Eliminationist antisemitism

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Eliminationist antisemitism is an extreme form of antisemitism which seeks to completely purge Jews and Judaism from society, either through genocide or through other means.[1] Eliminationist antisemitism evolved from older concepts of religious antisemitism.[2][3] The concept was developed by Daniel Goldhagen in his book Hitler's Willing Executioners to describe German antisemitism in the twentieth century, but has since been adapted and used to describe antisemitism in other societies and eras.

Origin[edit]

The concept was originally developed by Daniel Goldhagen in his book Hitler's Willing Executioners, in which he proposed that Germans harbored uniquely eliminationist antisemitism which led them to perpetrate the Holocaust.[4] Robert Wistrich is another historian who has written about the idea of eliminationist antisemitism with regards to Germany, although he does not believe the phenomenon is unique to Germany.[5][6][7] Goldhagen's thesis is not accepted by most historians of Germany.[8][9] For example, Helmut Walser Smith argues that "eliminationst antisemitism" was not common in Imperial Germany, but was found on the fringes of society voiced by such figures as Theodor Fritsch.[10]

Although he criticizes some aspects of Goldhagen's thesis, Aristotle Kallis contends that as Golhagen argues, eliminationism justifies ethnic cleansing and genocide by making such crimes seem desirable and justified to the perpetrators and their society.[11]

Other uses[edit]

In his more recent book The Devil that Never Dies: The Rise and Threat of Global Anti-Semitism, Goldhagen argued that eliminationist antisemitism has grown and spread since World War II.[12] The concept has since been adapted and is used to describe other antisemitism in other societies, such as Polish antisemitism[9][13] and antisemitism in the Muslim world.[14][15][16] For example, Robert Blobaum has argued that the antisemitism in Poland in the early twentieth century should be considered "eliminationist" because its aim was to completely remove the Jews from Poland.[9] The "a-semitism" of the Arrow Cross Party in Hungary has also been described as eliminationist.[17] Goldhagen's concept has also been expanded to analyze other forms of "eliminationist racism".[10]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Kallis, Aristotle (2008). Genocide and Fascism: The Eliminationist Drive in Fascist Europe. Routledge. p. 6. ISBN 978-1-134-30034-1.
  2. ^ Heni, Clemens (28 November 2017). "Antisemitism in the Twenty-first Century". Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism. 1 (1): 1–10. doi:10.26613/jca/1.1.1. S2CID 158850406.
  3. ^ Dan, Peter (2009). "Sanction for Genocide: Anti-Semitism and the Evolution of Evil". Studia Hebraica (9–10): 395–416. ISSN 1582-8158. CEEOL 161255.
  4. ^ Pfahl-Traughber, Armin (2013). Antisemitismus in der deutschen Geschichte (in German). Springer-Verlag. p. 155. ISBN 978-3-322-91380-7.
  5. ^ Wistrich, Robert (28 November 2017). "Thirty Years of Research on Antisemitism". Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism. 1 (1): 23–32. doi:10.26613/jca/1.1.3. S2CID 165608749.
  6. ^ Wistrich, Robert S. (2010). A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad. Random House Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-58836-899-7.
  7. ^ Beller, S. (2 December 2011). "A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, Robert S. Wistrich (New York: Random House, 2010), xii + 1,184 pp., cloth $40.00". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 25 (3): 474–476. doi:10.1093/hgs/dcr040.
  8. ^ Kühne, Thomas (2010). Belonging and Genocide: Hitler's Community, 1918-1945. Yale University Press. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-300-16857-0.
  9. ^ a b c Blobaum, Robert (2005). Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland. Cornell University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-8014-8969-3.
  10. ^ a b Smith, Helmut Walser (2008). "Eliminationist Racism". The Continuities of German History Nation, Religion, and Race across the Long Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780511817199.
  11. ^ Kallis 2008, p. 7.
  12. ^ Abraham, A. J. (22 March 2015). "Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. the Devil That Never Dies, the Rise and Threat of Global Antisemitism". Journal of Third World Studies. 32 (1): 347. ISSN 8755-3449.
  13. ^ Krzywiec, Grzegorz (2014). "Eliminationist Anti-Semitism at Home and Abroad: Polish Nationalism, the Jewish Question and Eastern European Right-Wing Mass Politics". In Rosenthal, L.; Rodic, V. (eds.). The New Nationalism and the First World War. Springer. ISBN 978-1-137-46278-7.
  14. ^ Mallmann, Klaus-Michael; Cüppers, Martin (2010). Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine. Enigma Books. p. 42. ISBN 978-1-936274-18-5.
  15. ^ Steinberg, Gerald (6 August 2019). "Steinberg: Calling out the eliminationists". The Canadian Jewish News. Retrieved 20 May 2020.
  16. ^ Marz, Ulrike (2014). Kritik des islamischen Antisemitismus: Zur gesellschaftlichen Genese und Semantik des Antisemitismus in der Islamischen Republik Iran (in German). LIT Verlag Münster. p. 264. ISBN 978-3-643-12785-3.
  17. ^ Kallis 2008, p. 117.
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