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Socialist antisemitism concerns the manifestation of antisemitism in socialist movements and appears in various forms. While this phenomenon has been the subject of a significant number of scholarly writings, it is viewed by researchers as an understudied topic. [1] Researchers have argued that while socialists were not all prejudiced against Jews, some socialist movements did harbor antisemitic views. [2] Others extend their argument with the assertion that modern socialism is characterised by a longstanding antisemitic tradition. [3]
Some researchers have argued that in certain historical settings, the writings of Karl Marx have be interpreted in such a manner that allowed for a socialist antisemitism to be manifest. [4] [5] [6] Other researchers have argued that the most important element in nineteenth-century socialist antisemitism concerns the role of fascism in the context of the socialist intellectual history. [7]
European socialists and Jews have had a complex relationship. While socialist parties in the early 20th century aimed to create a classless society, they also grappled with antisemitism within their ranks and among the working class. [2] And socialist antisemitism in this period was treated as distinct from racial and clerical variants of anti-Jewish prejudice. [8] In Britain, Jewish workers were at times paradoxically viewed as a super-exploited fraction of the working class, but also an alien body, whose interests were antithetical to those of British workers. [9]
One understudied area is the history of antisemitism in Dutch labor unions, especially concerning early socialist leaders like Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis. Researchers argue that prejudice against Dutch Jews explains why Dutch Jewish workers were late in joining socialist movements. Apparently, this was because Domela Nieuwenhuis used stereotypes about Jews to attack his opponents, who relied on Jewish diamond cutters for support. After this conflict ended, antisemitism became less central a feature in Dutch labor unions. [10]
Lucien Chaze, French politician and mayor of Mustapha (1900-1903), has been described by researchers as one of the most active leaders of socialist antisemitism in French Algeria. [11]
The 1968 Polish political crisis saw the rise of an antisemitic effort by the Polish United Workers' Party to rid Jewish academics from their posts. [12]
In Hungary, between the 1950s and the 1970s, the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (HSWP) adopted policies to adapt older antisemitic language as proported anti-Zionist rhetoric in order to shift antisemitic manifestations within the party without the need to substantially address the issue. The move was viewed by the Hungarian Jewish community as a cynical ploy. Furthermore, the HSWP placed significant restrictions on the practice of the Jewish faith, especially the Sabbath. [13]
Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against, Jews. This sentiment is a form of racism, and a person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Primarily, antisemitic tendencies may be motivated by negative sentiment towards Jews as a people or by negative sentiment towards Jews with regard to Judaism. In the former case, usually presented as racial antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by the belief that Jews constitute a distinct race with inherent traits or characteristics that are repulsive or inferior to the preferred traits or characteristics within that person's society. In the latter case, known as religious antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by their religion's perception of Jews and Judaism, typically encompassing doctrines of supersession that expect or demand Jews to turn away from Judaism and submit to the religion presenting itself as Judaism's successor faith—this is a common theme within the other Abrahamic religions. The development of racial and religious antisemitism has historically been encouraged by the concept of anti-Judaism, which is distinct from antisemitism itself.
Soviet anti-Zionism is an anti-Zionist and pro-Arab doctrine promulgated in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. While the Soviet Union initially pursued a pro-Zionist policy after World War II due to its perception that the Jewish state would be socialist and pro-Soviet, its outlook on the Arab–Israeli conflict changed as Israel began to develop a close relationship with the United States and aligned itself with the Western Bloc.
New antisemitism is the concept that a new form of antisemitism developed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, typically manifesting itself as anti-Zionism. The concept is included in some definitions of antisemitism, such as the working definition of antisemitism and the 3D test of antisemitism. The concept dates to the early 1970s.
Jewish political movements refer to the organized efforts of Jews to build their own political parties or otherwise represent their interest in politics outside the Jewish community. From the time of the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans to the foundation of Israel, the Jewish people had no sovereign territory and were largely denied equal rights in the lands in which they lived. Thus, until the emancipation of the Jews in the 19th century, almost all Jewish political struggles were internal, and dealt primarily with either religious issues or local community concerns.
Robert Solomon Wistrich was a scholar of antisemitism, considered one of the world's foremost authorities on antisemitism.
Antisemitism, the prejudice or discrimination against Jews, has had a long history since the ancient times. While antisemitism had already been prevalent in ancient Greece and Roman Empire, its institutionalization in European Christianity after the destruction of the ancient Jewish cultural center in Jerusalem caused two millennia of segregation, expulsions, persecutions, pogroms, genocides of Jews, which culminated in the 20th-century Holocaust in Nazi German-occupied European states, where 67% European Jews were murdered.
Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism. Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—a region partly coinciding with the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way.
Antony Lerman is a British writer who specialises in the study of antisemitism, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, multiculturalism, and the place of religion in society. From 2006 to early 2009, he was Director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, a think tank on issues affecting Jewish communities in Europe. From December 1999 to 2006, he was Chief Executive of the Hanadiv Charitable Foundation, renamed the Rothschild Foundation Europe in 2007. He is a founding member of the Jewish Forum for Justice and Human Rights, and a former editor of Patterns of Prejudice, a quarterly academic journal focusing on the sociology of race and ethnicity.
The February Revolution in Russia officially ended a centuries-old regime of antisemitism in the Russian Empire, legally abolishing the Pale of Settlement. However, the previous legacy of antisemitism was continued and furthered by the Soviet state, especially under Joseph Stalin. After 1948, antisemitism reached new heights in the Soviet Union, especially during the anti-cosmopolitan campaign, in which numerous Yiddish-writing poets, writers, painters and sculptors were arrested or killed. This campaign culminated in the so-called Doctors' plot, in which a group of doctors were subjected to a show trial for supposedly having plotted to assassinate Stalin. Although repression eased after Stalin's death, persecution of Jews would continue until the late 1980s.
Racism in the Palestinian territories encompasses all forms and manifestations of racism experienced in the Palestinian Territories, of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, irrespective of the religion, colour, creed, or ethnic origin of the perpetrator and victim, or their citizenship, residency, or visitor status. It may refer to Jewish settler attitudes regarding Palestinians as well as Palestinian attitudes to Jews and the settlement enterprise undertaken in their name.
Antisemitism in contemporary Hungary principally takes the form of negative stereotypes relating to Jews, although historically it manifested itself more violently. Studies show antisemitism has become more prevalent since the fall of Communism, particularly among the younger generations. Surveys performed from 2009 and beyond have consistently found high levels of antisemitic feelings amongst the general population.
British Jews have experienced antisemitism - discrimination and persecution as Jews - since a Jewish community was first established in England in 1070. They experienced a series of massacres in the Medieval period, which culminated in their expulsion from England in 1290. They were readmitted by Oliver Cromwell in 1655. By the 1800s, an increasing toleration of religious minorities gradually helped to eliminate legal restrictions on public employment and political representation. However, Jewish financiers were seen by some as holding disproportionate influence on British government policy, particularly concerning the British Empire and foreign affairs.
The Jewish left consists of Jews who identify with, or support, left-wing or left-liberal causes, consciously as Jews, either as individuals or through organizations. There is no one organization or movement which constitutes the Jewish left, however. Jews have been major forces in the history of the labor movement, the settlement house movement, the women's rights movement, anti-racist and anti-colonialist work, and anti-fascist and anti-capitalist organizations of many forms in Europe, the United States, Australia, Algeria, Iraq, Ethiopia, South Africa, and modern-day Israel. Jews have a history of involvement in anarchism, socialism, Marxism, and Western liberalism. Although the expression "on the left" covers a range of politics, many well-known figures "on the left" have been Jews who were born into Jewish families and have various degrees of connection to Jewish communities, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, or the Jewish religion in its many variants.
The Second International, also called the Socialist International, was an organisation of socialist and labour parties, formed on 14 July 1889 at two simultaneous Paris meetings in which delegations from twenty countries participated. The Second International continued the work of the dissolved First International, though excluding the powerful anarcho-syndicalist movement. While the international had initially declared its opposition to all warfare between European powers, most of the major European parties ultimately chose to support their respective states in World War I. After splitting into pro-Allied, pro-Central Powers, and antimilitarist factions, the international ceased to function. After the war, the remaining factions of the international went on to found the Labour and Socialist International, the International Working Union of Socialist Parties, and the Communist International.
Henry Mayers Hyndman was an English writer, politician and socialist.
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators is a 1983 work by the American free-lance journalist, outspoken pro-Palestinian activist, Trotskyist and Jewish author Lenni Brenner. The book makes the argument that Zionist leaders collaborated with fascism, particularly in Nazi Germany, in order to build up a Jewish presence in Palestine.
Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) is a British organisation formed in 2017 for Jewish members of the Labour Party. Its aims include a commitment "to strengthen the party in its opposition to all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism ... to uphold the right of supporters of justice for Palestinians to engage in solidarity activities", and "to oppose attempts to widen the definition of antisemitism beyond its meaning of hostility towards, or discrimination against, Jews as Jews".
Anarchism in the Netherlands originated in the second half of the 19th century. Its roots lay in the radical and revolutionary ideologies of the labor movement, in anti-authoritarian socialism, the free thinkers and in numerous associations and organizations striving for a libertarian form of society. During the First World War, individuals and groups of syndicalists and anarchists of various currents worked together for conscientious objection and against government policies. The common resistance was directed against imperialism and militarism.
Anti-antisemitism is opposition to antisemitism or prejudice against Jews, and just like the history of antisemitism, the history of anti-antisemitism is long and multifaceted. According to historian Omer Bartov, political controversies around antisemitism involve "those who see the world through an antisemitic prism, for whom everything that has gone wrong with the world, or with their personal lives, is the fault of the Jews; and those who see the world through an anti-antisemitic prism, for whom every critical observation of Jews as individuals or as a community, or, most crucially, of the state of Israel, is inherently antisemitic". It is disputed whether or not anti-antisemitism is synonymous with philosemitism, but anti-antisemitism often includes the "imaginary and symbolic idealization of ‘the Jew’" which is similar to philosemitism.
Zionist antisemitism or antisemitic Zionism refers to a phenomenon in which antisemites express support for Zionism and the State of Israel. In some cases, this support may be promoted for explicitly antisemitic reasons. Historically, this type of antisemitism has been most notable among Christian Zionists, who may perpetrate religious antisemitism while being outspoken in their support for Jewish sovereignty in Israel due to their interpretation of Christian eschatology. Similarly, people who identify with the political far-right, particularly in Europe and the United States, may support the Zionist movement because they seek to expel Jews from their country and see Zionism as the least complicated method of achieving this goal and satisfying their racial antisemitism.