41845358-Antisemitism

CHAPTER 3
THE DIABOLIZATION
OF JEWS *
DEMONS, CONSPIRATORS,
AND RACE DEFILERS
The whole history of the world knows no other example of a homeless, definitively
physically, and psychically degenerate people, simply through fraud and cunning,
through usury and jobbing ruling over the orbit of the world.
—Otto Glagau, 1876 1
Our war is not a Spanish civil war, it is a war of Western civilization against the
Jews of the entire world.
—General Queipo de Llano, October 6, 1936 2
TWO RELATED FACTORS MAKE ANTISEMITISM A UNIQUE form of hatred.
One is its seeming indestructibility. The Enlightenment’s insistence that
reason be applied to all inherited dogmas and its plea for toleration did not
eradicate it. The late nineteenth century, which was the apogee of liberalism,
* Some of the material in this chapter first appeared in Marvin Perry, An Intellectual History
of Modern Europe. © 1993 Houghton Mifflin Company. Reprinted with permission.
Sections also appeared in Marvin Perry and Frederick M. Schweitzer, eds., Jewish-
Christian Encounters over the Centuries: Symbiosis, Prejudice, Holocaust, Dialogue. © Peter
Lang Publishing 1994. Reprinted with permission.