Modern scholarship downplays antisemitism’s unique ideological role in the Holocaust

Evidence

Until one or two decades ago it was common – not only among the lay public, but also among historians – to seek the explanation of the mass murder of European Jews in the long history of European antisemitism. Such an explanation required of course singling out German antisemitism as the most intense, merciless and murderous; it was after all in Germany where the monstrous plan of total annihilation of the whole race had been begotten and put in action. As we, however, remember from the second and third chapters, both the explanation and its corollary have been discredited by historical research. There was an evident dicontinuity between the traditional, pre-modern Jew-hatred and the modern exterminatory design indispensable for the perpetration of the Holocaust. As far as the function of popular feelings is concerned, the ever-growing volume of historical evidence proves beyond reasonable doubt an almost negative correlation between the ordinary and traditional, ‘neighbourly’, competition-based anti-Jewish sentiment, and the willingness to embrace the Nazi vision of total destruction and to partake of its implementation. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 521 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Nazi purges targeted academia out of ideological hatred, not political necessity — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 522; The Holocaust should not define what antisemitism across history looks like — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 517; Pre-existing antisemitism alone cannot explain perpetrators’ immediate comfort with atrocity — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 336 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Traditional antisemitism negatively correlates with willingness to perpetrate genocide #complicates (0.74) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 521