Racial Antisemitism - Nationalism and Antisemitism

Nationalism and Antisemitism

Racial antisemitism was preceded, especially in Germany, by antisemitism arising from Romantic nationalism. As racial theories developed, especially from the mid nineteenth-century onwards, these nationalist ideas were subsumed within them. But their origins were quite distinct from racialism. On the one hand they derived from an exclusivist interpretation of the 'Volk' ideas of Johann Gottfried Herder. This led to antisemitic writing and journalism in the second quarter of the 19th century of which Richard Wagner's Das Judentum in der Musik (Jewry in Music) is perhaps the most notorious example. On the other hand, radical socialists such as Karl Marx (himself of Jewish descent) identified Jews as being both victims and enforced perpetrators of the Capitalist system – e.g. in his article On the Jewish Question. From sources such as these, and encouraged by the broad acceptance of racial theories as the century continued, antisemitism entered the vocabularies and policies of both the right and the left in political thought.

Germany experienced strong industrial growth following its unification in 1871. Romantic nostalgia coalesced with the rising industrial middle class to form the Völkisch movement. Proponents became concerned with race: pre-Christian German pagan traditions and customs. Terms such as "teutonic" and "aryan" entered the vocabulary. Industrialist Theodor Fritsch financed publication of texts such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and reprints of Henry Ford's "The International Jew." The Germanenorden of 1912 was one such party to emerge from this movement.