Volume 4 No 2 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] MONUMENTAL TREATISE AND MONUMENTAL REVIEW 763gogues of the right had no use for socialist internationalism: they pitchedtheir appeal in stridently nationalist “fatherland” terms, laying the basis forwhat became the dual appeal of Nazism in particular and fascism in general,nationalism and socialism combined. The success of the immensely popularLueger in being voted repeatedly into office as mayor of Vienna—the onlyinstance in Europe until after World War I that a party officially and vociferouslyantisemitic was to do so—on the strength of his antisemitic oratoryshould have sufficed to compel socialist intellectuals to abandon their beliefthat the workers and left-wing parties preferred internationalism to nationalismand were impervious to racial or religious prejudice, but with fewexceptions they and socialist leaders never snapped out of their somnolence.Rather, they were impressed with Lueger’s success in rallying the workersto his banner, so much so that they preferred utilizing instead of combatingantisemitism. The populist antisemitic rhetoric was also directed against theestablished moderate and liberal parties, which was also welcome to socialistsas undermining those parties, putatively their worst enemies, and givingan advantage to the socialist cause. Some socialists crowed that antisemitismwas “the cultural manure for socialism” and “the seedbed of SocialDemocracy,” and that the antisemites were “incipient Socialists.” A moresimplistic, unrealistic reading of history and prognosis of the future is hardto imagine, for it assumed that antisemitism is a simple matter of socialeconomics, utterly forgetting its ancient religious and cultural roots and itstenacious staying power. Hitler, unfortunately, was a more clear-eyedobserver of Lueger and the populist demagogues than were the socialists. Aparallel development occurred in France with the populist demagogues onthe right—Drumont, Morés, and Barrés—who trumped the left by whatWistrich calls a “cross-fertilization” of antisemitic ideas between theextreme left and right that provided the basis for a nationalist-socialist orfascist ideology for which antisemitism served as the integrating force ofsuch disparate elements. Wistrich’s understanding of this complex subjectis one of the keenest insights he affords the reader, one he extends in theform of generalizations positing that nationalism cannot be ignored, thatsuccessful communist revolutions in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, andThird World countries and societies succeeded because they spliced socialismand nationalism together, and that the perpetual invocation of internationalismamounts to little more than ideological tinsel.Given their species of analysis, it is not surprising that in the face ofantisemitism the socialist parties, particularly in Austria and Germany, werepassive or worse, and one may wonder if Wistrich’s use of ambivalence inhis title is too generous a term, that it might better be indifference or somethingharsher. Almost all socialists adhered steadfastly and dogmatically toMarx’s 1844 analysis. Hence, they theorized—and argued vehemently—