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Sources who use the phrase "economic antisemitism"

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Various scholars categorize the forms of antisemitism in different ways. The forms identified are substantially the same; it is only the number of categories that differ.

Bernard Lazare identifies three forms of antisemitism: Christian antisemitism, economic antisemitism, and ethnologic antisemitism.[1] Lazare commented that, "Economic antisemitism to-day is stronger than it ever was, for the reason that to-day, more than ever, the Jew appears powerful and rich. Formerly he was not seen: he remained hidden in his Ghetto, far from Christian eyes. He had but one care, to conceal his wealth, that wealth of which tradition regarded him as the gatherer, and not the proprietor. The day he was freed from his disabilities, the day the restrictions put to his activities fell away, the Jew showed himself in public."[2]

William Brustein names four categories: religious, racial, economic and political.[3]

The Roman Catholic historian Edward Flannery distinguished four varieties of antisemitism:[4][page needed]

Louis Harap provides a similar list that separates out "economic antisemitism" and merges "political" and "nationalistic" antisemitism into what Harap terms as "ideological antisemitism". Harap also adds a category of "social antisemitism".[5]

  • religious (Jew as Christ-killer),
  • economic (Jew as banker, usurer, money-obsessed),
  • social (Jew as social inferior, "pushy," vulgar, therefore excluded from personal contact),
  • racist (Jews as an inferior "race"),
  • ideological (Jews regarded as subversive or revolutionary),
  • cultural (Jews regarded as undermining the moral and structural fiber of civilization).

Frederick Schweitzer asserts that, "most scholars ignore the Christian foundation on which the modern antisemitic edifice rests and invoke political antisemitism, cultural antisemitism, racism or racial antisemitism, economic antisemitism and the like."[6]

According to Meyer and Brenner, the underlying premise of economic antisemitism is that Jews perform harmful economic activities or that economic activities become harmful when they are performed by Jews. [7]

Derek Penslar writes that there are two components to the financial canards:[8]

a) Jews are savages that "are temperamentally incapable of performing honest labor"
b) Jews are "leaders of a financial cabal seeking world domination"

Abraham Foxman describes six facets of the financial canards:

  1. All Jews are wealthy [9]
  2. Jews are stingy and greedy[10]
  3. Powerful Jews control business world[11]
  4. Jewish religion emphasizes profit and materialism[12]
  5. It is okay for Jews to cheat non-Jews[13]
  6. Jews use their power to benefit "their own kind"[14]

Gerald Krefetz summarizes the myth as "[Jews] control the banks, the money supply, the economy, and businesses - of the community, of the country, of the world".[15] Krefetz gives, as illustrations, many slurs and proverbs (in several different languages) which suggest that Jews are stingy, or greedy, or miserly, or aggressive bargainers.[16]Krefetz suggests that during the nineteenth century, most of the myths focused on Jews being "scurrilous, stupid, and tight-fisted", but following the Jewish Emancipation and the rise of Jews to the middle- or upper-class in Europe the myths evolved and began to assert that Jews were "clever, devious, and manipulative financiers out to dominate [world finances]".[17]

Leon Poliakov asserts that economic antisemitism is not a distinct form of antisemitism, but merely a manifestation of theologic antisemitism (because, without the theological causes of the economic antisemitism, there would be no economic antisemitism). In opposition to this view, Derek Penslar contends that in the modern era, the economic antisemitism is "distinct and nearly constant" but theological antisemitism is "often subdued".[18]


Other mentions of the phrase "economic antisemitism"

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  • Reinharz, Jehuda (1987). Living with antisemitism: modern Jewish responses. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |Page= ignored (|page= suggested) (help)
    • Reinharz writes "On economic antisemitism, see also Isaiah Trunk, "Economic Antisemitism in Poland between the Two World Wars," in Studies on Polish Jewry, 1919-1939, ed. Joshua A. Fishman (New York, 1974), pp. 3-98"




  • Curtis, Michael (1986). Antisemitism in the contemporary world.
    • "It was Marx's sinister achievement to marry the economic antisemitism of the French Socialists to the philosophical antisemitism of the German idealists and thereby to construct a new kind of antisemitic conspiracy theory,"

References

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  1. ^ Lazare, Bernard (2006). Anti-Semitism: Its History and Causes. Cosimo, Inc. p. 224.
  2. ^ Lazare, Bernard (1903). Antisemitism: Its History and Causes. International Library.
  3. ^ Brustein, William (2003). Roots of hate: anti-semitism in Europe before the Holocaust. Cambridge University Press. p. 46.
  4. ^ Flannery, Edward H. The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism, Stimulus Books, first published 1965, this edition 2004.
  5. ^ Harap, Louis (1987). Creative awakening: the Jewish presence in twentieth-century American literature, 1900-1940s. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 24.
  6. ^ Michael, Robert (2005). A concise history of American antisemitism. Rowman & Littlefield. p. vii.
  7. ^ German-Jewish History in Modern Times: Integration in dispute, 1871-1918. Columbia University Press. 1998. p. 220.
  8. ^ Penslar, p 5
  9. ^ Foxman, p 84
  10. ^ Foxman, p 89
  11. ^ Foxman, p 93
  12. ^ Foxman, p 98
  13. ^ Foxman, p 102
  14. ^ Foxman, p 105
  15. ^ Krefetz, p 45
  16. ^ Krefetz, p 6-7
  17. ^ Krefetz, p 47
  18. ^ Penslar, p 12
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