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Racial antisemitism is prejudice againstJews based on a belief or assertion that Jews constitute a distinctrace that has inherent traits or characteristics that appear in some way abhorrent or inherently inferior or otherwise different from the traits or characteristics of the rest of asociety. The abhorrence may find expression in the form of discrimination, stereotypes or caricatures. Racial antisemitism may present Jews, as a group, as a threat in some way to the values or safety of a society. Racial antisemitism is more radical thanreligious antisemitism: for religious antisemites, the Jew is no longer Jewish once converted, thus their “Jewishness” is gone, while in racial antisemitism Jews cannot get rid of their Jewishness, and thus must be isolated from gentile society or physically removed.[1]
The premise of racial antisemitism is that Jews constitute a distinct racial orethnic group which negatively impacts gentiles. Racial antisemitism differs fromreligious antisemitism, which involves prejudice against Jews andJudaism on the basis of theirreligion.[2] According to William Nichols, one can distinguish historical religious antisemitism from "the new secularantisemitism" based on racial or ethnic grounds: "The dividing line was the possibility of effective conversion ... a Jew ceased to be a Jew upon baptism." However, with racial antisemitism:
Now the assimilated Jew was still a Jew, even after baptism ... From theEnlightenment onward, it is no longer possible to draw clear lines of distinction between religious and racial forms of hostility towards Jews... Once Jews have been emancipated and secular thinking makes its appearance, without leaving behind the old Christian hostility towards Jews, the new term antisemitism becomes almost unavoidable, even before explicitly racist doctrines appear.[3]
In the context of theIndustrial Revolution, with theemancipation of the Jews (1790s onwards) and theHaskalah (the JewishEnlightenment of the 18th and 19th centuries), many Jews rapidly urbanized and experienced a period of greater social mobility. With the decreasing role of religion in public life and the simultaneous tempering of religious antisemitism, a combination of growingnationalism, the rise ofeugenics, resentment of the perceived socio-economic success of Jews, and the influx ofAshkenazi Jews fromEastern Europe to Central Europe, soon led to the newer, and often more virulent, racist antisemitism.[4]
Scientific racism, theideology thatgenetics played a role in group behavior and characteristics, was highly respected and accepted as factual between 1870 and 1940. HistorianWalter Lacquer lists numerous influential figures such as economistEugen Duehring, composerRichard Wagner, Biblical scholarPaul de Lagarde, and historian-philosophers likeHouston Stewart Chamberlain as important figures in the rise of racial antisemitism.[5] This acceptance of race science made it possible for antisemites to clothe their hatred of Jews in "scientific theory" and propose grand, sweeping political solutions in coming decades, fromrelocation to Madagascar tocompulsory sterilization to mass extermination.[6]
In theThird Reich (1933–1945), Nazis extended the logic of racial antisemitism,enshrining racial antisemitic ideas into laws which assessed the "blood" or ethnicity of people (rather than their current religious affiliations), and prescribing—purely on that basis—the subsequent fate of those so assessed. When added to its views on Jewish racial traits which Nazi pseudoscience devised, the logic of racial antisemitism led to theHolocaust of 1941–1945 as an attempt to eradicate conjured-up "Jewish traits" from the world.
Modern European antisemitism originates in 19th centurypseudoscience which claimed that theSemitic peoples, including the Jews, were entirely different from theAryan, orIndo-European populations, inherently inferior, and thus deserving social segregation. These theories extend at least as far back asMartin Luther's 1543 treatise,On the Jews and Their Lies, in which he wrote that Jews are a "base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast oflineage,circumcision, andlaw must be accounted as filth".[7] Though many argue that Luther expressed prejudice against Judaism as a religion, not Jews as a race, Franklin Sherman, editor of the American Edition of Luther's Works, writes that "Luther's writings against the Jews … are not ‘merely a set of cool, calm and collected theological judgments. His writings are full of rage, and indeed hatred, against an identifiable human group, not just against a religious point of view."[8]On the Jews and Their Lies was popular among supporters of the Nazi party during the early 20th century.[9]
Hannah Arendt explained that before the 1870s, the Jewish population was a defined and detached group amongst western society. They were given rights and civil liberties as long as they served the states they lived in. However, due to their apolitical standing, they became an easy scapegoat and were visible to the public eye due to their position in state finance.[10]
Racial antisemites do not necessarily oppose the Jewishreligion; instead, Jews othered by ascribing them hereditary or geneticracial stereotypes: greed, dirtiness, a special aptitude for money-making, aversion to hard work, clannishness and obtrusiveness, lack of social tact, low cunning, and especially, lack ofpatriotism. Later,Nazi propaganda also dwelt on supposed phenotypical differences, such as the shape of the "Jewish nose".[11][12][13][14]
Throughout thehistory of antisemitism, racial antisemitism has existed alongsidereligious antisemitism since at least theMiddle Ages, if not before.
All people of Jewish ancestry were barred from public office, universities and many professions, a policy enforced for centuries after theirexpulsion from Spain.[15] But even before theEdict of Expulsion of 1492,Spanish Jews whoconverted toCatholicism (conversos in Spanish), and their descendants, were calledNew Christians. They were frequently accused of lapsing back into their former religious practices (labeled "crypto-Jews").
To isolate theconversos in society, the Spanish nobility developed an ideology which it called "cleanliness of blood", calling them "New Christians" in order to indicate their inferior status within society. This produced a new form ofracism: there had been no such gradation of Christianity before this point, for converts had been given equal standing with life-long Christians. "Cleanliness of blood" was an issue of ancestry and ethnicity, not an issue of personal religion. The first statute of purity of blood appeared inToledo in 1449,[16] where an anti-converso riot lead toconversos being banned from most official positions. Initially these statutes were condemned by both the monarchy and the Church. However, "New Christians" were later persecuted by theSpanish Inquisition after 1478, thePortuguese Inquisition after 1536, thePeruvian Inquisition after 1570 and theMexican Inquisition after 1571, as well as the Inquisition in Colombia after 1610.
InMedievalEurope, allAsian peoples were thought of as being the descendants ofShem. By the 19th century, the term "Semitic" was confined to theethnic groups which speakSemitic languages or had origins in theFertile Crescent, as the Jews in Europe did. These peoples were often considered to be a distinctrace.
Arthur de Gobineau's pseudoscience theorized that theSemitic peoples arose from the blurring of distinctions between previously separate races.[17] Gobineau did not necessarily consider the Semites (descendants of Shem) to be alesser race, butessentialised humanity into three races: white, black, and yellow. When these races mixed, they underwent "degeneration". Gobineau believed that Aryans were the most "pure" white race, and thatmiscegenation would lead to mankind's downfall. Since the place where these three supposed races first met each other was located in the Middle East, Gobineau believed that Semitic peoples embodied the "confused" racial identity.[17] This idea of racial "confusion" was taken up by the Nazi ideologueAlfred Rosenberg.[18] It was used by the Nazis to perpetuate the idea that the Jews were going to destroy Germany.[17]
This concept suited the interests ofantisemites, as it usedscientific racism to rationalize racial antisemitism. Variations of this theory were espoused in the writings of many antisemites in the late 19th century. The Nazi ideologueAlfred Rosenberg developed a variant of this theory in his writings, arguing that Jewish people were not a "real" race. According to Rosenberg, their evolution resulted from the mixing of pre-existing races rather thannatural selection. The theory of "semiticization" was typically associated with other longstanding racist fears about the dilution of racial differences throughmiscegenation, which manifested in stereotypical images ofmulattos and members of other mixed groups.[citation needed]
InNazi Germany, theNuremberg Race Laws of 1935 imposed severe restrictions on "aliens" such as Jews or anyone of Jewish heritage. These laws deprived Jews of citizenship rights and they also prohibited sexual relations and marriages between Aryans and Jews (according to Nazi ideology and according to the race laws, such relations were crimes and as a result, they were punishable asRassenschande or "racial pollution"). These laws stated that on the basis of their race, all Jews were no longer citizens of their own country (their official title became "subject of the state"). This meant that they had no basic citizens' rights, e.g., to vote. In 1936, Jews were banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them from having any influence in politics, higher education and industry. On 15 November 1938, Jewish children were banned from going to normal schools. By April 1939, nearly all Jewish companies had either been confiscated, collapsed under financial pressure and declining profits, or their owners had been persuaded to sell them out to the Nazi government. This law further reduced their human rights; they were legally reduced to the status of second-class citizens compared to the status of the non-Jewish populace.
Racial antisemitic laws were also passed elsewhere. In the 19th century, King Frederick II of Prussia enacted multiple laws which were harmful to the Jewish people of the time such as laws which restricted marriages between them. In Austria, laws also limited the number of children which Jewish families were allowed to have, to prevent the rise of the Jewish population, the law only allowed a Jewish family to have one child.[19]
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