![]() ![]() It was a more obviously emotional matter than analysis purely by class, which is why Lenin used the slogan that “antisemitism is the socialism of fools.” But in terms of rationality, there was little to choose between the two. ![]() Modern theoretical antisemitism was a derivative of Marxism, involving a selection for reasons of national political or economic convenience of a particular section of the bourgeoisie as the subject of attack. Marx’s invention of the bourgeoisie was the most comprehensive of these hate theories, and it has continued to provide a foundation for all paranoid revolutionary movements, whether fascist nationalist or communist internationalist. The enemy, to be plausible, had to be an entire class or race. But modern secular faiths needed human devils, and whole categories of them. Christianity was content with a solitary hate figure to explain evil: Satan. Antisemitism seems to have made its appearance in Germany in the 1870s and 1880s at a time when a determinist type of social philosopher was using Darwin’s principle of natural selection to evolve laws to explain the colossal changes brough about by industrialism, the rise of megalopolis and the alienation of huge rootless proletariats. Paris was the city of the antisemitic intelligentsia. Until the Republic, antisemitism was not a disease to which Germany was thought to be especially prone. ![]() This was the principal reason why antisemitism made such astonishing headway in Weimar Germany. ![]()
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