41845358-Antisemitism

THE DIABOLIZATION OF JEWS
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passage of the essay, Wagner wrote: “There is only one possible way of redeeming
the Jews from the terrible curse that hangs over them—annihilation.” (No
doubt he meant the elimination of Judaism as a religion, not the physical extermination
of the Jews as a people, although many readers took it literally.) In later
essays published in the Wagnerian journal, the Bayreuther Blätter, Wagner’s antisemitism
grew even more vitriolic and racist. Holding that artistic creativity was
a function of race, he saw Jews as the deadly opponent of the German spirit and
rejected their participation in the coming cultural regeneration of the Volk.
The thought processes of Volkish antisemites demonstrate the mind’s
monumental capacity for irrational thinking. Antisemites invented a mythical
evil who could be blamed for all the social and economic ills caused by the
rapid growth of industries and cities and for all the new ideas that were undermining
the old order. Their anxieties and fears concentrated on the Jews, to
whom they attributed everything they considered evil in the modern age, all
that threatened their traditional way of life and corrupted the German Volk.
They said that the Jews were responsible for the decay of a hitherto healthy
German body politic. To these people the great changes occurring in Germany
did not stem from impersonal historical forces but were the work of
Jews who had uncanny powers.
In the mythical world of Volkish thinkers, Jews were regarded as evil entrepreneurs
and international financiers who exploited hardworking and decent
Germans, manipulated the stock exchange, and caused depressions; as
international socialists who were dragging Germany into class war; as democrats
who were trying to impose an alien system of parliamentary democracy
on Germany; as cold and calculating intellectuals devoid of aesthetic sensibilities
who corrupted traditional German culture; as city people who had no ties
or love for the German soil; as materialists who were totally without German
spiritual qualities; as foreign intruders, “half Asiatics,” who could never be
loyal to the German fatherland; as racial inferiors whose genes could infect
and weaken the German race; and as international conspirators who were
plotting to dominate Germany.
The last two accusations—the Jew as a racial inferior and the Jew as an international
conspirator—were the most dangerous for the future of European
Jewry.
RACE: THE KEY TO HISTORY
Volkish thinkers were especially attracted to racist doctrines. Racist thinkers
held that race was the decisive factor in history and that not only physical features
but moral, esthetic, and intellectual qualities distinguished one race from