On "Anti-Semitism"

[ck4829]

There has been a debate recently on DU, on whether Anti-Arab prejudices be termed "Anti-Semitism".

The fact of the matter is that neither Anti-Jewish or Anti-Arab prejudices should be called Anti-Semitism.

Why, you ask?

The term "Anti-Semitism" was actually created by what you could call an Anti-Semitic person.

"Wilhelm Marr (1819-1904) was a German agitator and theorist, who coined the term "anti-Semitism" as a euphemism for the German Judenhass, or "Jew-hate".

Marr was an unemployed journalist, who claimed that he had lost his job due to Jewish interference. A political conservative, he was influenced by the conservative pan-German movement, as expounded by Johann Gottfried von Herder, who developed the idea of the Volk, and the Burschenschaft movement of the early nineteenth century, which developed out of frustration among German students at the failure of the Congress of Vienna to create a unified state out of all the territories inhabited by the Volk. The latter rejected the participation of Jewish and other non-German minorities as members, "unless they prove that they are anxious to develop within themselves a Christian-German spirit" (a decision of the "Burschenschaft Congress of 1818"). While they were opposed to the participation of Jews in their movement, like Heinrich von Treitschke later, they did allow for the possibility of the Jewish (and other) minorities participating in the German state if they were to abandon all signs of ethnic and religious distinctiveness and assimilate completely into German Volk.

Marr took these philosophies one step further by rejecting the premise of assimilation as a means for Jews to become Germans. In his pamphlet Der Weg zum Siege des Germanentums über das Judentum (The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism, 1879) he introduced the idea that Germans and Jews were locked in a longstanding conflict, the origins of which he attributed to race — and that the Jews were winning. He argued that Jewish emancipation resulting from German liberalism had allowed the Jews to control German finance and industry. Furthermore, since this conflict was based on the different qualities of the Jewish and German races, it could not be resolved even by the total assimilation of the Jewish population. According to him, the struggle between Jews and Germans would only be resolved by the victory of one and the ultimate death of the other. A Jewish victory, he concluded, would result in finis Germaniae (the end of the German people). To prevent this from happening, in 1879 Marr founded the League of Anti-Semites (Antisemiten-Liga), the first German organization committed specifically to combating the alleged threat to Germany posed by the Jews and advocating their forced removal from the country."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Marr

The term in itself was a creation of the people who later became the Nazis.

So, for the people who were the victims of Nazi hatred, and the victims on both sides of the conflict today, I really think we should stop using the term "Anti-Semitism".

[Uppanotch]

1. Wilhelm's logic is based on a lie. Judaism is a religion, not a race. nt

nt

[newyawker99]

2. Hi Uppanotch!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[bryant69]

3. Not entirely true

It is an ethnicity and a religion. But, crackpots like Ben Shapiro aside, one can be a non-religious Jew without being a self hating jew or a bad jew.