And my contention is twofold: first, that these charges are largely bullshit and were driven by Christian religious opinions about Jews; and second, that Jewish economic behavior was no different other middleman minority groups.Stubble wrote: ↑Tue Jan 21, 2025 4:25 pm Going back specifically to before 1492, as you had called at earlier, I pointed at ritual jewish murder and the disputation of Paris, as well as the gates of Toledo and some other things, because those were the main drivers in those times. Usury and usurpation were certainly on the list, they were not chief however.
What's funny is that most scholars don't really believe what Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf and we can actually prove at least some of it as false. First, Hitler was raised in Linz, which is the third largest city in Austria. It had plenty of Jews living there, including in Hitler's own Realschule, which was attended by Ludwig Wittgenstein around the same time, although it's unclear whether they knew each other. Second, Hitler served on the honor guard at the funeral of Kurt Eisner in early 1919. Given that Eisner was a Jewish socialist, it's unlikely Hitler would not have objected to participating if his "noticing" had truly emerged by then. Third and finally, Hitler made rather large concessions to people of Jewish ancestry whom he felt had made appropriate political or personal contributions to his benefit: Erhard Milch, Emil Maurice, and Eduard Bloch to name just a few.Broadening the timescale to today, when looked at in retrospect, this excerpt from Mr Hitler rings the bell of truth, over and over again. None of the words ring hollow. Every bit of it the truth.
It's more likely, IMO, that what really sold Hitler on antisemitism was the Bolshevik Revolution.
As I stated elsewhere, I'm an historian of 19th century Europe, so of course I know what the Jewish question is -- or at least what it was in the 19th century. The question as it applied at that time concerned whether Jews could ever be full participants in the societies in which they lived while simultaneously remaining Jews. Racial antisemitism takes a rather "Gordian knot" approach to the question by classifying Jews racially, but the plain fact of the matter is that Germany had been negotiating more or less successfully this question for several decades before Hitler came along.Surely you are not so blind as to miss the parallels.
Most ironically, the answer that Germany was coming up with for the Jewish question was essentially that Jews could not fully participate while remaining Jewish beyond more than a vague sense of distant ancestry. And German Jews seemed pretty much find with that. In 1932, the rate of intermarriage of German Jews with non-Jews was north of 50%. That is not a country that's struggling with a Jewish question so much as one solving it in favor of a larger German family where people of Jewish ancestry are seen no differently than those of Polish or Slovenian ancestry from border areas -- i.e., just as German as everyone else.
But you guys had to blow it. Typical hwite behavior.
