Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 alpha 4/15/85; site ubvax.UUCP
Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!pesnta!amd!amdcad!cae780!ubvax!tonyw
From: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.politics.theory
Subject: Anti-Semitism and history
Message-ID: <382@ubvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 9-Dec-85 22:35:03 EST
Article-I.D.: ubvax.382
Posted: Mon Dec  9 22:35:03 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Dec-85 17:46:55 EST
References: <4188@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> <360@ubvax.UUCP> <614@unc.unc.UUCP> <366@ubvax.UUCP> <167@ucbjade.BERKELEY.EDU> <260@gargoyle.UUCP>
Reply-To: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Organization: Ungermann-Bass, Inc., Santa Clara, Ca.
Lines: 68
Xref: lsuc net.politics:2489 net.politics.theory:718

In article <260@gargoyle.UUCP> carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) writes:
>Racism, then, is not just a disposition to prejudge people by their
>color or ethnicity -- it also includes an ideological component (the
>supposed innate inferiority of the group, their having smaller
>brains, a "backward" culture, etc.) to lend intellectual and moral
>respectability to domination.

I'd concur with this.  Racism depends on power; power relationships are
asymmetrical.  It's an egalitarian fallacy to apply the same standards
to the powerless as to the powerful.  Jesus said the meek shall inherit
the earth, not everyone.

>About anti-Semitism:  Blacks are looked down on because they are
>supposedly inferior, but they are tolerated or even liked as long as
>they "stay in their place."  Jews are hated because they are
>*different*.  Jews have a strong group identity and resist
>assimilation into the prevailing culture, and this strong and opposed
>identity is perceived as a threat by a person whose own sense of
>identity and integration is weak and who derives security from having
>everyone else think like himself.
...
>-- 
>Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes

I'll never understand why ego-psychology explanations of social behavior
attract people so.  Individual psychology is probably *least* important
in a long chain of causes, such as politics, power, economics, sexuality,
etc.., involved in most social behavior.

My theory would go as follows (for Europe, but maybe it could be extended):

1.  Jews in Europe were vulnerable.  In particular, they were excluded
    from political decision-making unless their presence could not be
    avoided.

2.  Jews had a cosmopolitan, international identity when states needed
    to encourage more popular participation by building national myths.
    So Jewish habits of survival got in the way of state growth.

3.  In less developed countries, Jews were self-sufficient and not under
    bureaucratic authorities (i.e. in Russia and Slavic countries).  They
    fell out of feudal patterns of obligation and protection.  And they
    didn't organize dangerous peasant revolts.

4.  In more developed countries, the success of Jews who had never
    depended on land made declining aristocratic classes look silly.

    Aristocratic classes managed the transition of many states into nations,
    esp. in Central and Eastern Europe.  They took their bitterness
    out on Jews by denying Jews membership in the different sets of
    groups that each state called "part of the nation".

    That's especially important because many European definitions of citizen
    are based on the transferral of aristocratic privileges and rights
    to ethnic and national groups, not on egalitarian definitions of
    abstract people, mentioned in constitutions (New World).

    So in much of Europe, esp. Central and Eastern Europe, groups which
    were not "part of a nation" by the divine hand of history (guided
    by aristocrats of an earlier period) had no fundamental rights at
    all.  If they had any role, it was well-defined as exploitable.

5.  Jews were anti-militaristic (this easily follows from 1-4).  In a
    militaristic age, anti-militarism incurred resentment from the
    walking wounded of Europe's wars.

Tony Wuersch
{amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw