A European Phenomenon
The word Semite – derived from the biblical reference (Genesis 10) to Shem, one of the sons of Noah – was coined by German historian August Ludwig von Schlözer in 1781 and popularized by other scholars like Johann Gottfried Eichhorn. It was used to designate a group of languages spoken in the region of West-Asia (among others, Aramaic, Arabic and Hebrew). Although we can safely assume that for 18th century philologists, languages and peoples were completely interchangeable, it is logical that the initial focus was on languages, as at that time the very idea of nationhood was a work in progress at a very early stage.
The word Anti-Semitism, however, is almost exclusively used to designate hostility towards a people – the Jews – rather than all peoples who speak “Semitic” languages. Something must have happened as a result of which the philological, scientific orientation had been replaced by a political one. The term anti-Semitism was coined in the 1870s by Wilhelm Marr, perhaps to give a pseudo-scientific veneer to what would today be referred to more objectively in an analogy to Islamophobia (since we are talking about a religion) as Judeophobia. Around that time, there were an estimated total of 550,000 people identified as Jews living in Germany. These Jewish Germans spoke mostly German, although in more rural areas, Yiddish – although in rapid decline in Germany itself– was still spoken in the eastern parts as well as in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. Hebrew and Aramaic (for Talmudic scholarship) were not spoken languages but only used for religious and liturgical purposes.
The writer and journalist Wilhelm Marr popularized the term anti-Semitism in a racist sense, promoting a racial rather than religious opposition to Jews. This is extremely important. The timing of German anti-Semitism coincided with the creation of a unified German Empire. In 1879, Marr published a pamphlet entitled Der Weg zum Siege des Germanenthums über das Judenthum” (“The Way to Victory of Germanism over Judaism”). He thereby projected, that the becoming-nation of Germany could only be accomplished at the expense of its Jewish population (which only made up 1,5% of the total German population at that time).
It was Marr who promoted the idea that Jewishness was not tied to religion but to be understood as a racial category. It was Marr who emphasized that the German and Jewish nations were in an endless existential battle. It was Marr who stressed that Jews were infiltrating German public life, its laws and its institutions. In the same year that he published the pamphlet, Marr also founded the Antisemitenliga (League of Anti-Semites), the first organized anti-Semitic political organization in Europe.
What started as a pamphlet and a small political organization, quickly spread like an infectious disease across Germany, not because there was any truth in it, but because it was functional and served the interests of German nation-building. The German nation was very much a work in progress at that time. Only in 1871, after the end of the Franco-Prussian war, had a unified German Kaiserreich been established under Prussian ledership. It was still far from a unified nation. Distancing himself from his strong Antisemitism, Marr later explained that the political instability of Germany at that time was a main motivator of anti-Semitism. This strongly supports my argument in earlier posts, that anti-Semitism was primarily functional in terms of nation-building not through war but through the establishment of an enemy-within.
Anti-Semitism was not restricted to Germany of course. Racial theorists such as Joseph Arthur de Gobineau in France and Houston Stewart Chamberlain in England performed similar functions as Marr. Likewise in central and eastern Europe, the racialization of Jewishness enabled the establishment of a fixed and ready-made scapegoat, because it already had a longer history of pseudo-religious mythopoesis.
Historical records of vilifications of Jews are intertwined with Christian mythopoesis. In the Gospels of St Matthew and St. John “the Jews” are referred to as a powerful religious establishment that operated within the structures of the Roman Empire, often in complete disregard of the plight of the ordinary people (who were of course also Jews as well as Galileans and Samaritans etc.). But these were not myths and did not apply to individuals as some kind of inherent general characteristic or genus.
Mythopoetic elements emerged in Europe during the 12th century around a phenomenon called “blood libel”. In 1144 it was rumoured that in Norwich (England) a boy (William of Norwich) had been kidnapped and crucified by Jews. This became the basis of the myth of Jews killing Christian children to use their blood for Passover rituals. In subsequent centuries, this myth was linked to other incidents across Europe. The mythic construction of Jewish as the enemies of Christianity also included allegations of desecrations of the Eucharist, as well as being the source of pestilence (including the Black Death). In general, these myths portrayed Jews in relation to secret organizations and conspiracies. It is easy to understand how writers such as Wilhelm Marr could mobilize these populist medieval Christian mythopoetic references to fuel his racialization of Judeophobia into anti-Semitism. However, the distinction between treated Judaism as a hostile religion and treating Jews as a hostile race should not be ignored. Whereas the first distinction entails an ideological foundation, the second anchors the “evil” into the genus of an alleged “race”.
This definition of anti-Semitism is the one that had inspired Adolf Hitler when he wrote Mein Kampf. For Hitler, Jews were an ethnic group that lived amongst Aryans and sometimes even looked like them, but they were not of the same genus. For him, the main component of Jewishness was a contradiction: On the one hand, Jews were a degenerate, inferior race; on the other hand, they were intelligent and manipulative schemers who had been able to undermine the health of the superior, Aryan race for centuries. This contradictory trope in which inferior entities become an existential threat to the supposedly superior race is the foundation of all identity thinking that suggests that there is a direct connection between genetics (race) and mimetics (culture). For example, it can be found in associations made in justifications of the genocide in Gaza by asserting that Palestinians (genetics) are inherently terrorists (mimetics). It is not a secret that proponents of Zionism often also propagate Jewish exceptionism (to prohibit comparisons between the Holocaust and other genocides and between anti-Semitism and other racisms), which is based on exactly the same logic.
Hitler asserted that the Weimar Republic was plagued by three types of cultural diseases: Capitalism, Bolshevism and Liberalism. All three diseases were related to what he referred to as “international Jewry”. The alternative to all three was National-Socialism. However, it had very little to do with socialism, but instead its political-economic programme was that of Corporatism: using the State to serve the interests of big corporations and of course rich people. Contemporary examples of this political-economic system are Russia, China and the USA. These are all merely variations of the same principles of Corporatism.
For Marr as well as Hitler, anti-Semitism was justified as “Germany defending itself”. Germany would not be able to stop the cultural, intellectual, economic and moral degeneration (which were all derived from biological defeneration), as long as Jewish people were in control of financial institutions, businesses, universities, schools, hospitals, political parties etc. This so called “Jewish Question” (which originally emerged in the wake of the French Revolution in 1789 and referred to the issue whether Jews could be integrated into a national society), became itself a hyperstition in the 1920. As with so many hyperstitions, its non-sensical origins are being erased simply be means of repetition, as if there is anything substantial to it. By repeating it, its substance becomes the sign value of being talked about. The mechanism is the same as that of celebrities who are merely being famous for being famous.
Of course, would Hitler be asked about the Jewish Question today, he would probably counter this by asking: Does Germany have a right to exist? Or: “Does Germany have a right to defend itself?” These questions may sound familiar by now. He would also claim that whatever Germany is being accused of, is the work of lies and propaganda by the enemies of Germany, who have been working tirelessly to degenerate and weaken the German race from the inside and from the outside.
What should be clear however is the functionality of anti-Semitism for nation building around a form of identity thinking that asserts that mimetics are the product of genetics. This emerged only in Europe because only in Europe there was this mythopoetic precursor of pitching Judaism as a threat to Christianity. Thus, there is no Islamic anti-Semitism. There might be Muslims who express anti-Semitic sentiments, but since Islam is not a nation and since Islam does not conceptualize Judaism as an antithetical religion, it cannot be used either theologically or historically in analogy to Christianity.
Even within institutionalized Christianity, issues around anti-Judaic mythopoetics have always been controversial. The accusations surrounding the murder of Simon of Trent (1475) resulted in a feud between the Bishop of Trent (Prince-Bishop Johannes Hinderbach) and Pope Sixtus IV, with the latter condemning the torture and execution of seventeen Jews. Simon of Trent was never officially canonized and those who venerated them were considered to be a cult.
Hence, the roots of European anti-Semitism are far more entrenched in nationalism than in religion. The fact that today, Europe is still completely structured on the basis of the same kind of mythopoetic nationalism that was cultivated in the latter part of the 19th century, helps us explain why European political culture has such a strange relationship with anti-Semitism. It helps us explain why so many nationalists are very keen to embrace alternative mythopoetics such as “Islamic Anti-Semitism” or “Anti-Israel Antisemitism” or simply equate Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism. By inventing all kinds of new forms of anti-Semitism, it becomes easier to cover up the fact that European ethno-nationalisms were themselves forged by anti-Semitism and could never have existed without it. Just as Orientalism enabled Europe to imagine itself as a unified “Occident” against an imagined outside-enemy (Edward Said), so did anti-Semitism enable Europe to imagine itself as a unified genetic-mimesis against an imagined enemy-within.
However, the strange history of anti-Semitism does not stop here.
Disaffected Sociology 
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