In the first several chapters of her 1951 book On the Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt examined 19th century anti-Semitism and provided a class analysis of how it arose. As a classless group often associated with, under the protection of, providing services to, or granted special rights by the monarchy, Jews became a proxy for class antagonisms with the monarchy and among the European classes. First a declining aristocracy, then a scattered group of small political parties, each discovered that Jews were a useful substitute for challenging state power directly, and that anti-Jewish sentiment could be easily linked to religious antipathy for Judaism. The state religions, for their part, were only too happy to oblige. Even after the collapse of European monarchies, Jews continued to play a similar role in nationalist movements. And, of course, imperialism played a part in defining anti-Semitism.
Arendt’s analysis differs from the normative Jewish view, recited at Passover each year, that “in every generation they rise against us to destroy us.” Arendt dismissed this as a hollow explanation of anti-Semitism, but admitted it serves another purpose:
“In this situation, Jews concerned with the survival of their people would, in a curious desperate misinterpretation, hit on the consoling idea that anti-Semitism, after all, might be an excellent means for keeping the people together, so that the assumption of external anti-Semitism would even imply an eternal guarantee of Jewish existence.”
Arendt noted that the Jewish view was, strangely, precisely the same that the anti-Semites had of Jews. There was nothing historically unique, really, about a particular group of Jews. All Jews were simply an eternal plague to be fought, put down, or got rid of and, as she notes from Nazi records, anti-Semites coolly exterminated Jews without particular animus.
Whether one agrees with Arendt’s class analysis or not, it still seems clear that the historical causes of, and flavors of, anti-Semitism must be varied; that the relationship of Jews to the states in which they were persecuted — often first as protected, perhaps emancipated, in some cases elevated to the nobility — is not simple and does not indicate a generic, unwavering hate of Jews shared by everyone in every age. How otherwise could German Jews have succeeded in bourgeois society in the 18th and 19th centuries? How could Jews have attained influential posts in the various empires in which they lived during exile? The Book of Esther disqualifies itself as history but still seems to be a potent myth.
And if Arendt’s mechanics of anti-Semitism are correct and class antagonisms are at the heart of anti-Semitism, how then can antagonism to the state of Israel be explained? Since Andre Sakharov’s revisionist definition of anti-Semitism (based mainly on opposition to a Jewish state and not confined to simple baseless hatred) virtually every Diaspora Jewish organization has taken more interest in defending the state of Israel than in pursuing justice for individual victims of hate crimes. Arendt’s higher standard for defining anti-Semitism doesn’t seem to be at work in organizations like the ADL. But the Purimspil is recited as if a fact.
Could it be that antagonism toward Israel has nothing to do with Jews and everything to do with Zionism?
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