argue that the stereotype of Jews and money has lasted throughout centuries while other stereotypes have decayed under reasoned argument is not to say that antisemitism is inevitable and certainly not to argue that it led inevitably to the Holocaust. But, once this historical construct of the greedy and exploitative Jewish moneylender was created, anticapitalist views made fertile ground for antisemitism to grow. And continues to do so. Let us, though, consider the contrary situation. It is clear that there were some places and periods of time in the pre-modern period where Jewish moneylenders did not suffer, or, at least, not as badly or not worse than their fellow subjects or citizens. In the modern era, antisemitism has never been a dangerous issue in a number of western countries (which is not the same as saying it is absent). This is particularly true of the United States, but the same could be argued for Australia, South Africa, Canada, and England (notwithstanding the Labour party’s recent embrace of antisemitism). We now see a disquieting rise in antisemitism in Europe and the US, a type that is outside of Islamic antisemitism but overlaps insofar that many activists hold views that merge anticapitalism with anti-Zionism. In places such as the US and the UK, once known as their commitment to Enlightenment values such as free speech, free trade, the freedom to worship, and tolerance, an increase in both antisemitism and anticapitalism is surely not coincidental just as, in the past, it was surely not coincidental that countries with a strong commercial economy were relatively more tolerant towards Jews.
Finally, this book does not take a classical approach to economic history with flow charts and mathematical equations. Instead, it grounds the history of antisemitism within a larger critique of an evolving economy based on capital and the overarching question about the common good versus individual liberty. There are, of course, other facets of antisemitism, but the economic stereotype is ←xiv | xv→the more insidious due to its longevity and its ability to hide under the mantel of “social justice.” This approach, and the time span involved, involves large questions which I hope offers something new in the history of antisemitism. It does not treat Jews as apart from society nor does it assume that all negative action or rhetoric towards Jews—individual or collectively—is irrational, “the chimerical fantasie of the “mysterious” Jew, or antisemitic. And it rejects any idea that the history of antisemitism is a long-connected chain of lachrymose events that ends at the gates of Auschwitz. In presenting a cacophony of voices in their historical context, I have attempted to avoid such a teleological account. Instead, the focus is on understanding how, when, and why certain people crafted and promoted the view that a mythical collective—“the Jews”—was the chief exponent of a an economic system they believed was based on theft, greed, corruption, and went against the common good. It is this book’s contention, in the strongest possible terms, that in both cases they were wrong. And so, too are the modern secular critics, of any political and social stripe, who took up this mantel, disrobed it of the religious garb, and promoted the same ideas for different purposes.8
Notes
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1.Sara Lipton, “A Terribly Durable Myth,” The New York Times Review of Books, June 27, 2019; Reuters, May 1, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-antisemitism/anti-semitic-attacks-rise-worldwide-in-2018-led-by-us-west-europe-study-idUSKCN1S73M1; VOA, May 30, 2019, https://www.voanews.com/europe/un-condemns-rising-antisemitism-europe-us; The Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-anti-semitism-11562944476; Eliot A. Cohen, “Socially Acceptable Anti-Semitism,” The Atlantic, March 6, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/belgian-carnival-float-shows-virus-anti-semitism/584251/; Jennifer Rubin, “Opinions: Occupy Wall Street: Does Anyone Care about the Anti-Semitism?” Washington Post, October 17, 2011, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/occupy-wall-street-does-anyone-care-about-the-anti-semitism/2011/03/29/gIQA43p8rL_blog.html?utm_term=.09e778eedf40; Gilet Jaunes devant la banque Rothschild: l’esclavage par l’usure, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U76_JoZ2Ul4.
2.Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism (Glencoe IL: Free Press, 1951); Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question (Cincinnati OH: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, 1958.
3.Julie L. Mell, The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender, vol. I and II (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017).
4.Werner Sombart, The Quintessence of Capitalism (Miami: Hardpress, 2017), Kindle ed., chap. 2; Washington Examiner, June 17, 2019, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/follow-the-money-john-cusack-apologizes-for-tweeting-anti-semitic-meme; Jillian Becker, “The Red Army Faction: Another Final Battle on the Stage of History,” Libertarian Alliance, http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/cultn/cultn012.pdf.
5.Niall Ferguson, Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), Kindle, Introduction and “Evolution,” and Afterword.
6.William N. Goetzmann, Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), Kindle ed., chap. 12; Ferguson, Ascent of Money, introduction.
7.R. H. Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society 1000-1500 (Cambridge: CUP, 1993), 1–2, 10; Goetzmann, Money Changes Everything, chap. 27.
8.Gavin I. Langmuir, Towards a Definition of Anti-Semitism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1990), 14. For books that treat antisemitism as an unceasingly tragic history of victim/oppressor, in varying degrees, see, for example, Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Antisemitism in England (Oxford: OUP, 2012); S.W. Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Random House, 2010 and Anti-semitism: The Longest Hatred (New York: Pantheon, 1982); David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2014); Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: A History of Antisemitism (Los Angeles: Facing History and Ourselves, 2011).
From the eleventh to the thirteenth century, new towns sprung up over Europe along the high roads and coastlines, subject to royal or seigniorial authority. They became centers for tax collecting, the trading of surplus goods, and the circulation of money. A multitude of newly-constructed monumental cathedrals and abbeys in the contemporary Gothic style soared towards the heavens, built at great expense for the good of the soul. Bridges, canals,
