Summary
After the horrors of the Holocaust, there was a question which seemed to confound even the most practiced intellectuals: Why the Jews? Of all the different groups, religions, characteristics of human beings, of all the varied strata of modern society, why was it that the Jews occupied an exceptional position in the ideology of the Nazi regime? Some attempts to answer this question chalk the whole ordeal up to chance—the Jews were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time and thus were doomed by random circumstance to become the Nazi’s (and other’s) preferred scapegoat. On the other end of the spectrum lies the argument that antisemitism is an eternal condition of this world, spanning time and space, and that every persecution of the Jew since the days of Rome to the Nazi concentration camp is part of a singular process. Finally, there are those who attempt to link antisemitism to nationalism and jingoism. Arendt rejects all three interpretations and takes their shortcomings as the starting point for her own study: Why does antisemitism work despite its arbitrariness? What is the specific historical development of antisemitism in the modern age? How does this development relate to the decline of the nation-state and the rise of explicitly internationalist ideology such as fascism?
The history of modern Jewry begins with the French Revolution in 1789. The Revolution was the overthrow of the monarchy and the church by the Third Estate: those people who work, typified by the emerging bourgeois class. Once this happened, there was no class that could take over the monarchy and aristocracy's old position of absolute authority as the ruling class, from which all rules of society emanate. This led, according to Arendt, to the formation of the nation-state, which claimed to stand above all classes and derive its power from its citizens.
European Jewry became attached to the nation-state, accommodating itself to changes in regime and government. This was, however, problematic since the basis of the nation-state is the relatively homogenous nation of citizens from which it derives its power. Since the Jews were unable to assimilate into society, they invariably fell outside the community of the nation-state.
The well-being of European Jewry became tied to the well-being of the nation-state. Since the medieval age, Jews often served, due to historical circumstance, as financiers of the aristocracy. In the modern age, this transformed into financiers of the state. Their special relationship to the state afforded them special privileges and kept them isolated from society, which they did not really want to assimilate to anyway. At the time this would have seemed fortuitous, but their special privileges would keep them alien to the body politic and later outside the masses.
The social position of Jews in Europe is a bit more complicated. For example, they were often accepted into the close-knit circles of high society while at the same time being personally discriminated against. Arendt uses this peculiarity to pinpoint a key characteristic of 19th century antisemitism: the distinction between "a Jew" and "the Jew in general." The individual Jew is accepted by high society for their "vice." An important example of this used by Arendt is Benjamin Disraeli, the Prime Minister of Britain in the mid-19th century, who felt his Jewishness was key to his political success.
However, as the 19th century drew on, European Jewry was losing its influence in European life. The rise of imperialism, which Arendt will discuss in the next section, led to a rapid decline in the importance of Jews as financiers of the state. By the end of the 19th century, Jewry mostly consisted of a wealthy but powerless elite and strata of intellectuals, parvenus and immigrants who were attempting to assimilate into society or exist as their own community, as the case may be. It was at this time, when the power of the Jews in Europe was at its lowest, that antisemitism, which claims that the Jews are a secret cabal pulling the strings of European society, gained its greatest popularity.
19th century antisemitism reached its height in the Dreyfus Affair; this event also marked the low-point of 19th century society and its grand political hopes, particularly the hopes of France. The century began with the French Revolution and ended with the farcical trial of Dreyfus, who was framed and prosecuted for crimes he did not commit due to his Jewish heritage. In this story, Clemenceau, leader of the radical party at the time, is cast as the last defender of sincere belief in the nation-state and the equality of all men before an impartial law. However, by the end of the affair, he has long given up these ideals in favor of the same cynicism that allowed antisemitic elites to manipulate the mob.
Arendt notes that the constellation of parties supporting the antisemitic mob (the anti-Dreyfusards) was surprisingly diverse. It included not only right-wing factions but left-wing factions as well. The socialist party, led by Jaurès, did not want to get involved in the Affair because they believed it was not in their class interest to do so. Clemenceau had to convince them that the opposition to Dreyfus was primarily aristocratic and therefore the enemies of the socialists in order to get their support. Dreyfus was eventually pardoned, but this proved to be only the beginning of antisemitism as an ideology of the mob.
Analysis
Arendt attempts to investigate the origins of modern antisemitism by examining the position of the Jews in society. The special relationship of the Jews to the state has two results. First, the Jewish people as a whole appear to the antisemite to be identical with power, and second, their aloofness from society as a result of their inability to assimilate appear to the antisemite as the intent to destroy all social structures.
Furthermore, their separation from society is why Jewishness came to be considered a "vice." According to Arendt, Benjamin Disraeli was the first to discover that vice is the flipside of crime. What, exactly, does that mean? She argues that vice rules man like "the drug rules the addict" (80). While a man is responsible and can therefore be punished for a crime, he is not responsible for a vice. Thus, high society may sometimes accept vice as it accepts the mob. Though this may seem like "tolerance," such a view actually robs men of their free will and makes their Jewishness or homosexuality—the two "vices" with the greatest public relevance in the 19th century—something that controls their behavior and their identity. This actually lends itself to the formation of antisemitism and race-thinking, since it suggests something biological like race could determine a man's soul.
A very important feature of Arendt’s analysis of antisemitism is her refusal to compromise on the basic equality of human reason, and so her resistance to easy but surely false and one-sided answers. It would be easy to say that the persecution of the Jews in Europe was caused by antisemitism; however, according to Arendt, this would be mistaking what is essentially an effect for a cause. Antisemitism is not the cause, but the effect of a particular historical circumstance. In this way, it is possible to grasp the rational basis upon which something as irrational as antisemitism would arise in the 19th century. The failure of society to incorporate all men into the body politic and the preservation of special privileges—and therefore inequality—for the Jewish people necessarily appeared to be a situation not merely cast upon, but caused by, the Jews. By casting Jewishness as a vice, a personal prejudice—an individual dislike of Jews—could become a larger political ideology. A whole group can take up antisemitism because it offers an explanation for the social situation that confronts them (the seemingly special position occupied by Jews) as a result of biology and the natural laws of history. This means that political anti-semitism can claim to explain history through reference to a set of "natural," thus inevitable, laws of history.
This appearance, however, was not enough, for it required someone to take it up. The creation of the mob in the 19th century was the perfect storm for the rise of antisemitism. The mob, according to Arendt, is composed of the refuse of all classes that now existed in the fallout of the scandals of the Third Republic of France. These scandals caused an economic crises, and created a group of people who were torn from the stability of their former class position. Because they no longer belonged to a class, they felt they were not represented by the parties that represented those classes. Without a way to represent themselves, the mob cries out for a strong man or a great leader, and antisemitism was the perfect ideology to help such a leader manipulate the mob. On the basis of race they can be represented by the force of history itself through their involvement in a larger antisemitic movement.
Those who were in conflict with the state already due to the developing crisis of society could be convinced that they were actually in conflict with the Jews. Furthermore, the Jews in their decline were characterized by wealth without power. Wealth without power seems parasitical, because the wealth seems undeserved and the wealthy who are not powerful usually do not have the power to put the wealth to work. The combination of these factors is what allowed angry mobs to declare Jews the puppet-masters of the world at a time when they were in fact at their lowest level of influence in over 100 years.
The resolution of the Dreyfus Affair did not resolve the problems of the decaying nation-state nor the rise of the mob and antisemitism. Though Dreyfus was eventually pardoned, this was a hollow victory for Clemenceau. It may have benefitted Dreyfus as an individual, but it did not rehabilitate the impartiality of the law against the whims of the mob. In the concept of the impartiality of the law, trials are supposed to judge only individual behavior according to the law, but the use of the mob's antisemitism and the rigging of the Dreyfus trial fundamentally undermined any confidence in the law of the republic. Dreyfus was saved, but the republic and the nation-state were not.
