{"id":31658,"date":"2019-01-27T18:00:19","date_gmt":"2019-01-27T17:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libmod.de\/?p=31658"},"modified":"2020-02-05T12:58:24","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T11:58:24","slug":"essay-on-the-alliance-between-anti-liberalism-and-anti-semitism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libmod.de\/en\/essay-on-the-alliance-between-anti-liberalism-and-anti-semitism\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Attack on a Jew is an Attack on the Liberal World"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u00a9 Shutter\u00adstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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On this date 74 years ago, the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau exter\u00admi\u00adnation camp. The 27th of January became the Day of Remem\u00adbrance for the Victims of National Socialism. Much has been subjected to critical analysis since then. What has been overlooked, though, is the alliance between anti-liber\u00adalism and anti-Semitism, an alliance that is still influ\u00adential today.\n

One can hardly accuse the criti\u00adcally thinking public in the West of under\u00ades\u00adti\u00admating the signif\u00adi\u00adcance of anti-liberal trends or failing to pay attention to the rise in anti-Semitic attitudes. Largely overlooked and under\u00ades\u00adti\u00admated, though, are the following:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The close associ\u00adation between and mutual inspi\u00adration of anti-liber\u00adalism and anti-Semitism.<\/li>\n
  2. The long lineage of this associ\u00adation, which first emerged in the mid-19th century and has re-emerged period\u00adi\u00adcally since then. Hermann Wagener, lawyer and Prussian minis\u00adterial official, politician and would-be founder of a political party, and ardent Jew-hater, laid out the theoretical under\u00adpin\u00adnings for this associ\u00adation, whose influence would continue to be felt well beyond his day. His book Das Judentum und der Staat (1857) saw the ultimate \u201cenemy of all state order\u201d in the \u201cso-called liber\u00adalism of the Jewish bourgeoisie\u201d. Displaying an aptitude for propa\u00adganda, Wagener linked ressen\u00adtiment towards Jews, inherited from past gener\u00ada\u00adtions, with arguments for preserving the monarchy. He could be sure of the appro\u00adbation of the Christian bourgeoisie, who found validation for their deep-seated distrust of the Jews in his work. Wagener\u2019s thinking also met with approval from the \u201closers\u201d \u2013 craftsmen and labourers \u2013 in the techno\u00adlogical and social upheaval of the time. In Wagener\u2019s work, liber\u00adalism and pluralism became quasi synonymous with Jewry and decadence. It was only a small step from there to Heinrich von Treitschke\u2019s dictum \u201cThe Jews are our misfortune\u201d (1879).<\/li>\n
  3. The cultural, social and political complexity of this sinister alliance; its cyclical resur\u00adgence, first in the first half of the 20th century and now again in the early decades of the 21st century; and, not of least signif\u00adi\u00adcance, its exponential increase in potency under certain social, economic and political conditions.<\/li>\n
  4. The fact that the extreme right end of the political spectrum is not and, histor\u00adi\u00adcally, has not been the only \u2013 or even the primary \u2013 locus of the origins and advocates of anti-liberal ideologies that rest to a substantial degree on arguments derived from or linked with anti-Semitic clich\u00e9s. In fact, university-educated, Christian-oriented, bourgeois circles within the mainstream of society consti\u00adtuted an essential resource for these ideologies both in the 19th century and during the Weimar period. It was in these circles that Wagener\u2019s writings were read, their destructive stereo\u00adtypes taken up and additional force lent to the wind sown by the author. Out of an anti-Judaism that had for centuries been justified primarily on religious grounds was born the modern form of anti-Semitism, which rests mainly on social and political arguments. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and his adepts used the newly constructed image of the \u201cJewish bourgeoisie\u201d as the enemy to repress liberal aspira\u00adtions and movements and shore up the, by then somewhat shaky, Prussian monarchy. This would not have been possible without an overtly anti-Semitic, illiberal class society. Eventually, in the years of the Weimar Republic, the smoul\u00addering coals inherited from Bismarck\u2019s empire flamed fully into the fire that incin\u00aderated all of the liberal ambitions of the time. It brought Hitler and his National Socialists to power and, a few years later, millions of Jews into the gas chambers.<\/li>\n
  5. The role that Christian religious bodies, well-estab\u00adlished cultural organi\u00adza\u00adtions and political parties played in enabling the sinister axis between anti-liber\u00adalism and anti-Semitism to develop such calamitous power. One of the key social groups influ\u00adencing public opinion in this context was the bourgeois Protestant milieu, from which the majority of people with university educa\u00adtions came.\u2028The political and cultural self-image of bourgeois Protes\u00adtants shaped a period that began after of World War I and lasted well into the Nazi era. In those days, people in these circles took a very sceptical view of Western parlia\u00admentary democracy and its notion of civic self-deter\u00admi\u00adnation and partic\u00adi\u00adpation. They saw themselves as \u201canti-liberal\u201d and \u201canti-democ\u00adratic\u201d. In this, they had the blessing of the [Protestant] Evangelical Church, which, while not requiring this political orien\u00adtation, did share it. To a substantial degree, it paved the way for the fusion of anti-liber\u00adalism and anti-Semitism into a specif\u00adi\u00adcally German ideology during the \u201cThird Reich\u201d. People in these circles did not neces\u00adsarily see themselves as national socialists in the sense of adherents of the political party. They did endorse and promote the Nazi regime\u2019s concept of the enemy though. The rejection of both Western liber\u00adalism and Eastern Bolshevism was inter\u00adtwined with racist anti-Semitism.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Anti-Semitic attitudes are not directed solely against their explicit target<\/h2>\n

    Research on all of this is scant and anything but systematic. What has been brought to light by the little research that has been done is just lying there, an occasional loose thread poking out. As though we balked at pulling them \u2013 and drawing any meaningful conclu\u00adsions. By virtue of being aimed at Jews, Jewish commu\u00adnities and the State of Israel, anti-Semitism also targets everyone and every\u00adthing associated with liberal modernity. In Germany, anti-Semitism takes aim not only at individual Jews and Jewish insti\u00adtu\u00adtions, but at the democ\u00adratic Republic as well, the Republic whose consti\u00adtution, the Grundgesetz of 1949, arose out of an awareness of respon\u00adsi\u00adbility for the Shoa and therefore contains, in its first article, a statement based so uncom\u00adpro\u00admis\u00adingly on the code of values of a liberal, plural\u00adistic social order: \u201cHuman dignity shall be invio\u00adlable\u201d. The Grundgesetz of the Federal Republic of Germany did not and does not intend only to safeguard the possi\u00adbility of a liberal way of life. It also pledges to promote the universal values of human dignity and democracy within and beyond German borders. It is the sole ethical framework to have legal effect for a German nation of the future. Anti-Semitic attitudes are therefore not directed solely against their explicit target. They are always also aimed at the code of values which pledges to protect freedom and pluralism as a binding standard. Those who attack Jews, Jewish commu\u00adnities or the State of Israel, are also attacking the concept of a liberal society. Every attack on Jews is an attack on the liberal world. <\/p>

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    The supposedly enlightened West is displaying an alarming inability to grasp its situation<\/h2>\n

    Those who have under\u00adstood this will re-evaluate what is going on around us, taking a consid\u00aderably broader perspective: what is happening in Hungary, where what amounted to a revocation of the license of the Central European University was accom\u00adpanied by an unprece\u00addentedly anti-Semitic public poster campaign vilifying George Soros, the CEU\u2019s principle benefactor; what is reaching us, in an ever increasing flood, from Putin\u2019s Russia, where journalists, writers on public affairs and media organ\u00adi\u00adsa\u00adtions are being black\u00adlisted and pilloried as Jewish in classic Der St\u00fcrmer style on platforms like Russia Insider; what is being expressed in the AfD\u2019s core party texts and day-to-day political state\u00adments. One hears this v\u00f6lkisch swill more often again \u2013 and by no means only from the regulars finishing each other\u2019s sentences at the local pub or at preten\u00adtiously eccentric student societies. It has reached yet another ignominious nadir in the book published recently by Bj\u00f6rn H\u00f6cke (Nie zweimal denselben Fluss), a leading figure in the AfD. Anti-liber\u00adalism is assem\u00adbling itself in Europe, drawing momentum both from Moscow and from the alt-right movement in the USA. It is trying, with the help of an anti-Semitism that is as blatant as it is brutal, to insinuate itself into every opportune fracture and conflict in a supposedly enlightened Western society which, in actual fact, is displaying an alarming inability to grasp its situation. As though we had learned nothing of moment from the past and were once again confronting the rekindled threat not en bloc, but as a conglom\u00ader\u00adation of na\u00efve and narcis\u00adsistic individual societies.<\/p>\n

    Anti-liber\u00adalism and anti-Semitism: an ideological symbiosis<\/h2>\n

    Against this backdrop, the tendency to reduce the anti-Semitic threat in Germany and Europe to the growing number of Muslim immigrants is also disturbing. The number of attacks on Jews and Jewish insti\u00adtu\u00adtions perpe\u00adtrated by Muslim Arab persons has increased \u2013 but the exclusive focus on this group, its culture and religion is as dangerous as that rise in numbers is indis\u00adputable. This narrow focus leaves out our own, homebrewed anti-liberal groupings, which are delib\u00ader\u00adately stoking anti-Semitic senti\u00adments and exploiting them for their own ends. Anti-Semitism is per se illiberal, while anti-liber\u00adalism exploits the illiberal strength of anti-Semitism for its own ends. We are dealing with an ideological symbiosis which is likely to stifle the idea of liberty, respect and pluralism should we fail to counter it through timely and decisive action. Anti-liber\u00adalism and anti-Semitism cannot be considered or combatted separately. They act in concert, the Janus face of a centuries-old, period\u00adi\u00adcally re-emerging threat.<\/p>\n

    \"Textende\"<\/p>\n

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