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Lidforss shared with his time - and with present days' sionism - the idea that jews were a particular people that didn't blend with the peoples they lived among. But he was no antisemite. See what he wrote (quoted in the Swedish wikipedia article about him):
Allt hvad Tyskland äger av småsinthet, chauvinism, brutalitet och oridderlighet tyckes samladt i detta monstrum, som vill förgöra ett folk, hvilket vi alltsedan vår första ungdom lärt oss akta och älska. Hvilken tack äro vi icke skyldiga de judiska genierna! Var det icke Heine, som med Sångernas bok gaf oss en helsobringande trolldryck, när en gång för länge sedan den första kärlekens kval höll på att slå oss till jorden. Var inte Georg Brandes en gång vår trognaste bundsförvant i den inre frigörelsekamp, vi alla kämpat mot fördomar och öfvertro, var det inte han, som lärde oss förstå att skönhetens genius äfven är frihetens. Och var det inte sedan Marx, som lät nya världar med en ny kultur härga för oss vid horisonten, och var det ej Lombroso, som med sin forsknings blindlykta kastade en ljusstrimma öfver de dunklaste krafterna i vår själ, vansinnet, genialiteten och kärleken till brottet... Judar utefter hela linjen, hvarannan milstolpe på vår själs utvecklingsväg ett judiskt geni!.
It seems that the term anti-semite in this context needs to be defined more carefully. I had a look at the usage here doi:10.1080/0031322X.2017.1355498 which says "To the botanist Bengt Lidforss, the Jews belonged to a race, with racial distinctions and racial instincts. A Jew would never, in his view, truly understand or experience the depths of what Lidforss knew as the Germanic soul, its art, literature, poetry, music and love for nature. Lidforss did not assert that the Jews were inferior to what was labelled ‘Germanic’ or ‘Aryan’ peoples, but only profoundly different. Therefore, he was also positive about the ‘national awakening’ of the Jews at the same time that he opposed Jewish influence in Swedish culture". It further talks about the labour movement in Sweden - "Nonetheless, this was marginal in socialist rhetoric and neither was it combined with opposition to Jewish rights or to Jews in general. The central leaders of the movement usually condemned antisemitic movements in Germany and pogroms in Russia". It is easy to misinterpret statements like "Lidforss was an anti-Semite" as given in https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469657141_blackwell which can be misinterpreted. Shyamal (talk) 02:20, 11 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
