Historical Anti-Jewish Writing

Myth and the Russian Pogroms, Part 2: Inventing Atrocities

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Having grounded ourselves in the history of Russia’s Jewish Question, it is now time for us to turn our attention to the anti-Jewish riots of the 1880s. The following essay will first provide the reader with the standard narrative of these events advanced by Jewish contemporaries and the majority of Jewish historians — a narrative which has overwhelmingly prevailed in the public consciousness. The latter half of the essay will be devoted to dissecting one aspect of the Jewish narrative, and explaining how events really transpired. Other aspects of the Jewish narrative will be examined in later entries in this series. While a work like this can come in for heavy criticism from certain sections of the population who may denounce it as ‘revisionist,’ I can only say that ‘revisionism’ should be at the heart of every historical work. If we blindly accept the stories that are passed down to us, we are liable to fall victim to what amounts to little more than a glorified game of Chinese whispers. And, if we taboo the right of the historian to reinterpret history in light of new research and new discoveries, then we have become far removed from anything resembling true  scholarship.

The Jewish Narrative.

In 1881 the ‘Russo-Jewish Committee,’ (RJC) an arm of Britain’s Jewish elite, mass-produced a pamphlet entitled “The Persecution of the Jews in Russia,” and began disseminating it through the press, the churches, and numerous other channels. By 1899, it was embellished and published as a short book, and today digitized copies are freely available online.[1] By the early 20th century, the pamphlet had even spawned a four-page journal called Darkest Russia – A Weekly Record of the Struggle for Freedom, ensuring that the average British citizen did not go long without being reminded of the ‘horrors’ facing Russian Jews.[2] The fact that these publications were mass produced should provide an indication as to their purpose: It is clear that these publications represented one of the most ambitious propaganda campaign in Jewish history, and combined with similar efforts in the United States, they were aimed at gaining the attention of, and ‘educating,’ the Western nations and ensuring the primacy of the ‘Jewish side of the story.’ Implicit in this was not only a desire to provoke anti-Russian attitudes, but also copious amounts of sympathy for the victimized Jews — sympathy necessary to ensure that  mass Jewish chain migration to the West went on untroubled and unhindered by nativists. After all, wasn’t the bigoted nativist just a step removed from the rampaging Cossack? Read more

Revisiting the 19th-Century Russian Pogroms, Part 1: Russia’s Jewish Question

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The anti-Jewish riots, or “pogroms” of late 19th-century Russia represent one of the most decisive periods in modern Jewish, if not world, history. Most obviously, the riots had demographic implications for western countries – around 80% of today’s western Diaspora Jews are descendants of those Jews who left Russia and its environs during the period 1880–1910. But perhaps the most lasting legacy of the period was the enhancement of Jewish “national self-awareness,” and the accelerated development of “modern, international Jewish politics.”[1]

The pogroms themselves have consistently been portrayed by (mainly Jewish) historians as “irrational manifestations of hatred against Jews,”[2] where peasant mobs were the unwitting dupes of malevolent Russian officials. Other explanations are so lacking in evidence, and so devoid of logic that they stretch credulity to breaking point. For example, University of British Columbia Professor, Donald G. Dutton has asserted that the mobs were not motivated by “the sudden rapid increase of the Jewish urban population, the extraordinary economic success of Russian Jews, or the involvement of Jews in Russian revolutionary politics” but rather by the “blood libel.”[3]

Little or no historiography has been dedicated to peeling back the layers of “refugee” stories to uncover what really happened in the Russian Empire in the years before and during the riots. This lack of historical enquiry can be attributed at least in part to a great reluctance on the part of Jewish historians to investigate the pogroms in any manner beyond the merely superficial. In addition, historical enquiry by non-Jewish historians into the subject has been openly discouraged. For example, when Ukrainian historians discovered evidence proving that contemporary media reports of Jewish casualties in that nation were exaggerated, the Jewish genealogy website ‘JewishGen,’ responded by stating: “We believe that [these facts] are more than irrelevant because it redirects public attention from the major topic: the genocidal essence of pogroms.” Read more

Carl Schmitt’s “Jews in Jurisprudence” (Part 2)

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Carl Schmitt (1888-1985)

Introduction to Part 2:

Part 2 of “Jews in Jurisprudence” continues the glimpse into the mind of an important intellectual during the National Socialist period.  One has to remember that this is a speech to a gathering sponsored by a high government official in a nation with a very well-defined official ideology. It is not a treatise with elaborate and well-supported arguments tempered by qualifications sensitive to differences among Jews. Rather than an attempt to persuade by the weight of logic and argumentation, it reflects a shared understanding in a highly politicized context. Within these limitations, the essay is an important insight into perceptions of Jews among elite German academics during the National Socialist period. Read more

Carl Schmitt’s “Jews in Jurisprudence” (Part 1)

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Carl Schmitt, 1888 – 1985

What follows is the English translation of the little known closing speech, given by Prof. Dr. Carl Schmitt at a conference held in Berlin, Germany, on October 3 and 4, 1936. The conference, sponsored by Reich Minister Dr. Hans Frank, was attended by hundreds of German legal scholars, law professors and political scientists, most of them affiliated with the National Socialist regime. The speeches and minutes of the two-day conference were subsequently published in several separate short volumes under the title Jews in Jurisprudence (Das Judentum in der Rechtswissenschaft) and are available in the German language on line.

Carl Schmitt (also Karl Schmitt and Carl Schmitt-Dorotic) was a German legal scholar, philosopher, political scientist and critic of liberal parliamentarianism.  His voluminous writings span the fields of international law, political theory, comparative linguistics, geopolitics, philosophy of history and comparative literature. After WWII, Schmitt, along with hundreds of thousands of German and other European professors, teachers and academics, was subject to the process of “denazification” and was removed from all academic and teaching positions by the American  occupying authorities.

Some contemporary critics consider Schmitt a big time opportunist and “Hitler’s Crown Jurist.” While acknowledging Schmitt’s influence on modern political thinkers, some of his contemporary (mostly Jewish) critics, like Steven E. Aschheim, from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, also note how “Schmitt’s anti-Semitism demonstrates in great and nuanced detail how his anti-Jewish attitudes permeated the very structure and grounds of his thought and categories.” The speech reproduced here clearly shows Schmitt as a completely accepting the National Socialist world view.

Over the last 30 years, however, Schmitt’s works have gained immense popularity, both in the USA and Europe, among leftist, conservative, liberal and rightwing scholars. Recently, most of his work has been translated into English. Of significant academic interest today are Schmitt’s theories on “just vs. unjust war,” on “limited vs. total warfare,” on the “notion of the political” in different political systems and on the “state of emergency.” His theories on the legal status of “terrorists”, “freedom fighters” and “disarmed enemy combatants,” on guerilla and partisan warfare, are debated today by many legal experts, including military establishments and colleges all over the world. ‘C. Schmitt’ is a household name for many nationalist intellectuals and nationalist parties in Europe (see my Against Democracy and Equality). Read more