Enlightenment thinkers grounded antisemitism in progressive secular ideology, not religious prejudice.
Evidence
The now dominant form of antisemitism is a product of theory, not of elementary experience; it is supported by the process of teaching and learning, not by intellectually unprocessed responses to the context of daily interaction. … Yet there was no road leading from such heterophobia or even boundary-drawing anxiety of the masses, in a way a ‘private affair’ of the lower classes, to sophisticated antisemitic theories of universal ambitions, like this of a deadly race or the ‘world conspiracy’. To capture popular imagination, such theories much refer to facts normally inaccessible and unknown to the masses and certainly not located within the realm of their daily and unmediated experience. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 229 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
Zionism thus became the Promethean passion of Jews in the modern era. — David Ohana, David Maisel , The Origins of Israeli…, 39 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Modern antisemitism is a learned theoretical product, not raw experience. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 229; Modern Jewish nationalism emerged from Enlightenment contradictions. — David Ohana, David Maisel , The Origins of Israeli…, 39; Enlightenment antislavery coexisted with racist assumptions about Africans (+1 more)
Related
- Modern antisemitism is a learned theoretical product, not raw experience. (similarity 0.88)
- Modern Jewish nationalism emerged from Enlightenment contradictions. (similarity 0.86)
- Enlightenment emancipation reframed Jewish persistence as blameworthy obstinacy rather than ending victim-blaming. (similarity 0.84)
- Jews faced the twin contradictions of equality-as-privilege and non-national existence in nation-states. (similarity 0.81)
- Zionism was a revolution in Jewish theological and political history, not a natural continuation. (similarity 0.80)
- Theoretical antisemitism matters through its link to state social-engineering ambitions. (similarity 0.79)
- Antisemitism was added to Pan-German program rather than foundational to it (similarity 0.79)
- Nazi ideology encompassed antisemitic views that blamed Germans rather than Jews (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Modern antisemitism is a learned theoretical product, not raw experience.
#corroborates(0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 229 - Enlightenment antislavery coexisted with racist assumptions about Africans
#complicates(0.82) - Modern Jewish nationalism emerged from Enlightenment contradictions.
#expands(0.78) — David Ohana, David Maisel , The Origins of Israeli…, 39