Nationalism, Racism, and Jews

What percentage of Americans find antisemitism justified as a response to the Israel–Hamas war?

1 in 4

What is a pogrom?

A violent riot aimed at massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group.

Historically refers to attacks on Jewish communities.

What is nationalism, according to Benedict Anderson?

Based on the concept of “imagined communities.”

A nation is an imagined political community where people share identity, culture, and destiny, even without direct contact.

Nation 

a group of people with a shared identity, culture, and values.

state

a government tied to a specific territory.

nation-state

when a government identifies with one national group.

when did nationalism develop?

18-19th centuries

why did nationalism develop?

• Seen as a better model than empires—each people should govern itself.
  
  

• Changed ideas of belonging, citizenship, and power.

question nationalism raised?

Can Jews be part of the nation?

How did France handle Jewish inclusion during the Revolution?

Granted Jews individual rights (citizenship, ability to vote).

Denied them collective recognition as Jews.

Jews could be French citizens but not as a distinct Jewish people.

How did England handle Jewish inclusion?

Acceptance fluctuated.

Some tolerance, but also violent backlashes like the Hep-Hep riots and pogroms.

What was Jewish emancipation?

Granting civil and political rights to Jews as individuals.

Required assimilation and reforming Judaism to fit national culture.

Many Jews accepted this for legal protection and legitimacy within the state.

Liberal/pro-emancipation

Jews can join the nation if they assimilate; equality will lead them to convert or blend in.

Early Christian nationalists

Jews can belong only if they convert to Christianity.

Right-wing nationalists

Jews can never belong; they are a separate nation.

What do all nationalist positions on Jews have in common?

All aim to remove Jewish distinctiveness:

Liberals through assimilation.

Conservatives through exclusion.

Anti-Judaism

hostility based on religion

Antisemitism

hostility based on race or identity

As Europe secularized

the question became how Jews could belong if not defined by religion.

What did Arthur de Gobineau contribute to racial theory?

French thinker (1853–1855).

Divided humanity into white, black, and yellow races.

Claimed race determined national character and morality.

Race explained whether nations were virtuous, lazy, brave, rich, or poor.

How were Jews categorized in early race theory?

Labeled as “Semites,” a distinct race outside the white European race.

Seen as a “nation within a nation,” inherently different and threatening.

What is antisemitism as a political ideology?

Opposition to Jews based on race or biology rather than religion.

Called for exclusion, subordination, or expulsion of Jews.

Jewish identity was seen as permanent and incurable.

How did eugenics relate to antisemitism?

Claimed Jewish traits were hereditary and unchangeable.

Accused Jews of immorality, greed, disloyalty, and manipulation.

Portrayed Jewishness as physical and biological, not religious.

What impact did race theory have on the idea of assimilation?

Assimilationists: believed Jews would integrate and abandon Judaism if given rights.

Racial theorists: believed Jewishness was biological and could never be erased.

Both views assumed Jewish distinctiveness would eventually disappear, just in different ways.

How did modernity affect Jews?

The 19th and 20th centuries brought industrialization, democracy, and capitalism.

Many Jews embraced modernity and liberalism for equality and freedom.

Success in modern society led to resentment and new antisemitic accusations (blaming Jews for capitalism, socialism, or decline).

How was antisemitism used politically?

Became a code for loyalty to nationalist, monarchist, and imperial values.

Supported strong nationalism, autocracy, and defense of upper-class privilege.

Used as a unifying ideology against liberalism and democracy.

What was the Dreyfus Affair (France, 1894)?

Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French officer, was falsely accused of espionage for Germany.

Imprisoned on Devil’s Island.

Sparked national division between republicans and antisemitic nationalists.

Sixty anti-Jewish riots broke out in France and Algeria.

Dreyfus was later exonerated.

Revealed that Jews were unsafe even with emancipation and showed a strong counterrevolutionary backlash.

What were the Protocols of the Elders of Zion?

Fabricated antisemitic text created in Russia (1890s, finalized 1903).

Secretly funded by the Czar’s regime.

Claimed to record a secret Jewish plan for world domination.

Used to prove Jews sought control through emancipation and assimilation.

Became one of the most influential antisemitic propaganda tools of the 20th century.

What is redemptive antisemitism?

Idea by Houston Stewart Chamberlain in The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899).

Called for a racially purified Christianity to redeem the world from Jewish influence.

Merged Christian theology, nationalism, and race theory.

Influenced later fascist and Nazi ideologies.

What major pattern connects antisemitism across time?

Antisemitism adapts to fit new political and cultural contexts—religious, national, racial, and modern.

Each version frames Jews as an obstacle to the dominant vision of society.