Jewish conspiracy and the Boer War

I don't think it is necessarily the case that racism is limited to the right. There are always left strands in populism and always racist strands in populism. One of the more important antisemites in American history was Father Charles Coughlin who had a weekly radio show during the depression where he called for progressive economic policy. (Roosevelt's New Deal wasn't enough for him.) But even today in the anti-immagration movement, you see strands of left racism. But what does seem to me to be different here is that people like John Burns were anti-racists as well as economic leftists. There were also anti-racists among the German antisemites of the late 1800s, but the British left probably had a better claim to being overall anti-racist. It certainly is remarkable that antisemitism can flourish among anti-racists.

A few historians have tried to explain why antisemitism had such a central role in the Holocaust. (Although many non-Jews were killed by the Nazis as well, the racist ideology and even the motor of Nazism focused specifically on Jews.) Antisemitism in Germany comprised a broad coalition of left and right that was often only tied together by antisemitism. Even in the writings of specific individuals in the late 1800s, antisemitism was often the only thread tying together incongruous ideologies. Strangely, that often meant that those writings focused on specifics and barely mentioned antisemitism, even for works with titles like "Why we are antisemites."

Moishe Postone put out an interesting theory. As Nazism was heavily influenced by German Romanticism, it often seemed very anti-modern, but at the same time, it was very pro-industrial. To Postone, Jewishness represented the intangible qualities of modernity or even the principle of abstractness itself. In what I think is a stark contrast to other forms of racism, then, Jews themselves were the anthropormorphism of Jewishness, and it was Jewishness rather than Jews that was hated.

The Holocaust was characterized by a sense of ideological mission, by a relative lack of emotion and immediate hate (as opposed to pogroms, for example), and, most importantly, by its apparent lack of functionality. The extermination of the Jews seems not to have been a means to another end. They were not exterminated for military reasons or in the course of a violent process of land acquisition (as was the case with the American Indians and the Tasmanians). Nor did Nazi policy toward the Jews resemble their policy toward the Poles and the Russians which aimed to eradicate those segments of the population around whom resistance might crystallize in order to exploit the rest more easily as helots. Indeed, the Jews were not exterminated for any manifest "extrinsic" goal. The extermination of the Jews was not only to have been total, but was its own goal—extermination for the sake of extermination—a goal that acquired absolute priority.

It is not only the degree, but also the quality of power attributed to the Jews that distinguishes anti‑Semitism from other forms of racism. Probably all forms of racism attribute potential power to the Other. This power, however, is usually concrete, material, or sexual. It is the potential power of the oppressed (as repressed), of the "Untermenschen." The power attributed to the Jews is much greater and is perceived as actual rather than as potential. Moreover, It is a different sort of power, one not necessarily concrete. What characterizes the power imputed to, the Jews in modern anti‑Semitism is that it is mysteriously intangible, abstract, and universal. It is considered to be a form of power that does not manifest itself directly, but must find another mode of expression. It seeks a concrete carrier, whether political, social, or cultural, through which it can work. Because the power of the Jews, as conceived by the modern anti-Semitic imagination, is not bound concretely, is not "rooted," it is presumed to be of staggering immensity and extremely difficult to check. It is considered to stand behind phenomena, but not to be identical with them. Its source is therefore deemed hidden—conspiratorial. The Jews represent an immensely powerful, intangible, international conspiracy.

So if racism is tangibly connected to individuals while antisemitism is intangible and only later connected to individuals, perhaps that explains how antisemitism can flourish among antiracists?

I should note that I don't necessarily agree with Postone. His view, though, is an interesting one, and there are few explanations for why antisemitism does function the way it does. Other racisms don't implicate groups in conspiracy theories. Only antisemitism flourishes in places where there are no Jews. (Including contemporary Poland, which has almost no Jews left, and Japan, which never had many. In the most extreme form of blaming Jews where there weren't any, Jews have been blamed for Adam and Eve's fall from grace!) Many other groups suffer from similar stereotypes (since many Orientalists modeled their theories on the only "Orientals" they knew - the Jews of Europe), but racism against them doesn't take the same forms. Antiracists may be divided on how much energy to put into combatting model-minority myths, but they recognize them for what they are.