Traditional antisemitism negatively correlates with willingness to perpetrate genocide

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

Categorization

• XREF: Bearse the field’s move: pre-modern prejudice is discontinuous from modern exterminatory design—a key corrective to simple continuity arguments. — connects to: Antisemitism acted as a catalyst for Nazi rule, world war, and genocide; The scapegoat and eternal-antisemitism theories mirror totalitarian denial of human agency; Intense Nazi indoctrination failed to override conventional, nonracial loyalties (+10 more)

Related

• Nazi ideology encompassed antisemitic views that blamed Germans rather than Jews (similarity 0.86)
• Antisemitism acted as a catalyst for Nazi rule, world war, and genocide (similarity 0.86)
• Popular hatred was insufficient to drive the Holocaust (similarity 0.84)
• Intense Nazi indoctrination failed to override conventional, nonracial loyalties (similarity 0.84)
• Heterophobia and boundary anxieties do not directly cause genocide. (similarity 0.83)
• Prejudice is neither necessary nor sufficient for genocide (similarity 0.82)
• The Holocaust required neutralizing popular attitudes, not mobilizing them (similarity 0.82)
• The commonsense antisemitism-explains-Holocaust causal link collapses under scrutiny. (similarity 0.81)
• Majority ambivalence toward Jews, not indifference, enabled genocide (similarity 0.81)
• The Holocaust fused antisemitism with social and political mechanisms of an entirely different character. (similarity 0.80)
• Popular antisemitism contributed to the Holocaust chiefly through induced apathy. (similarity 0.80)
• Genocide is creative weeding, not destructive hatred (similarity 0.80)
• Theoretical antisemitism matters through its link to state social-engineering ambitions. (similarity 0.80)
• Pre-Holocaust Jew-hatred was never genocidal and did not inevitably lead there (similarity 0.80)
• Modern antisemitism is a learned theoretical product, not raw experience. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Genocide is creative weeding, not destructive hatred #contradicts (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 268