Anticapitalism and the Emergence of Antisemitism. Stephanie Chasin
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such as free speech, free trade, the freedom to worship, and tolerance, an increase in both antisemitism and anticapitalism is surely not coincidental just as, in the past, it was surely not coincidental that countries with a strong commercial economy were relatively more tolerant towards Jews.
Finally, this book does not take a classical approach to economic history with flow charts and mathematical equations. Instead, it grounds the history of antisemitism within a larger critique of an evolving economy based on capital and the overarching question about the common good versus individual liberty. There are, of course, other facets of antisemitism, but the economic stereotype is ←xiv | xv→the more insidious due to its longevity and its ability to hide under the mantel of “social justice.” This approach, and the time span involved, involves large questions which I hope offers something new in the history of antisemitism. It does not treat Jews as apart from society nor does it assume that all negative action or rhetoric towards Jews—individual or collectively—is irrational, “the chimerical fantasie of the “mysterious” Jew, or antisemitic. And it rejects any idea that the history of antisemitism is a long-connected chain of lachrymose events that ends at the gates of Auschwitz. In presenting a cacophony of voices in their historical context, I have attempted to avoid such a teleological account. Instead, the focus is on understanding how, when, and why certain people crafted and promoted the view that a mythical collective—“the Jews”—was the chief exponent of a an economic system they believed was based on theft, greed, corruption, and went against the common good. It is this book’s contention, in the strongest possible terms, that in both cases they were wrong. And so, too are the modern secular critics, of any political and social stripe, who took up this mantel, disrobed it of the religious garb, and promoted the same ideas for different purposes.8
Notes
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1.Sara Lipton, “A Terribly Durable Myth,” The New York Times Review of Books, June 27, 2019; Reuters, May 1, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-antisemitism/anti-semitic-attacks-rise-worldwide-in-2018-led-by-us-west-europe-study-idUSKCN1S73M1; VOA, May 30, 2019, https://www.voanews.com/europe/un-condemns-rising-antisemitism-europe-us; The Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-anti-semitism-11562944476; Eliot A. Cohen, “Socially Acceptable Anti-Semitism,” The Atlantic, March 6, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/belgian-carnival-float-shows-virus-anti-semitism/584251/; Jennifer Rubin, “Opinions: Occupy Wall Street: Does Anyone Care about the Anti-Semitism?” Washington Post, October 17, 2011, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/occupy-wall-street-does-anyone-care-about-the-anti-semitism/2011/03/29/gIQA43p8rL_blog.html?utm_term=.09e778eedf40; Gilet Jaunes devant la banque Rothschild: l’esclavage par l’usure, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U76_JoZ2Ul4.
2.Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism (Glencoe IL: Free Press, 1951); Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question (Cincinnati OH: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, 1958.
3.Julie L. Mell, The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender, vol. I and II (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017).
4.Werner Sombart, The Quintessence of Capitalism (Miami: Hardpress, 2017), Kindle ed., chap. 2; Washington Examiner, June 17, 2019, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/follow-the-money-john-cusack-apologizes-for-tweeting-anti-semitic-meme; Jillian Becker, “The Red Army Faction: Another Final Battle on the Stage of History,” Libertarian Alliance, http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/cultn/cultn012.pdf.
5.Niall Ferguson, Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), Kindle, Introduction and “Evolution,” and Afterword.
6.William N. Goetzmann, Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), Kindle ed., chap. 12; Ferguson, Ascent of Money, introduction.
7.R. H. Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society 1000-1500 (Cambridge: CUP, 1993), 1–2, 10; Goetzmann, Money Changes Everything, chap. 27.
8.Gavin I. Langmuir, Towards a Definition of Anti-Semitism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1990), 14. For books that treat antisemitism as an unceasingly tragic history of victim/oppressor, in varying degrees, see, for example, Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Antisemitism in England (Oxford: OUP, 2012); S.W. Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Random House, 2010 and Anti-semitism: The Longest Hatred (New York: Pantheon, 1982); David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2014); Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: A History of Antisemitism (Los Angeles: Facing History and Ourselves, 2011).
From the eleventh to the thirteenth century, new towns sprung up over Europe along the high roads and coastlines, subject to royal or seigniorial authority. They became centers for tax collecting, the trading of surplus goods, and the circulation of money. A multitude of newly-constructed monumental cathedrals and abbeys in the contemporary Gothic style soared towards the heavens, built at great expense for the good of the soul. Bridges, canals, and roads were constructed, all of which aided the transport of people and goods. As pilgrims made their often arduous journeys to view the body parts of saints in cathedrals, and theologians anxiously contemplated the omens in the skies, amber, honey, beeswax, glassware, basalt, metal jewelry, pottery, wool, and wine were carried across Europe. Tastes grew for more exotic items, and so spices (cumin, ginger, cardamom, and saffron) and luxurious textiles, such as silk and toile, arrived at ports from the Mediterranean, Africa, and the Levant. Aristocrats filled their drafty castles with tapestries, lit them with tallow candles, and decorated them with ever more comfortable furniture. They adorned themselves with more colorful and sumptuous textiles and jewels and bought armor to protect themselves in war.1
The late medieval world was one of hierarchy, privilege, servitude, and dependency. Private fortunes were concentrated in the hands of the monarchs and nobility and would continue to be for centuries to come. Up to the tenth century, ←1 | 2→the region was covered by forests and marshes, moors and heaths, and much of it was woefully unproductive. Life consisted of a network of obligations and duties with everyone born into their place in life as part of a