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| The Merchant of Venice |
The
roots of anti-Semitism are nearly as old and deep as the tree of
humanity itself. From Biblical times through the blood libel of the
Middle Ages through "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" through
Nazi Germany and right through today, anti-Semitism has been a
malignancy that has eaten at the very souls of humanity.
"I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that."
- The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 1, 58-68
Revisionist
historians say that "Anti-Semitism is a product of the right-wing and
Naziism," as if to say that there has never been anti-Semitism on the
Left. Ignoring the fact that Fascism has much more in common with
Socialism than many would like to admit and both certainly are
totalitarian in nature, word, and deed and the opposite of Classical
Liberalism; it is simply untrue that anti-Semitism has not been a part
of leftist ideology. First of all, Karl Marx, himself, was
anti-Semitic. A few examples: "The Jews of Poland are the smeariest of all races." (Neue Rheinische Zeitung, April 29, 1849); he called Ferdinand Lassalle, "Judel Itzig – Jewish Nigger." (Der Jüdische Nigger, MEKOR III, 82, July 30, 1862), and "Ramsgate is full of Jews and fleas." (MEKOR IV, 490, August 25, 1879).
"The
struggle which is now beginning between the Zionist and Bolshevik
Jews is little less than a struggle for the soul of the Jewish people.”
- Winston Churchill
In
"On the Jewish Question," Karl Marx wrote "Money is the zealous one
God of Israel, beside which no other God may stand. Money degrades all
the gods of mankind and turns them into commodities. Money is the
universal and self-constituted value set upon all things. It has
therefore robbed the whole world, of both nature and man, of its
original value. Money is the essence of man's life and work, which have
become alienated from him: this alien monster rules him and he
worships it...The God of the Jews has become secularised and is now a
worldly God. The bill of exchange is the Jew's real God. His God is the
illusory bill of exchange...What is the foundation of the Jew in our
world? Practical necessity, private advantage...What is the object of
the Jew's worship in this world? Usury. What is his worldly God?
Money...Very well then: emancipation from usury and money, that is,
from practical, real Judaism, would constitute the emancipation of our
time."
“If we are socialists, then we must definitely be anti-Semites. How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-Semite?”
- Adolf Hitler, Munich, August 1920
While
Jews had been in Europe for a very long time, it wasn't until the
11th century and the disintegration of feudalism that they began to be
prohibited from certain occupations and sequestered in "quarters" or
"ghettos." These laws were the seeds that allowed Jews to become the
successful in the areas of finance, banking, commercial operations,
merchantilism, trade, specialised craftsmanship, etc. Whereas, European
Christians were more apt to farm the land, European Jews flourished
in the cities.
The Death of Venice
Because of the Church, Christians were not allowed to
lend money and charge interest. In the late 14th century, Christians
finally got into the banking business when Cosimo de'Medici created
the Medici Bank in the late 14th century and, even then, it took very
creative accounting to get around religious and municipal laws.
Nevertheless, the small Jewish community in Europe had a strong
foundation with the wealth, education, and culture upon which to
thrive.
In
the second half of the 19th century, Germany became the first
country to develop systematic anti-Semitic political and intellectual
movements. 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.”
"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.”
- Adolf Stocker, Socialist
E. J. Hobsbawm characterised the evolution of capitalism during the nineteenth century as both The Age of Revolution and The Age of Empire.
As Hobsbawn opines, "it was in this context of socio-political
disruption accompanying the process of modernity that the Jewish
populations were drawn into the whirlwind of European politics.
Anti-Semitism was part of the general xenophobia that came to the fore
during times of hardship. In countries like France, Germany, Sweden,
and Norway where Jews accounted for a small proportion of the
populations, anti-Semitism was directed at bankers, entrepreneurs, and
others who the little folks identified with the ravages of capitalism.
"Anti-Semitism," one German socialist leader, Bebel, felt, "was ‘the
socialism of idiots;'" yet, what strikes me as most important is that by
the end of the 19th century the idea that "Jew = Capitalist" was linked
in the minds of Socialists.
"Auschwitz
meant that six million Jews were killed, and thrown on the waste-heap
of Europe, for what they were considered: money-Jews. Finance capital
and the banks, the hard core of the system of imperialism and
capitalism, had turned the hatred of men against money and
exploitation, and against the Jews. . . . Antisemitism is really a
hatred of capitalism."
- Ulrike Meinhof, a left-wing German terrorist of the 1970s