israel is not incompatible with dislike and resentment of American Jews, especially liberal Jews, of a kind that Robertson has repeatedly expressed. (my emphasis)

I would say that "not incompatible", which certainly accurate is a mild description of the relationship of this theory to anti-Semitism. In fact, it comes from the aspect of Christian tradition that was most deeply hostile to Jews and Judaism. As the highlighted passage just quoted shows, this fundamentalist view assumes that God has designed an End of Days scenario in which "most Jews will be destroyed." It's safe to say than any view that looks forward to the day when "most Jews will be destroyed" is a fundamentally anti-Semitic theory. Lind in his review compares at some length parallel claims about the Jewish conspiracy in history to that of William Guy Carr in a book called Pawns in the Game, which Lind calls "a post - World War II defense of Hitler and fascism." Although Robertson doesn't explicitly defend the latter, Lind shows with long quotations how much Robertson embraces the same lines of argumentation. Lind's concluding paragraphs are well worth noting:

The evidence most relevant to the question of whether Robertson is an anti-Semite is found in the details of his conspiracy theory as set forth in The New World Order. Between the Illuminati and the Freemasons the link is the Frankfurt branch of the Rothschild family. "Lord Rothschild" - presumably Nathan Mayer Rothschild, who became a peer in 1885 - was the key link connecting the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy with the British Empire, through the Milner circle and Cecil Rhodes. Between world Freemasonry and world communism, the critical link is provided by Moses Hess. Between the Judeo-Masonic-Bolshevik "European bankers," the Ivy League American establishment, and Lenin's revolutionary Bolsheviks, the key links are two Jews, Paul Warburg and Jacob Schiff. Not only does the "octopus" control everything, but many of the major "tentacles" turn out to be Jews.

Robertson's theories about Jewish bankers and Jewish revolutionaries are central to his conspiracy theory, which in turn is central to his vision of his own destiny, his movement, and his ambitions for the American Right and the Republican party and the United States of America. Not since Father Coughlin or Henry Ford has a prominent white American so boldly and unapologetically blamed the disasters of modern world history on the machinations of international high finance in general and on a few influential Jews in particular. And not since Huey Long, with his Share Our Wealth movement, has there been a radical populist movement as powerful in American politics as Robertson's Christian Coalition.

Much has been written in the American press about neo-fascist movements in Italy, Germany, Japan, and France. But the United States is the only industrial democracy in which a far-right political leader in one of only two major parties has created a base of support so powerful that conventional politicians and intellectuals in his party feel they must defend him from charges of anti-Semitism. They have so far managed to ignore the fact that his best-selling book purveys the Illuminati–Freemason–Communist–High Finance conspiracy theory of world history familiar from generations of anti-Semitic propaganda. What would such conservatives, particularly Jewish neo-conservatives, be saying if Louis Farrakhan had written a book that made the New York Times best-seller list and claimed that Jewish financiers like the Rothschilds, Paul Warburg, and Jacob Schiff were leaders in a two-century old Freemason-Communist-Banker conspiracy to exploit American taxpayers and the members of the armed forces in America by stirring up deficit-funded wars?

Pat Robertson has written such a book. He has not repudiated a single word of it. Ralph Reed and the conservatives who dominate the newly ascendant Republican party would prefer that we continue to ignore it. (my emphasis)

That description of Robertson's poisonous ideology is a good one to remember the next time you hear some OxyContin Radio jock ranting about anti-Semitism in Europe, pretending to be against it. Anyone who ignores this deep strain of ugly religious bigotry in the Christian Right is just closing their eyes to reality.

Tags: anti-semitism, christian right, new world order, pat robertson, radical right

"Cultural Marxism": a far-right conspiracy theory involving the Frankfurt School

Several writers who follow the Radical Right have commented on the confessed Norwegian Christian terrorist Anders Breivik's strong emphasis on a far-right, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about what its advocates call "Cultural Marxism" in his political manifesto. It's key theme is that it blames the Frankfurt School, about whom I have written quite a bit on this blog the last couple of years, for "political correctness," by which the Radical Right means opposition to white racism and to other forms of bigotry.

Bill Berkowitz described the crackpot theory several years ago in Reframing the Enemy Intelligence Report 110 (Summer 2003).

I came across this particular crackpot theory several years ago. As Berkovitz noted in his piece, the Council of Conservative Citizens was pushing some DVD on it at the time. Chip Berlet provides a link to a different video advocating the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory: The History of Political Correctness. Berlet tweeted this link with the description, "History of Political Correctness: video--Lind, Islamophobe David Horowitz, and Nazi collaborator Laszlo Pasztor."

I've been aware of the actual Frankfurt School authors and their school of "critical theory" since my undergraduate time. And I've done some additional reading on them in recent years. "Frankfurt School" is shorthand for the Institut für Sozialforschung/Institute for Social Research, which had its first institutional home at the University of Frankfurt. This is the English version of the Institute's history at their website: Ludwig v. Friedeburg, History of the Institute of Social Research (Summary) n/d. It has a bibliography list, including histories of "critical theory" by Martin Jay and Douglass Kellner.

It made some kind of warped sense to me on the surface that far-rightists would pick the Frankfurt School as a bogeyman of multiculturalism. The most prominent figures associated with them were Jewish and they understood themselves as Marxists as well as Freudians. Since the far-right equates even American liberalism with Communism, no amount of actual history would persuade them of a more nuanced picture. But two of the most famous Frankfurt School writers, Franz Neumann and Herbert Marcuse, worked for the US wartime Office of Strategic Services doing intelligence analysis on Germany. And anyone who has read (or attempted to read!) an essay by any of the three core Frankfurt School figures - Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Marcuse - will seriously doubt whether even the more intellectually inclined among the Christian nationalist crowd have much direct exposure to what they actually wrote.

Lately I've been reading through the five studies in the "Studies in Prejudice" series, the results of a research project sponsored by the American Jewish Committee and led by Horkheimer, the most famous of which is The Authoritarian Personality. The AJC has made the texts available at their website: Studies in Prejudice Series. Reading through these, it occurred to me that this set of studies may particularly irritate the present-day Radical Right because of its careful analyses of the crackpot right of the 1940s.

Those were Old Right isolationists. But their kindred spirit to the Tea Party of today is readily evident, particularly in Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator by Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman. The AJC also has a typed, 4-page report from Lowenthal on a local 1945 meeting of a far-right group called the Christian Front that I found interesting reading. The website doesn't link it directly; you have to search for Leo Lowenthal and look for "Surveillance report on a Christian Front meeting in New York."

Various recent discussions of this include the following.

Ben Alpers, The Frankfurt School, Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories, and American Conservatism US Intellectual History 07/25/2011.

Chip Berlet, Anders Behring Breivik: Soldier in the Christian Right Culture Wars Talk to Action 07/23/2011

Chip Berlet, Breivik cited William S. Lind, Free Congress Foundation, & the LaRouchites Talk to Action 07/24/2011

Chip Berlet, Breivik's Core Thesis is White Christian Nationalism v. Multiculturalism Talk to Action 07/25/2011

Chip Berlet, Breivik 2011 Manifesto Echoes Weyrich 1999 Manifesto Talk to Action 07/25/2011

Chip Berlet, Author Cited by Anders Behring Breivik Regrets Original Essay Talk to Action 07/26/2011

Martin Jay, Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe Salmagundi (168/169) Fall 2010

Dave Neiwert, Norway terrorist Breivik was an ardent subscriber to theories of 'Cultural Marxism' C&L 07/23/2011

Dave Neiwert, Norway terrorist Anders Breivik leaves written, video manifestoes to explain his motives: He's a right-wing cultural warrior C&L 07/24/2011

Sarah Posner, How Breivik's "Cultural Analysis" is Drawn from the "Christian Worldview" Religion Dispatches 07/27/2011

Tags: anders behring breivik, anti-semitism, frankfurt+school, frankfurter schule, radical right

Political anti-Semitism in Germany, 1871-1914 (5 of 5): the SPD and anti-Semitism

Paul Massing, Rehearsal for Destruction: A Study of Political Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany (1949)

SPD leader Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826-1900)

The combination of the SPD's view of contemporary anti-Semitism as an ugly side-product of capitalism, their notion that it would fade away with the growth of working-class solidarity and the eventual achievement of socialism, and the receding of anti-Semitic politics and activism after 1895 made them misjudge the potential political power of anti-Semitism. Massing notes that after the 1905 Revolution in Russia, pogroms against Jews took place there:

The brutality with which the government put down the revolution, and the white terror and pogroms that followed in its wake, were not taken as an object lesson by the German Socialists. They felt, like most Western Europeans, that terroristic anti-Semitism was inconceivable anywhere but in the barbarous world of Czarist reaction. Pogroms belonged to the dark Middle Ages which in Russia extended into the present but which had definitely become past history in Germany. The Social Democrats shared this conviction with the Liberals and with most Conservatives. In Germany, not even a professional anti-Semite would have dared any longer to instigate physical violence against Jews. The worst mob demonstrations in the eighties and nineties had not approximated anything like a Russian pogrom. Meanwhile ten years had passed which had extinguished even these memories. The use of physical violence against the Jews was only possible among "backward," "uncivilized," "ignorant" masses, spurred on by ruthless tyrants. (p. 196)

"Racial" anti-Semite Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg (1848-1911)

He quotes the Party's leader, August Bebel from 1906 condemning anti-Semitic outbreaks in Russia and affirming the view that such a problem was not to be expected in Germany:

The Russian government favors anti-Semitism because it is anxious to divert the hatred of the masses from its own foul and corrupt system of government and from the representatives of this system, the corrupt civil service. ... And since the Jews in Russia, intellectuals and proletarians, participated in extraordinary number in the revolutionary movement, the Russian government had an additional reason for having hatred of Jews incited by its agents and for provoking massacres and butcheries the like of which have happened so far only under oriental despotisms. Anti-Semitism which by its very nature can appeal only to the basest drives and instincts of a backward stratum of society, expresses the moral depravity of the groups that accept it. It is comforting [to know] that in Germany it will never have a chance to exert a decisive influence upon the life of state and society. [p. 197; Massing’s emphasis]

Massing then observes that even though that final sentence sounds "preposterous" after the experience of the Third Reich, at the time it "expressed the conviction of the German people at large."

In response to the pogroms in Russia and the generally unfavorable condition of Jews in eastern Europe, especially compared to their situation in Germany and Austria, the Zionist movement began to win adherents. Its popularity was greatest among eastern European Jews. But some Jews in the SPD’s reform wing expressed active sympathy for Zionism, doubting the Party’s official position that the development of capitalism would make class considerations override religious or pseudo-racial prejudices against Jews as Jews. The SPD’s official position was opposed to Zionism, regarding it as an unrealistic response to a problem they believed was fundamentally rooted in the social processes affecting peasants and the lower middle class under capitalist condition, and one that would disappear as a matter of course under socialism.

"Racial" anti-Semite Wilhelm Marr (1819-1904)

This approach meant that the SPD tended to downplay the manifestations of anti-Semitism in Germany during the 1895-1914 period. But he also argues that not only Party leades but rank-and-file supporters understood anti-Semitism as being an ideology hostile to the needs of the working class. And he notes:

Indeed, quite a number of Jews were attracted to the party despite the economic and cultural barrier of class. The Jewish Social Democrats were mostly intellectuals, businessmen, and salaried employees, with hardly any manual workers among them. The reasons that prompted middle-class Jews to expose themselves to additional hostility by joining the Social Democrats must have been strong. Material considerations, as a rule, cannot have entered into their decision. To be known as a voter, member, or even active supporter of the Social Democratic Party was in imperial Germany no boon to anyone's career, and less so to a Jew's. Besides, Jewish intellectuals who joined and worked for the revolutionary party often jeopardized their social relations and damaged their standing in the Jewish community, particularly in small towns. Apparently in the world of socialist labor individual Jews could experience the equality which German society denied to the Jewish group. (p. 202)

He sums up the strengths and the weaknesses in the SPD's approach to anti-Semitism this way:

In theory and practice socialist labor was opposed to anti-Semitism. The Socialists never wavered in their stand against all attempts to deprive Jews of their civil rights. They treated with contempt the anti-Semitic agitators and the groups behind them. They never gave in to the temptation - considerable at times - to gain followers by making concessions to anti-Jewish prejudice. From the rise of the socialist labor movement in the 1860's to the time of its defeat by National Socialism, the statements of the labor leaders, the resolutions carried in party conventions, the methods of coping with the situations created by political anti-Semitism, testify to its unswerving opposition to any kind of discrimination against Jews.

On the other hand, socialist labor was indifferent, if not actually hostile, toward all efforts to preserve and revitalize autonomous Jewish religious, cultural, or national traditions. Marxism, its guiding philosophy, had as little use for the Jewish religion as it did for the Christian. Eager to have the processes of industrial society do their work of obliterating cultural differences, socialist labor could see no more than an obsolete religious heritage in the beliefs of orthodox Jewry and had even less sympathy for conscious attempts to revive the Jewish nation.

Little attention has been paid in nonsocialist literature to the work of enlightenment and education which German socialism carried on among its followers. The Socialists, on the other hand, have done little in the way of critically reevaluating this work. [As of 1949.] (p. 151)

Massing's book doesn’t trace the historical threads of these anti-Semitic trends into the First World War and beyond. He occasionally makes reference to some similar development in the time of the Nazi movement. But he mostly concentrates on describing the events in the political context as the major players understood them at the time. His analysis does throw light on some of the psychological and sociological factors at work in anti-Semitic appeals. But its main value is in giving a clear definition of the most notable political anti-Semitism movements from the time of German unification in 1871 to the First World War and how they were situated in the social and political conflicts of the time.

Tags: anti-semitism, deutsche politik, frankfurt school, frankfurter schule, german politics, paul massing, rehearsal for destruction

Political anti-Semitism in Germany, 1871-1914 (4 of 5): the SPD and anti-Semitism

Paul Massing, Rehearsal for Destruction: A Study of Political Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany (1949)

Massing devotes several separate chapters to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the labor movement and anti-Semitism. The SPD's outlook was secular. Socialist labor was deeply skeptical of both the Catholic and Protestant hierarchies, and the feeling was returned and more. Massing frames the basic position of the SPD on anti-Semitism this way:

The Social Democrats saw no reason for singling out the Jewish group, either for attack or protection. Jews would share the fate of the socioeconomic classes to which they happened to belong. The revolutionary workers would abolish capital regardless of its religious denomination. In matters of human relations they would be guided by the declaration of the First International which had stated that "this International Association and all societies and individuals adhering to it will acknowledge truth, justice, and morality as the bases of their conduct towards each other and towards all men without regard to color, creed or nationality." The class theory also governed the Social Democrats' appraisal of anti-Semitism. They were certain that the economic and psychological conditions necessary for anti-Semitism to flourish were to be found mainly in those intermediary classes which modem capitalism had thrown into a "prolonged but hopeless agony." (p. 160)



Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader August Bebel  (1840-1913)

As a practical matter, the "racial" anti-Semites were of more concern to the SPD than the Stoecker variety. Because, as Stoecker soon realized after launching his political activities, he was attracting support from independent tradespeople and shopkeepers, virtually none from the industrial working class which was his original target constituency. The "racial" anti-Semites did attempt to compete directly with the SPD for working-class votes, and their programs were tailored to appeal to not only urban middle-class voters who felt their positions endangered by economic developments, but also to peasants and to workers. By contrast, Stoecker for most of his political career focused more on pulling voters from the liberal (capitalist) parties to the Conservatives and allied forces. The SPD saw the "racial" anti-Semites as the more direct political threat, because they also denounced feudal reaction and struck a radical and even revolutionary tone against the existing authorities. The SPD prior to the First World War didn’t make much effort to win rural votes from the peasants.

Kaiser Bill, Wilhem II (1859-1941), who "improvised from one blunder to the next"

Massing credits the SPD, whose leaders mostly applied a Marxist outlook to their understanding of social and class dynamics, with recognizing the dangerous potential popularity of anti-Semitism in German politics:

The Marxists [SPD] were the first to emphasize the socioeconomic roots of modem anti-Semitism. They warned their followers not to belittle it as a mere product of demagogic agitation, not to ignore the social reality behind the manipulative aspects of anti-Semitic movements. "One cannot pass over phenomena which find a response among the masses," Bebel told the delegates to the Social Democratic Party convention in 1893, admonishing them not to repeat the stupidity of their own opponents who for a long time had regarded the socialist movement as nothing but an artificial bubble. "It is necessary to analyze the causes and, having found these causes, one must look out for the means with which to remedy the ills that have produced these phenomena." [my emphasis] (p. 161)

Massing doesn't go into detailed analyses of electoral results but rather describes the fortunes and influence of those groups that promoted anti-Semitism most actively and effectively. He has a good sense of the complexity of motivation on politics and the difficulties for an historian to make exact judgments about them. He also appreciates the role of plain old folly in politics; he writes of Kaiser Wilhelm II's general approach to forming foreign policy, "It was all-important to have the ear of the Kaiser who, unable to master the situation, relied on his 'intuition' and improvised from one blunder to the next."

"Racial" anti-Semite Ernst Henrici (1854-1915) strikes a colonial pose

He gives one of the best brief descriptions I’ve seen of how the reform and revolutionary wings of the SPD co-existed in the same Party from the mid-1890s to the First World War brought a split between supporters and opponents of the war, largely corresponding to the reform and revolutionary trends, respectively:

Intensive industrialization not only favored the growth of the Social Democratic organization but facilitated a compromise between the party's left and right wings. So long as such objective criteria as electoral victories, membership increases, and the rapid concentration of industrial and financial wealth supported the theory of a quasi-automatic evolution toward the day when labor would "take over," it did not matter too much how the party acted, as long as it remained "revolutionary." The Social Democratic leaders seemed justified in the belief that the revolutionary prospects would not suffer if the party confined itself to those legal methods of agitation which the government could not deny it. The radicals' desire for legality was, of course, wholeheartedly shared by the moderates who saw in the party's growing stature proof of the progress which Social Democracy could make under the constitutional government. In the early nineties, on the occasion of Bismarck's dismissal, and again at the time of the Kaiser's conflict with [Chancellor] Caprivi when the air was thick with rumors of an impending coup d'etat, the leaders of Social Democracy had agreed that the conditions of constitutional legality were preferable to a hazardous existence under a military dictatorship. (p, 191)

Concludes in Part 5

Tags: anti-semitism, deutsche politik, frankfurt school, frankfurter schule, german politics, paul massing, rehearsal for destruction

Political anti-Semitism in Germany, 1871-1914 (3 of 5): "racial" anti-Semitism

Otto Boeckel, the "peasant king of Hesse"

Paul Massing, Rehearsal for Destruction: A Study of Political Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany (1949)

Political and racial anti-Semitism were real phenomena in late 19th-century Germany and had a significant impact on politics. But they were largely a side-show to the Conservative Party of Prussian Junkers, other big landlords and the conservative Protestant hierarchy. The political anti-Semites had some success in making "the Jews" a bogeyman for an array of social problems, especially during periods of harder economic times. In periods when the Conservatives were outside the government coalitions, they found it convenient to make use of the anti-Semites, not so convenient when they were in the government coalitions. Especially among the leaders of "racial" anti-Semitism, there was genuine fanaticism and a keen desire to suppress or even expel Jews from Germany. But these elements never had the political clout to force significant governmental measures against Jews:

Theodor Fritsch and his Anti-Semites' Catechism; Fritsch eventually wound up in prison for blackmail

Neither the anti-Semitic movement of the eighties nor of the nineties succeeded in bringing about any changes whatsover in the legal status of the Jewish group. Not a single law was passed that infringed upon the emancipation act of 1869. This in a country in which there was at the time considerable discrimination against Catholics, Socialists, and Poles. The demands of the racial anti-Semites that the Jewish group be put under legal restrictions never had the slightest chance. When, at the first "International Congress of Anti-Semites" at Dresden (1882), Ernst Henrici moved that all Jews be expelled from Germany, no other than Adolf Stoecker assured him that, in a contest as to who should be expelled from Germany, the Jews or the anti-Semites, the decision would most certainly go against the anti-Semites.' Stoecker's biographer, Nazi professor Walter Frank, agrees that "the whole anti-Semitic movement which, between 1876 and 1900, had such a wide appeal, did not noticeably change the nature of the Jewish problem one way or the other. The situation in the Prussian-German state continued to be such that by and large Jewry's economic, social and cultural power was left untouched, whereas Jews were, on the whole, excluded from the administrative apparatus."' [my emphasis] (p. 107)

Political anti-Semitism faded considerably in importance during the period 1895-1914, as a strong recovery from the international economic Crisis of 1893 took hold. The anti-Semitic voting base in rural areas dropped off as agricultural prosperity returned. Massing quotes Willi Buch saying, "By 1911, anti-Semitism with a political party organization had actually ceased to exist." And Massing summarizes the passing from the scene of the old guard anti-Semitic leaders like this:

Among the apostles of "pure," "radical" anti-Semitism Ernst Henrici gave up early and withdrew so completely from the political scene that his name was soon all but forgotten. Even standard works on the history of anti-Semitism contain no reference to his further fate. Buch mentions that its erstwhile hero had turned out to be an embarrassment for the anti-Semitic movement. Henrici had gone to the United States from which he returned with a spouse of "mixed blood." Bernhard Förster and his wife Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche's sister, left Germany in 1886 and founded a judenreine colony, Neu-Germania, in Paraguay. In 1889 Förster, despairing of the success of his project, committed suicide. Karl Paasch, pamphleteer and contemporary of Henrici and Förster, went to Switzerland where he died, a victim of persecution mania. Otto Boeckel, "peasant king of Hesse," lost his Reichstag seat in 1903, withdrew from political life "completely impoverished, bitter and withdrawn," and died forgotten in 1923. Hermann Ahllwardt, "Rektor of all Germans," fared even worse. Although reelected to the Reichstag in 1898, he found himself in complete isolation and stopped attending parliamentary sessions. By the turn of the century he had practically disappeared from the political scene. After an unsuccessful trip to the United States where he tried to organize the fight against "the Jewish rabble that does not want to work," he opened a cigar store in Berlin which he soon gave up again. For a while he sold mining stock in the German-speaking parts of Bohemia. In 1907, "having completely turned his back on anti-Semitism," he approached Theodor Fritsch with a suggestion to take up the fight against the Jesuits and Free-Masons. In 1909 he was sentenced for blackmail. His family was impoverished and sunk to the level of the Lumpenproletariat; Ahlwardt himself died in 1914 from injuries he suffered in a traffic accident in Leipzig. (pp. 113-114)

During the two decades leading up to the First World War, organized anti-Semitism faded in importance, although it didn’t disappear. But its political position was in practice subordinated to the Conservatives:

During the years of prosperity the two occupational organizations, the Agrarian League and the Federation of Commercial Employees, well managed, solidly financed, and going about their business in a rational way, proved to be far superior to the parties which had nothing to sell but anti-Semitism. The anti-Semitic parties became financially dependent on them and were accordingly treated. (p. 139)

But this was also the era in which Germany started playing the imperialist game in a major way, competing with Britain and France for colonial acquisition and influence. And along with that mission came racist ideas. The Pan-German League (Alldeutsche Verband) was the major private organization devotedly specifically to promoting German colonialism. (See pp. 142ff)

Massing's book is especially helpful in showing how anti-Semitism was more typically linked to conservative politics, but not always. Some of the anti-Semitic groups favored social reforms that would benefit labor and small farmers. But it was generally clear that the anti-Semites hated organized labor, whether in the form of unions or the Social Democratic Party. Stoecker's Christian Social Party had a significant wing of Protestant unions.

Continued in Part 4

Tags: anti-semitism, deutsche politik, frankfurt school, frankfurter schule, german politics, paul massing, rehearsal for destruction

Political anti-Semitism in Germany, 1871-1914 (2 of 5): Adolf Stoecker and religious anti-Semitism

Adolf Stoecker (1835-1909)

Paul Massing, Rehearsal for Destruction: A Study of Political Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany (1949)

Adolf Stoecker (1835-1909)

Organized anti-Semitism as it manifested itself in German politics in the second half of the 19th century up to 1895 revolve around two movements: the Berlin Movement led by Adolf Stoecker (1835-1909) and the pseudo-scientific racial agitation, led by characters like Hermann Ahlwardt (1846-1914), Otto Böckel (1859-1923), Theodor Fritsch (1852-1933), Ernst Henrici (1854-1915), Wilhelm Marr (1819-1904) and Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg (1848-1911). Eugen Dühring (1833-1921), who is mainly remembered today as the target of fierce polemics by Nietzsche and Engels, was also a significant promoter of racial anti-Semitism.

Stoecker was a Protestant minister who was recognized as a "court minister," which was an official position within the Imperial court. It was unusual for someone in that position to actively engage in politics, but Stoecker did. He founded the Christian Social Workers Party (Christlich-Soziale Arbeiterpartei) in 1878, which became the Christian Social Party (Christlich-Soziale Partei) in 1881, after it became clear to him that his notions of conservative reform had little resonance among urban industrial workers, which had been a large part of his intent in founding the Party.

Though Stoecker advocated reforms aimed at ameliorating the social conditions of workers, his politics were very much on the conservative side. The Christian Social Party worked closely with the Conservatives, and Stoecker himself served in the German Parliament (Reichstag) as a Conservative from 1880-1893 and then again from 1898-1908. His original political strategy, encouraged and tolerated to greater and lesser degrees over time by Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm I, was to use anti-Semitism to draw votes away from the SPD in order to strengthen the clout of the Conservatives. Massing writes that "as long as Stoecker wooed the industrial population, anti-Semitism was not in the foreground of his agitation though it certainly was inherent in the orthodox Protestant concept of the Christian state" which he advocated. After a notable lack of success in drawing working-class voters in Berlin elections of 1878, Stoecker accepted that his constituency was largely middle class and began to emphasize anti-Semitic appeals. Massing includes in an appendix an 1879 speech of Stoecker's, "What We Demand of Modern Jewry" which elaborated his anti-Semitic themes.

Stoecker's influence rise and fell depending on whether Bismarck needed an alliance with the liberals in the Reichstag; the liberals opposed Stoecker’s anti-Semitism. Although he served in the Reichstag until 1908, the year before his death, his influence on the Conservative Party after 1895 had become negligible.

Stoecker relied on traditional Christian anti-Semitic themes, which included not only religion but accusations of various conspiracies and bad acts in business and social life. But Stoecker rejected the pseudoscientific racial anti-Semitism promoted by the likes of Hermann Ahlwardt.

Or rather, sometimes he did. The distinction between the more traditional-religious and pseudoscientific-racial anti-Semites is not one of relative benevolence, and not much so of ideological framing. Both drew on anti-Semitic traditions of the past, and both used similar characterizations of the alleged threat presented by the Jews. For instance, in "What We Demand of Modern Jewry" Stoecker said this:

The Jews are and remain a people within a people, a state within a state, a separate tribe within a foreign race. All immigrants are eventually absorbed by the people among whom they live - all save the Jews. They pit their Unbroken Semitic character against Teutonic nature, their rigid cult of law or their hatred of Christians against Christianity. We cannot condemn them for this; as long as they are Jews, they are bound to act in this way. But we must, in all candor, state the necessity of protecting ourselves against the dangers of such an intermingling. There are 45,000 Jews in Berlin alone, as many as there are in all of France, in all of England. That is too many. If they had a real bond with us, there would be nothing wrong with this figure. But this half of a hundred thousand lives by itself, in easy circumstances, with increasing power, equipped with a very profitable mind, and without any concern for our Christian-German interests. Therein lies the real danger. [my emphasis] (pp. 285-6)

The more practical distinction between the Stoecker anti-Semites and the "racial" kind was one of party allegiances, political programs and target constituencies. And as Massing points out, whereas for Stoecker and the Conservatives, anti-Semitism was a useful tool of political agitation in seeking votes, the racial anti-Semites tended toward the fanatical:

In every mass movement two types of agitators may be distinguished, the missionary and the racketeer. The preponderance of the one or the other type is relevant for evaluating the movement's dynamic power. In German racism the anti-Semitic fanatics far outweighed the racketeers to whom Jew-baiting was one way of making a living. There was a high proportion of elementary and high school teachers among its leaders (Henrici, Bernhard and Paul Förster, Jungfer, Bruhn, Schwarzschulz, Dühring, Ahlwardt, Holtz, Hentig, etc.) some of whom paid with the loss of their positions for the tenacity of their opinions. As a political career racial anti-Semitism in the Kaiserreich had little to offer in terms of spoil. Unlike Stoecker, whose movement was generously subsidized by Conservative friends, the racists were always short of funds and income. Prior to 1906, Reichstag members were not paid either a salary or a per diem allowance. There was little if any remuneration in lecturing. Anti-Semitic mass meetings were usually free of charge and organizers passed the hat around to get reimbursed for their expenses. A semblance of a paying anti-Semitic show was once staged in Berlin. An anti-Semitic schoolteacher, Wilhelm Bruhn, got hold of a mentally deranged aristocrat, one Count Pückler, whom he exhibited in popular meetings for a small admittance fee. The Count threatened to drive all the Jews out of Germany as he had driven them out of his Junker domain at the head of a "flail-guard" of peasant boys, and his performance attracted big crowds of entertainment-seekers who enjoyed the megalomaniac's antics. Eventually Pückler was institutionalized. This one celebrated exception where anti-Semitism was offered as commercial divertissement only serves to underscore the general rule that German anti-Semitism was taken with deadly seriousness by its partisans. [my emphasis in bold] (p. 100-1)

But those partisans tended to be educated urban men. Their voting strength, to the extent it existed, was primarily among peasants. Massing argues that for them, "the Jews" didn’t represent so much a racial or religious characteristic so much as an image of everything they found oppressive and frustrating about existing society. Of course, the fact that they responded to "the Jews" as a bogeyman for those conditions had to do with a much longer history of Christian anti-Semitism. Massing writes:

One thing is certain. The peasants who voted for Boeckel and Ahlwardt were not enraptured by notions of race superiority. They were concerned with more sober matters, such as cheaper industrial goods, cheaper government, cheaper credit, feed, and Schnaps. Their anti-Semitism telescoped many elements of discontent, and they lumped together as "Jews" a host of foes whom they thus could abuse in violent language without fear of punishment. Disgruntled peasants saw "Jews" everywhere - in Berlin, in the government, in the legislature, in subversive Social Democracy; at the stock exchange, in the press, in the Conservative Party, and even at the Royal and Imperial Courts. The racial agitators' success with the rural population was due in part to the aggressiveness with which they put forth demands for economic remedies, but perhaps even more to the fury and bluster that distinguished their oratory, to the emotional gratifications which their violent invective provided for the rural audience. The most noticeable gains of radical anti-Semitism among peasants and farm hands were made when the agrarian depression was at its worst. They were largely lost again when "the Jews" gave less cause for discontent, an indication that the reactions of the peasants depended on other factors than a permanent body of racial doctrine. (p. 101)

The advocacy of racial anti-Semitism, though, had promoted a prejudice that later and more successful advocates of peusdoscientific racial anti-Semitism would effectively exploit.

Continued in Part 3

Tags: anti-semitism, deutsche politik, frankfurt school, frankfurter schule, german politics, paul massing, rehearsal for destruction