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Roots of Hate: Anti-Semitism in Europe Before the Holocaust

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The methodolgy adopted by the study involved sampling newspapers in five European countries for anti-Semitism in the forty years before WWII. Four roots of anti-Semitism are identified for analysis: racial, religious, economic and political. Contra Goldhagen, Brustein concludes that anti-Semitism was not an axiom of 19th century German nationalism. His other arguments are directed towards the impact of Jewish immigration from the East into Europe (pogroms and the Russian revolution) and the perceived involvement of Jews in the rise of leftwing politics. Race and religious practice served to further create a uniqueness for the group and a social opacity. There are a large number of challenging theses and arguments in this book. Facile certainties about anti-Semitism are explored in detail and some of the conclusions are controversial, e.g. about the relatively benign nature of Europe towards the Judaism in the 19th century. However, this is an exceptionally intelligent book in that it analyses anti-Semitism against a background of general European upheaval in the late 19th century and post WWI. The book argues that unlike other migrant minorities in search of labour, Jews were both disliked and feared (due to economic prejudices). The methodology of newspaper sampling over such a long period of time is debatable. The conclusion reached is that by and large the newspapers (the 'broadsheets') were neutral towards Jews. There is something missing here and that is a explanation of the potency of anti-Semitism in the political arena. Some element9s) of popular culture have not been caught in the trawl.

In Germany the 'fork' in media coverage came with the rise of the Nazis in 1933. What the book does not explain however, at least to my satisfaction, is how the step from mutterings about anti-Semitism to the Holocaust was accomplished. In other words, the various layers of social fabric and the vernacular ideology of the 'street' that enabled the rolling out of the extermination program are not satisfactorily explained. Whether the flaw lies in the data sampling, the methodology in general or at the level of testing the wrong hypotehses is beyond the remit of this review. Nevertheless, this is a book worth reading in its entirety. It is never strident or reliant upon a tacit acceptance of pre-existing anti-Semitism to force its claims. I must admit in conclusion that it while it clarifies several of the ideological and structural properties of anti-Semitism, it did not provide me with a 'logic of anti-Semitism' sufficient to explain the Holocaust.

Braustein's book is refreshing in that it does not pretend that anti-Semitism is some kind of psychological disease but more of a conflict of interest between an established society and an emerging society. Braustein's approach is to evaluate the treatment of the "Jewish question" in late 19th century Europe by comparing newspaper articles, decade by decade, in various European newspapers. It is an innovative and deeply researched approach. "The Roots of Hate" admits that one of the chief causes of anti-Semitism in late 19th/early 20th century Europe was the deep Jewish involvement in revolutionary Marxism. Thus, Braustein admits that in the Hungarian and German revolutions of 1919 that the revolutionaries were 80-90% Jewish. He is quite candid that the great October Revolution in Russia was perceived as Jewish dominated. Braustein will not, of course, concede that sometimes anti-Semitism is justified. But he does admit that anti-Semitism has frequently been a response to Jewish behavior in the real world.

"The Roots of Hate" is an interesting book in that it represents a break from the usual apologetic tradition of trying to pretend that anti-Semitism is an irrational phenomenon. Braustein is not entirely alone in his approach. Both ex-president Jimmy Carter and professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer have argued in their books that there exists an Israel First lobby acting contrary to the interests of the United States. The German historian, Ernst Nolte, has argued that the anti-Jewish actions of the Nazis were a response to Jewish Bolshevism. As more and more authors like Alan Hart are pointing out, the actions of the Palestinians are a response to the evil the Zionists have inflicted on them.

The use of the word "hate" by ALL the Jewish organizations is deliberately disingenuous. (In the Holocaust movie "The Reader" there is a line where a a Jewish woman says: "Jews have an organization for everything". Another major reason for anti-Semitism!)

Hate implies an irrational mindset. It conditions the listener to exclude the possibility that Jewish behavior is the real cause of anti-Semitism. For many, many years no one has dared to publicly challenge this assumption. Finally, the pretense is breaking down.

Jews are not blameless.