Let’s get off the side issue of right vs. left for a moment and restate the question as Why have Jews historically been singled out for persecution?
Throughout much of its history (indeed up until just the last several decades) many Christian sects believed, and even openly taught that the Jewish people collectively were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ
During the Middle Ages, Christianity taught that lending money with interest was a form of usury, therefore theft, therefore a sin. This left the development of the banking industry open to Jews, hence, the assumption that they controlled the money.
Jews have historically been a minority group, often squeezed into ghettos. This made them easy to target.
There are other reasons, but those three will serve as a good starting point.
Before anything else emerges from the woodwork, and noting that there was a long and acrimonious GD thread about Why have Jews historically been singled out for persecution? recently (without the allegation about the “radical right”, and which you can search out if you have a high nausea threshold), let me directly address the OP.
People suck. Hating Jews and other groups fills a need, can be a means to political ends and provides a welcome distraction from one’s own failings.
It would be interesting to know how Jim B. arrives at his definition of “radical right wingers”.
Ya know, I rushed to point out the fallacy in the OP so quickly that I failed to address his question:
I don’t think there is any common thread. While nascent hate movements almost invariably attempt to link their ideology to earlier ones (usually in order to evoke the sense of eternity that an emphasis on tradition requires), that doesn’t mean that their historical causes are similar. In other words, they may use the same methods but the proximate situations differ.
So let’s consider the two instances cited. At least part of the reason for Hitler’s rise to power was the economic situation in Germany. Economic factors may also be said to contribute to the popularity of Islamic fundamentalism. The Nazis played off long-standing notions of Jewish perfidy and sometimes found the Zionist movement to be a suitable example of this (yet they also tried to collaborate with the Zionists because, after all, the extrication of Jews from Germany was a shared goal). Muslim fundamentalists also utilize the idea of Jewish treachery and look to Israel for the justification of such a belief. But both of these analyses fail to take into account other factors–the differences in the kind of economic development (and travails) between the two regions, the exact relationship of Israel to said group, the extant social structure.
Also, a facile portrayal of anti-Semitism as being rooted in the resentment of Jewish success does not account for the various and multi-faceted forms of anti-Semitism that have existed throughout history. Were this the case, it would have to refer to something exclusively Jewish and there have been other ethnicities whose economic ascent has engendered similar animosity.
I would like to point out that the American Democratic party is left leaning, but Democratic does not imply left leaning at all in other countries or cultures.
Furthermore, the fact that “national socialism” contains the word “socialism” in it does not mean that the Nazis were socialist in any meaningful sense.
Nonetheless, the observation that anti-semitism is not exclusive to the right is sound. There are plenty of left-wing anti-semites out there.
The 25 point platform of the NSDAP. Other than the racist stuff, sounds like typical Euro-socialist fare to me. Some of it is quite hard-core lefty:
And so forth. Face it, these guys couldn’t get on the GOP ticket, that’s for sure. And as long as they claimed their anti-Semitism was merely opposition to Israeli policies, they could make some hay with the campus crowd.
Yes, because it’s obvious to anyone with a brain that the only reason anyone opposes the policies of the Israeli government is because they anti-semites in disguise. :rolleyes:
:rolleyes: Are you saying anti-semitism is more apparently compatible with conservatism? The reason is that lots of people are hypocrites and a lot of people talk about rights for everyone but aren’t really talking about everyone.
None of that is in Revelation. Contrary to popular belief, the Book of Revelation says nothing at all about an antichrist.
The Jewish Messiah is expected to prove himself by his deeds. He will not have to prove lineage. He will have to rebuild the Temple and bring world peace and make the world worship one God. Those are the things which will define him as the Messiah. His lineage is incidental. Messiahship is not a birthright. The Messiah is not the Messiah until he fulfills all the expectations. Even if a bloodline were provable, it would only make him a potential Messiah (and by some Jewish traditions there is at least one potential Messiah alive in every generation).
By and large, I agree with your cite context. But Marx also penned this:
“*Money is the jealous God of Israel, besides which no other god may exist… * (Few sentences on how bad Money is) … The god of the Jews has been secularized and has become the god of this world.”
That’s a bit too sweeping to my taste. Of course we know that Karl was given to making rather sweeping statements on many subjects.
Also, he used disgusting stereotypes against his political adversaries:
“…Manetho narrates of the expulsion of the “leprous people” from Egypt. At the head of these people was an Egyptian priest, Moses. Lazarus, the leper, is therefore the archetype of the Jew, and Lasalle is the typical leper.”