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Anti-Semitism BEFORE Adolf Hitler : what do you think?

As we know Adolf Hitler did not invent a lot : he was simply a very, very talented communicator . His message was repetitive , over-simplify and also contradictory (e.g. how can Japanese be seen as sorts of ‘Aryans’? Never seen a blonde and blue eyed Japanese! By contrast, you find scores of tall, blonde and blue-eyed Russians but Hitler hated them). Pan-Germanism, German Nationalism, Socialism mixed with Nationalism : all things already existing. There were various militant far-right Parties in Germany before the rise of Hitler , not all openly anti-Semitic.

The point is : Adolf Hitler (probably not an anti-Semite in his youth, given that he worked with Jews) DID NOT invent Anti-Semitism. So where did it come from?

Karl Lueger, a very popular Major in Vienna during the period 1897-1910 was an anti-Semite, for example. Also Voltaire attacked the Jews in his writings : for me, Voltaire represents the first instance of anti-Semitism because he was not writing from the viewpoint of religious criticism, since he opposed also Christianity and Islam. So, anti-Judaism is transfromed into anti-Semitism . Even Karl Marx with his essay ‘ On the Jewish question’ may have inspired modern anti-Semitism. Wagner was an anti-Semitic German Nationalist even if calling him a proto-Nazi seems to me exaggerated ( he also hated personally some Jewish musician like Meyerbeer). The pioneer automobile manufacturer Henry Ford propagated antisemitic ideas in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent (published by Ford from 1919 to 1927). As for the pogroms in Imperial Russia, they were more linked to the old anti-Judaism of the Russian peasantry , with a mainly Eastern Orthodox Culture, than motivated by mere nationalism or by racist conceptions likely the Nazi ones.

Your opinions? Your corrections? Books? Films?

submitted by /u/JakkoMakacco
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Source: Reditt