Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

Bistro Antisemitism: From Bierkeller to Soiree
Ben Cohen*
Examining the birth of modern antisemitism in Germany following the
Franco-Prussian war of 1870, the Swedish historian Hugo Valentin identified
perhaps the central theme of anti-Jewish agitation in the fin-de-siecle
period. “As the Jews were scattered over the whole world, they were
regarded as an ‘International,’ ” Valentin explained, “and therefore as enemies
of the national State.”
Valentin published his book Antisemitism in 1935—the same year that
the Nazi regime confirmed the inferior civil status of the un-German, alien
Jewish minority through the Nuremburg Laws. Were Valentin writing
today, it is likely that his assessment would be radically revised, for the
crime of the Jews in the post-Holocaust era is not internationalism, but tribalism.
Rather than diluting the national character of the societies in which
they live, Jews are regarded by their adversaries as guilty of subverting the
lofty goals of international peace and justice through the aggressive pursuit
of their own national project. Hence, one might say that antisemitism today
is no longer a form of racism so much as it is a form of anti-racism or anticolonialism.
How has this transformation come about? To answer this question, we
need to understand that while antisemitism is, for Jews, a murderous type of
prejudice that shares common characteristics with other racisms, for
antisemites themselves it is primarily a means for explaining the world.
This disparity in perception is important: too often, contemporary debates
concerning the charge of antisemitism revolve around whether the individual
so accused is personally ill disposed toward Jews. Invariably, such individuals
respond with an indignant denial. Even Rudolf Hoess, the notorious
commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, declared in his memoir
that, on a personal level, he didn’t dislike Jews; his fealty to the antisemitic
worldview, grounded on what he saw as its scientifically rigorous explana-
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