Our friend Norman Podhoretz is interviewed in today’s New York Times on the topic of his new book, “Why Are Jews Liberals.” Here’s one question that caught my eye:
[Q]Why is it such a puzzle to you? Anti-Semitism and the Nazi Party were invented by the political right.
[A]It’s a little more complicated than that, but the rise of Hitler was certainly the culmination of a long history of hostility on the right. But there’s been a complete reversal of roles. Whereas the right was once full of anti-Semites, since the Six-Day War of 1967, the right — and especially the religious right — has become more pro-Israel, and the left — as exemplified by intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal and a magazine like The Nation — has become more hostile.
I think my disagreements — and agreements — with Podhoretz should be fairly obvious. But rather than get into a dispute of interpretation let us turn to something closer to his beat than mine: Anti-Semitism.
The New York Times’s interviewer says that anti-Semitism was invented by the political right.
This is simply absurd on too many levels.
Of course, we can get bogged-down in semantics. What’s the political right? What do we mean by anti-Semitism? etc. But if we simply mean Jew-hatred — or Hebrew hatred — it’s just wildly silly to say that the political right, or any meaningful political faction in today’s context, “invented” it. I would like to think this is something I don’t have to demonstrate by consulting the Bible, the Koran or several thousand years of history.
As for anti-Semitism, which is more specific than mere Jew hatred, it’s simply not true to say that it was invented by the political right. It was invented by Wilhelm Marr, a German radical, atheist, and leftist. He coined the word, and concept, in his 1879 tract The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism (Der Weg zum Siege des Germanentums über das Judentum). Unlike the old-fashioned Judenhass — Jew hatred — anti-Semitism was modern and scientific, unconcerned with theology. It was progressive! Indeed, Marr hated assimilated Jews more than orthodox ones.
Meanwhile, anti-Semitism as a political movement has its roots in the Left. Karl Marx, the quintessential self-hating Jew, was writing about the “Jewish Question” in what can only be called anti-Semitic (by today’s usage) terms long before Hitler was born. Here’s Tyler Cowen (no fan of my book, if memory serves):
The growing nineteenth-century socialist movements did little to stem the anti-Semitic tide and often explicitly promoted anti-Semitism. The initial link between socialism and anti-Semitism arose through intellectual affinity. Throughout the nineteenth century, the socialist critique of capitalism and the anti-Semitic critique used the same arguments. Many socialists considered anti-Semitism to be a way station on the path toward a more consistent socialist viewpoint. The very first systematic socialist philosophers, the French Utopians of the early nineteenth century, had implicated the Jews in their critique of capitalism. French Jewry was highly commercial, financial, and capitalistic. Proudhon and Fourier, who stressed the abolition of usury, saved their most vitriolic anti-Semitic tirades for Jewish moneylenders.
And as I duscuss in my book the German Communists fighting the Nazis competed for German support by trying to out-do the Nazis in their denunciation of the Jews. The Communist Ruth Fisher proclaimed, “Whoever cries out against Jewish capitalists is already a class warrior, even when he does not know it . . . Kick down the Jewish capitalists, hang them from the lampposts, and stamp upon them.”
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Germany became the first country to develop systematic anti-Semitic political and intellectual movements. In Germany, Adolf Stocker’s Christian Social Party (1878-1885) combined anti-Semitism with left-wing, reformist legislation. The party attacked laissez-faire economics and the Jews as part of the same liberal plague. Stocker’s movement synthesized medieval anti-Semitism, based in religion, and modern anti-Semitism, based in racism and socialist economics. He once wrote: I see in unrestrained capitalism the evil of our epoch and am naturally also an opponent of modern Judaism on account of my socio-political views. Stocker had revered the Prussian aristocracy since his youth.
Georg Ritter von Schonerer led the left-wing, anti-Semitic movement in Austria. Schonerer’s German Liberal Party, developed a lower-middle-class, anti-Semitic, anti-capitalistic platform in the 1880s. Schonerer directed his anti-Semitism at the economic activity of the Rothschilds; he advocated nationalization of their railroad assets. Later, he broadened his charges to attack Jewish merchants more generally. Hitler was an avid admirer of Schonerer, and as a young man even hung Schonerer’s slogans over his bed.
And as I duscuss in my book the German Communists fighting the Nazis competed for German support by trying to out-do the Nazis in their denunciation of the Jews. The Communist Ruth Fisher proclaimed, “Whoever cries out against Jewish capitalists is already a class warrior, even when he does not know it . . . Kick down the Jewish capitalists, hang them from the lampposts, and stamp upon them.”
Has there been anti-Semitism on the political right? Of course. Could you make the case that Jew-hatred (as opposed to anti-Semitism) has its roots on the Right or was dominant there for a significant period of time? Yeah, you could, but it’d be a very complex argument and you’d have to define your terms very carefully and very tendentiously.
But as for anti-Semitism, the famous “socialism of fools,” well that has its roots in, well, socialism.