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per month. Slows. mintmobile.com. Hello,

0:42

my name is David Runtzman and

0:44

this is past, present, future. Today's

0:46

bad idea really is a very

0:48

bad idea. I'm

0:50

talking to the historian, the preeminent

0:52

historian of modern Germany, Chris

0:54

Clark, about antisemitism.

0:58

It's long and complicated history. Where

1:00

does it come from? Why

1:03

does it keep coming back? And

1:05

why is it so weird? Chris,

1:15

we're not here to talk about whether antisemitism

1:17

is a bad idea. I think we can

1:19

agree it is a bad idea. This is

1:21

a conversation about the history of

1:23

that bad idea and particularly the ways in

1:26

which it recurs. Full disclosure,

1:29

maybe because it's a sensitive topic. I

1:31

am Jewish in the sense that my

1:33

mother is Jewish, that I wasn't raised

1:36

Jewish and I don't have personal experience

1:38

of antisemitism. You come from a

1:40

Catholic background, but this is not that podcast. So

1:42

there is a podcast called a new one called

1:44

a Muslim and a Jew go there. This is

1:46

not a Catholic and a Jew go there. This

1:48

is a conversation with a

1:50

historian about history. But we will come up

1:52

to the present and we will talk about

1:55

Israel at the end. But I want to

1:57

go all the way back to the Middle Ages, to the early

1:59

modern period. Anti-Semitism is a feature

2:01

of European history in so many different ways.

2:03

Maybe to start with, you could just say

2:05

something about, it could be the medieval period,

2:08

it could be the early modern period, but

2:10

what makes anti-Semitism different,

2:12

given that was a world which

2:14

was rife with discrimination, persecution, violence,

2:18

all sorts of different groups were subject to

2:20

all sorts of appalling treatment in all sorts

2:22

of different kinds of regimes. And

2:24

yet there is something distinctive about

2:26

anti-Semitism in a way there always has been.

2:29

Do you have a sense of what it

2:31

is that makes anti-Semitism in this origin story

2:33

a distinctive form of, discrimination seems too mild

2:35

a word for it, but I'm going to

2:37

call it discrimination? I think it is distinctive.

2:40

I mean, it's distinctive in lots of different

2:42

ways and for lots of different reasons. But

2:44

one key point

2:46

of exceptionality, I suppose,

2:49

is the unique position of Judaism

2:51

as the sort of originating religion

2:54

for two other world religions.

2:56

Christianity and Islam both grow out of

2:58

the, you know, they are both Abrahamic

3:01

faiths. So I think

3:03

that places the Jews or Judaism,

3:05

the phenomenon of Judaism, in

3:08

a kind of hinge position, which is unique. I

3:10

mean, there is no other, I can't think of

3:12

any other religion which is in this sort of

3:14

position. I don't think necessarily we should talk today

3:16

about the history of anti-Semitism in the Middle East

3:18

or in the Islamic world, although that is a

3:20

history in its own right. Very interesting and varied

3:22

one. But if we can find our gaze for

3:24

the moment to the Christian West,

3:27

then that position of Judaism as

3:29

the origin, the predecessor,

3:32

is very fraught and quite complex and

3:34

creates deep ambivalences on the one hand,

3:36

you know, veneration for the Old Testament

3:39

out of which the New Testament springs

3:41

and Christ is in many ways the

3:43

fulfillment of Scripture, meaning of Old Testament

3:45

Scripture or of Mosaic Scripture. That's how

3:48

he sees himself and that's how his

3:50

followers see him. On the other hand,

3:52

in some ways, Christ replaces Judaism. He

3:54

replaces the circumcision in the flesh with

3:56

the circumcision of the heart And

3:59

produces a new description. the say shit,

4:01

a new covenant and new deal with

4:03

God. So then the question arises. Well,

4:06

If. There's an old deal and the new

4:08

deal. What's the status of the old deal?

4:10

Now if there's a new one, that does

4:13

that mean we can rubbish the older? He

4:15

can forget that. That's problematic, because that would

4:17

mean that God initially made an alliance with

4:19

his people, the people of Israel, and then

4:21

for some reason or another, he he jilted

4:24

them. He dumped them. He chose a different

4:26

system that seems implausible. On the other hand,

4:28

what does the new dispensation mean of the

4:30

old one is still in place, and Christians

4:32

really struggled with this. And so what? I

4:35

think one of the sources of. Anti Semitism

4:37

is this problem of the fact that

4:39

on the one hand, the Jews of

4:41

where it all begins. on the other

4:44

hand, the Jews or innocence The best

4:46

argument against Christianity because they're the ones

4:48

who produce Christ who was himself a

4:50

Jew but didn't acknowledge his Messianic status.

4:53

So there's this tremendous problem there that

4:55

you have to deal with and Christian

4:57

struggle with this over the centuries and

4:59

there are different ways one can. Resolve.

5:02

The question? When when could say as

5:04

August and did for example said August

5:07

and Daddy said that you know the

5:09

Old Covenant is not simply been rubbish

5:11

and superseded. Did you still have a

5:13

place as witnesses to the old books

5:16

to the Mosaic Bible and they for

5:18

that reason it's okay to discriminate against

5:20

similar to limit the numbers or to

5:22

restrict their existence in various ways, but

5:24

it's not ok to do away with

5:27

them. God has something in store for

5:29

them and there was a long tradition

5:31

of imagining. On the basis of

5:33

various complex checks in the Bible, in

5:36

particular Paul's letters, the Romans that it

5:38

met might even be the case that

5:40

a future conversion of the Jews to

5:42

Christianity was prophesied, than that this conversion

5:45

might bring about the triumphant conclusion of

5:47

Christianity journey through world history. On the

5:49

other hand, There. Were those in

5:51

This became more and more dollars in the

5:54

Middle Ages in particular started in Spain and

5:56

France for the mendicant orders. Their Franciscans in

5:58

the Dominican who started arguing. Who

6:00

are these people who call themselves

6:02

Jews? Are they really the still

6:04

the Jews of the Old Testament?

6:06

Or they just the sort of

6:09

weird oriental fragment of and ethnicity

6:11

of some kind whose books no

6:13

longer bear any resemblance to the

6:15

Mosaic Bible. And there you have

6:17

a lot of hostile attention to

6:19

the Talmud, which is a book

6:21

of Jewish scripture full of accumulated

6:23

customary knowledge about the practice of

6:25

Jewish religion and hostile Christian observers

6:27

and some converts from Judaism Christianity.

6:30

Subjected the Town Mode to very and to

6:32

pathetic scrutiny and argued that it no longer

6:34

have anything to do with that old covenant

6:36

and so these people would just strangers in

6:38

i'm It's That's where the complexity starts if

6:40

you like and I think that is unique

6:42

situation. You. Could say that where you've

6:45

described this is a problem in part about

6:47

time or about history as well as being

6:49

about religion And religion as History To the

6:51

Jews are a historic people in that sense

6:53

they exist in the past, their purpose or

6:55

meaning. Comes. From the ancient

6:57

status and they also exist in the

7:00

present. there are Jews Now in the

7:02

Middle Ages, in the early Modern period

7:04

in the world has Jews in it.

7:07

And the disappointment for Christians in a

7:09

with Jews and Judaism is it doesn't

7:11

remain limited to it's historic ancient traditional

7:14

role. It evolves, it changes, and yet

7:16

for it to make sense for Christians,

7:18

it has to be contained. Has to

7:20

be the before. That means of the

7:23

past people. These are the people who

7:25

came before So. What are they doing

7:27

existing in the present? Never mind will

7:29

come on to this than later versions.

7:31

What are they doing? Thriving in the

7:33

present? Dunning There was a huge amount

7:35

of thriving in this period, but existing

7:37

in the present. For christians the problem

7:39

is a historic people who don't remain

7:41

in history. Yeah. they come

7:43

from the past that they don't stay

7:46

in the past and there's also a

7:48

kind of christian suspicion that there may

7:50

be a role in visage for them

7:52

in the future i mean in is

7:54

that the romans poll one the apostle

7:57

paul ones himself it's a convert from

7:59

judaism ones the non-Jewish Christians, the

8:01

non-Jewish, the pagan converts to Christianity, not

8:03

to denounce and to despise the Jews,

8:05

because he says, remember that the Jews

8:08

are made of the wood of the

8:10

original olive tree of the

8:12

first covenant. And so imagine when

8:14

their wood is grafted back onto the tree,

8:16

how it will flourish and what fruits it

8:19

will bear. And this was interpreted,

8:21

I mean the interpretations of this

8:23

passage and the letters of the Romans are very

8:25

diverse and people disagree about this and it goes on

8:27

for centuries and centuries. Basically the question

8:29

was, does this mean that the

8:32

Jews are going to be put back onto

8:34

the original tree? Is there going to be

8:36

a restoration of the Jews, of Israel as

8:38

a whole, to some kind of unity with

8:40

Christianity? And if so, what role are

8:42

they going to play in the future of Christianity?

8:44

And people struggle with this. So on the one

8:47

hand, as you say, they're a people of the

8:49

past, but they refuse to stay in the past

8:51

because they continue to exist and also to change

8:53

and evolve in the present. But they're

8:55

also a people of the future. I

8:57

mean in their own minds, but also in the

8:59

minds of those around them. And one of the

9:02

most interesting things about the Jews, if you think

9:04

about their place in Western Christian cultures, is

9:07

the way the Christians around them, the

9:09

way the non-Jews around them

9:11

use them to think about stuff. They

9:13

use them to think about history. They use

9:16

them to think about questions about what kind

9:18

of journey Christianity is on to the world.

9:20

And finally, most importantly, they use them to think about the

9:23

end of the world. How is this

9:25

going to finish off this extraordinary story? When

9:27

is the plan complete? And what

9:30

will that completion look like? So they're

9:32

kind of at the center of, you know, willy-nilly. I

9:34

don't think they want to be at the center of

9:36

everybody's thinking about these questions. But whether they want to

9:39

be or not, they are. And

9:41

so thinking with the Jews becomes one

9:43

of the central habits of Christianity. If

9:46

you take someone like Luther, the originator

9:48

of one strand of the

9:50

Reformation, I don't think it's to trivialize

9:52

it to say there's a kind of

9:54

love-hate relationship here. And he changes. He

9:56

was notoriously anti-Semitic, particularly towards the end.

9:58

I mean, brutally viciously. Anti Semitic.

10:00

And yet he also recognized the

10:02

complete central city of Judaism to

10:04

his faith. Absolutely, it is a

10:06

love hate relationship. I think that's

10:08

not an unfair way of putting.

10:11

and I mean, he envied the

10:13

Jews. He taught himself Hebrew with

10:15

enormous effort invested in that He

10:17

great the esteemed Jewish Bible, the

10:19

Jewish scripture. He had a sort

10:21

of reluctant admiration of Rabbinical learning,

10:23

although of course, in his mind,

10:25

rabbinical learning was at mixed with

10:27

all kinds of other heretical and

10:29

irrelevant forms. Of knowledge about Jewish

10:31

customary and religious life since the

10:33

ancient parents, but nevertheless admiration and

10:35

contempt were mixed up in a

10:37

really unstable sorters. compounds in Luther

10:39

and he starts a new in

10:41

the fifteen twenties, full of a

10:43

sense that perhaps the end of

10:45

the world is already Ny and

10:47

the advent of a reform in

10:49

the fabric of Western Christianity is

10:52

going to bring about they conversion

10:54

that is is hope and in

10:56

that early hopeful phase be of.

10:58

This is the famous essay that.

11:00

Christ was born a Jew as good

11:02

as an Uber when a you desire

11:04

and which he says in a list

11:06

or hit on the Jews I mean

11:08

they are the cousins of Christ in

11:10

the flesh and he warns, reminds everyone

11:12

of this and unfolds the consequences. But

11:14

by the end of his life in

11:16

the fifteen twenties he's become an embittered

11:18

old man and he publishes a renders

11:20

the hostile checksum in One with the

11:22

unpromising name of the Jews and their

11:24

lies in which you know he denounces

11:26

them as stop and uncomfortable sick necked.

11:28

He says let them be forced to

11:30

take up tools and to plow the

11:32

land. let this synagogues be burned, let

11:34

their books be destroyed. And as even

11:36

worse stuff than that she met him

11:38

and full house for example of an

11:40

extraordinary text of just dripping with hatred.

11:42

So it's a very complex story and

11:44

yet at the very end of his

11:46

life one of his last sermons, Luther

11:48

once again return to his hope for

11:50

restoration, the conversion of the Jews so

11:52

it's a very complex and unstable relationship.

11:54

I think it's important that remembered this

11:56

isn't just about theology, I mean the

11:58

Jews are also remarkable in. The Way:

12:00

they occupy a remarkable place in the

12:02

societies and economies of the West. They

12:05

have a a unique occupational profile, and

12:07

I think that's part of the mix

12:09

as well. Plus. Come on to that.

12:11

But there is a question here but conversion. But you

12:13

just touched on their meet in a way, if you

12:15

are. The Jews. If you are

12:17

Jewish this period, you couldn't win in the

12:19

sense that on the one hand, it's your

12:21

job the bear witness to be Jewish that

12:24

the point of being Jewish is that you

12:26

aren't Christian. On the other hand, it's your

12:28

job to convert. Yeah, a tough nut to

12:30

crack. It's a tough nut to crack. You've

12:32

got to be both converted, mum, converted and

12:35

this persists right the way through them. In

12:37

this is still going on in German theological

12:39

politics right the way through to the eighteen,

12:41

even the nineteenth century. The question, is it

12:43

the job of Christian churches to. Convert.

12:46

The juice or is it the job of

12:48

Christian churches to recognize the difference is isn't

12:50

just the sort of medieval, sixteenth century, or

12:52

Reformation story. This isn't just part of a

12:55

world in which the was a religion that

12:57

followed Lisa. It was grim to be achieved.

12:59

It was kind a grim to be anyone

13:01

at various points at various times as a

13:03

genocidal world, but you go through the enlightenment

13:06

and the echoes of this is still there.

13:08

I mean, I think the way you put

13:10

it's very interesting and that reveals that this

13:12

is not just about the allergy, it's that

13:15

on the one. Hand to choose a

13:17

perceivable and discernible as Jews because they're

13:19

separate because have a some some sort

13:21

of existence that much them off as

13:23

Jewish, a particular style of clothing for

13:25

example, or dietary practices that differ from

13:27

those of their neighbors and a lot

13:29

has made of that. And in Tempe

13:31

discourses about the Jews drop middle ages

13:33

and Zone especially about dodgy practices. and

13:35

so it this is held against them

13:37

that their clique asian separate and not

13:40

brotherly. the not for tunnel they don't

13:42

blend with the people around them. On

13:44

the other hand, when they do. start

13:46

lending with the people around them and

13:48

that go into what we now call

13:50

assimilation when they start assimilating and they

13:53

cast aside these much separateness well then

13:55

that's not good either and they're accused

13:57

of having sort of infiltrated the communities

13:59

around them and no longer being discernible

14:02

as Jews, but still in some sense

14:04

wielding a nefarious but now occult influence

14:06

invisibly as Jews who are no longer

14:08

recognisable as such. So again,

14:11

it's yet another example of the paradoxical situation

14:13

in which Jews find themselves, that they're damned

14:15

if they do and they're damned if they

14:17

don't. Conversion assimilation,

14:20

part of the problem here is that it is tempting,

14:22

and I think it was true of the conversion narrative

14:25

as well as the assimilation narrative, to say that it's

14:27

fake. On the one hand,

14:29

you want these people to convert to Christianity.

14:31

On the other hand, because of your sense

14:33

of their difference and their historic role, you

14:36

don't believe them when they do. But

14:38

that then feeds into what is one

14:40

of clearly the distinguishing features of the

14:42

history of antisemitism, which is its propensity

14:44

to collapse into a kind of paranoid

14:48

conspiracy theorising about the role of Jews

14:50

in world history, which is a version

14:52

of that assimilation story. Not to be

14:54

assimilated is to be a part,

14:57

and that's dubious. But

15:00

to be assimilated, given that you are a people

15:02

who are a part, is clearly to lead a

15:04

kind of double life or indeed to live a

15:06

lie. And the echoes of the

15:08

sort of 19th, even 20th century versions of

15:11

that story are clearly there in the 16th,

15:14

17th century arguments about

15:16

conversion. It's never stable

15:19

because it's never satisfactory for the

15:21

Christians, and it's never satisfactory because

15:23

they don't quite believe their

15:25

own story about the Jews. That's

15:27

right. This is another one of the paradoxes.

15:30

The more pressure you put on the Jews to convert,

15:32

the less likely it is that their conversions will

15:35

be genuine. I mean, that's just obvious. So

15:37

if you say to them, you can only stay

15:39

in Spain if you convert to Christianity, otherwise we're

15:41

going to drive you out and you have to

15:43

go to some other place you know nothing of

15:45

and live among strangers, then obviously

15:48

you may well make a lot of

15:50

converts, but their authenticity may not be

15:52

the highest possible standard. So this

15:55

again runs right through the whole history

15:57

of this relationship with Jews and also

15:59

the idea of their conversion. of their

16:01

absorption. Initially it's a Christian translation into

16:03

convert status and in the case of

16:05

Spain in 1492 you

16:08

have the expulsion of the Jews but

16:10

also the mass conversion by coercive means

16:12

and which include not just threatening people

16:14

with violence but also saying you can

16:16

thrive and flourish and operate in

16:18

any profession you choose if you just convert to

16:20

Christianity. And this is going on not

16:22

just in Spain but elsewhere as well but

16:24

in Spain no sooner have these very large

16:26

numbers of Jews converted become converisors as they

16:29

were called. But by the

16:31

1520s the Spanish crown is starting

16:33

to issue so-called Estatutos de l'Empiesa

16:35

de Sangre, these new statutes of

16:37

the purity of blood which are

16:39

about distinguishing between people who are

16:41

true Christians, old Christians and people

16:43

who are merely new Christians who

16:45

are seen as carrying a sort

16:47

of germ of inauthenticity which they've inherited

16:50

from their Jewish forebears. And that's when

16:52

you get something that looks a

16:54

bit like a racial form of anti-Semitism in

16:56

the sense that this is an inheritable form

16:59

of inauthenticity, it's a mark in the

17:01

blood of the new Christians. So it's

17:04

another example of the sort of paradoxes

17:06

that anti-Semitism confronts the Jews with. That

17:09

Spanish narrative that you just described it sort

17:11

of reminds me of the way Romans thought

17:13

about slaves and the obvious

17:17

incoherence of the view in Roman

17:19

law because slaves were different,

17:21

they weren't fully human. They

17:23

couldn't be witnesses in a court of law

17:25

unless the evidence had been tortured out of

17:27

them because torture was the mark that they

17:29

were different. They couldn't just come forward like

17:31

normal witnesses because you can't trust them, they're

17:33

slaves. But at the same time

17:35

everyone knows that if you torture people their

17:38

evidence is unreliable because they'll say anything because

17:40

they've been tortured and it is one of

17:42

those inevitable paradoxes of having a people that

17:44

you both want to assimilate

17:46

into your practices and customs and you

17:48

cannot treat them as being like you.

17:51

But then if we take this story then into

17:54

the Enlightenment and beyond. So the

17:56

question of the Jews and

17:58

their relationship to Christi- Christianity and

18:00

to emerging secular

18:02

political and cultural practices

18:05

becomes not just in Germany but in Germany

18:08

something called the Jewish question. So it turns

18:10

into, as you say, the Jews are used

18:12

to think with and about. People

18:15

try and work out who they are by thinking about what they

18:17

think about the Jews. The Jewish

18:19

question in late 18th, early

18:21

19th century Germany, what did people think

18:23

the question was by this point? What

18:25

was the question about the Jews? It

18:28

was partly a question about citizenship and

18:30

a particular version of assimilation. But

18:32

why was there a Jewish question? Well,

18:34

the term the Jewish question is part

18:36

of something that the American historian Holly

18:38

Case has called the age of questions

18:41

when suddenly people were popping questions about

18:43

everything. There was the woman question,

18:45

the Polish question, the Albanian question, you name it,

18:48

there was a question about almost everything.

18:50

And there's something special about the 19th century

18:52

that these questions suddenly have a capital Q

18:55

and a capital whatever the other is, J

18:57

or W, you name it. So yeah, the

18:59

19th century sees the proliferation of these questions

19:01

and of course these questions are themselves bundles

19:03

of questions. And the Jewish question is a

19:05

bundle of different questions as you were

19:07

just suggesting. You know, it's partly about

19:09

process of emancipation and assimilation, the absorption

19:12

of Jews into the Christian majority.

19:14

It's about the nature of citizenship.

19:16

Should citizenship, this is a

19:19

question that really moves people and interests

19:21

people in the late 18th century, should

19:23

citizenship be religiously marked? Is

19:25

it okay to be a non-Christian citizen of

19:27

a state like France or of a state

19:29

like the Kingdom of Prussia, for example? But

19:32

then there's also the question of the socioeconomic

19:34

profile of the Jews, which is also one

19:36

of the central themes of antisemitic discourses in

19:38

the late 18th and especially coming into the

19:41

19th century as it becomes a big issue.

19:43

The question of the location of the

19:45

Jews as occupying a special

19:48

relationship, for example, of processes of credit,

19:50

the issuing of credit, the lending of

19:52

money, the role of Jews as what

19:54

I would call marginal capitalists. I mean,

19:56

this is one of the most, again,

19:58

I keep on having to... reach for

20:00

this sort of metaphor of paradox. But you know,

20:02

it's the fact that for centuries,

20:04

the Jews had been driven out on

20:07

the one hand of land ownership. Nobody wanted a

20:09

Jewish peasantry. They didn't want the Jews to own

20:12

land because that was the single most prestigious form

20:14

of ownership there was. So land should be in

20:16

Christian hands. Gilded labor, the

20:18

gilded skilled labor of people who

20:20

made beautiful things like shirts and

20:22

shoes and all that kind of thing, that

20:25

was under the control of Christian guilds, which

20:27

had chapels and funeral services and all the

20:29

rest of it. And so which

20:32

were religious institutions and also kept Jews out.

20:34

So if you're driven out of manufacturing and

20:36

you're not allowed to own land, that

20:38

leaves and there are many other

20:41

restrictions besides that pushed the Jews

20:43

into among other things, you know,

20:45

the sale and secondhand goods, transitory

20:47

forms of salesmanship wandering around in

20:49

the countryside. The traveling Jew was

20:52

a part of the sort of landscape of European

20:54

societies in the 18th century, but

20:56

it also meant a concentration in money

20:58

lending and processes of offering credit. And

21:00

this in a world where there didn't

21:02

exist credit institutes, which were willing to

21:04

lend money to vulnerable clients like peasants

21:06

or like shoemakers in a small town

21:09

in central Germany. And that meant that

21:11

the Jews who had been

21:13

forced into this kind of cash economy that nobody

21:15

else wanted to be in, find themselves

21:17

in a position that devolves over time of

21:19

privilege. And it's in that connection that

21:21

they get associated with the idea of usury.

21:24

People say these guys are charging interest. It's

21:26

too much. They're sucking us dry and so

21:28

on. But of course, the problem with the

21:30

term usury is that interest rates are there

21:33

to protect the person lending the money from

21:35

the possible loss of his principle, among other

21:37

things. And if you're lending to

21:39

very vulnerable clients, like for

21:41

example, rural people in central Germany in

21:43

the 18th century, you will charge a higher

21:46

interest rate in order to cover for those

21:48

to hedge for those risks. And

21:50

the interest rate is simply what the market will

21:53

bear. People, nobody's putting a gun to these people's

21:55

heads and saying you must borrow money. But if

21:57

they need the money, they will pay that rate

21:59

of... they needed enough. So that's how it operates.

22:01

And the money lender, whether he's Jewish or not, and

22:03

this is something you can observe in other cultures, is

22:06

not a very popular person when things go

22:09

belly up. When there's suddenly a

22:11

tightening, and people, their farms

22:13

are foreclosed, or they can't repay their

22:15

debts, suddenly everybody's attention, everybody's BDIs

22:18

are fixed on the money lender. And so

22:20

that becomes another reason for hating the Jews,

22:23

you don't want to pay them back, you

22:25

want to destroy their debt records, and so

22:27

on. So that becomes

22:29

also part of the discourse of anti-Semitism, this

22:31

special relationship between the Jews and money, even though,

22:33

of course, on the other hand, you need the

22:35

Jewish money lender. So there, this is the same

22:38

ambivalence. People would talk in a German village, they

22:40

would say, we need some money, we'll have to

22:42

go to the Jew. On the other hand, that

22:44

was a very precarious situation for the money lender

22:46

to be in, if he's living in a rural

22:49

environment where his legitimacy

22:51

is in question, his

22:53

stranger status remains, and

22:56

he's not really protected by law

22:58

or social norms. By

23:00

the early or mid 19th century, can

23:02

you start to see the coming together

23:04

of two versions of this, because this

23:06

is also the era where the Rothschilds

23:08

are funding the Napoleonic Wars, you know,

23:10

there's there is the village money lender

23:12

in Central Europe version, and there is

23:14

the capitals of Europe

23:17

and money lending on a really

23:19

grand scale to sovereigns and others.

23:21

I'm so glad you mentioned the Rothschilds, because,

23:24

you know, of course, they loom very, very

23:26

large in the discourse in the imaginary, as

23:28

it were, of anti-Semitism in 19th century Europe,

23:30

they're absolutely huge. But of course,

23:32

they are just the sort of modern example

23:35

of a phenomenon which was actually very old

23:37

and extends back into the Middle Ages, the

23:39

phenomenon of the court Jew or the Jewish

23:42

factor, the Jewish financier or someone with accounting

23:44

and financial skills who's been pulled

23:46

close to government to people who hold

23:48

power and is used to raise money

23:51

to wage wars or to get princes

23:53

out of debt and so on. And

23:55

these highly placed but extremely precarious people

23:58

become great figures in the. narrative

24:00

of Jewish history. I mean, when

24:03

I say precarious, I mean that, you

24:05

know, when things went bad, they could

24:07

be taken to trial. There's a famous

24:09

example of the man known as Jut

24:11

Zus, a figure who

24:14

haunts Nazi propaganda in the period

24:16

of the Third Reich, an early

24:18

modern Jewish financier who was turned

24:20

against by the government that

24:22

had actually been using his services and tortured

24:25

and eventually executed in the most

24:27

horrible way. So, you know, these

24:29

people are both powerful and very,

24:31

very vulnerable. And the link that's

24:33

made, and it is made, and it was

24:36

certainly made in the 20th century, with the

24:38

Jews, many Jews in Europe are extremely poor

24:40

and vulnerable in the ways that the poor

24:43

are vulnerable. And what you described... That's a

24:45

really important point. I remember when I

24:47

was an undergraduate at Sydney University, there was

24:49

a very charismatic lecturer called Bob Dreher. And

24:52

he used to say, you know, we need

24:54

a history of the stupid Jew, we need

24:56

a history of the poor dumb Jew, the

24:58

Shlemiel and the Shmuck, and so on. So,

25:01

and he was absolutely right. I mean, there

25:03

is a great and untold history of not

25:05

very talented, not very well endowed and

25:07

Jew who doesn't know about the refinements

25:10

of credit and finance and so on.

25:12

And it's just a street porter or

25:14

a laborer or working on the docks

25:16

or whatever. There are countless Jews in

25:18

that situation. And of course, they get

25:20

lost from view because our attention is

25:23

so tightly focused on these key figures.

25:25

But how, as you move through the

25:27

19th century, does that version

25:29

of antisemitism which focuses on Jewish power,

25:31

Jewish influence, as you say, it's vulnerable,

25:34

it's always been vulnerable, and it's also

25:36

it's not a new invention of the

25:38

19th century. But how does that get

25:40

collapsed into this wider racial

25:43

antisemitism, which after all, in

25:45

the end, comes for not,

25:47

I mean, it comes for

25:49

everyone in the end, but it crucially

25:51

comes for the impoverished, the marginalized, the

25:54

Jews who have always lived on the edge of society.

25:56

How do the two get collapsed together? Because it is

25:58

one of the puzzles about antisemitism. that

26:01

it does run together the fact

26:03

that the Jews are viewed as

26:06

uniquely powerful, often in a conspiratorial

26:08

way, and also

26:10

vulnerable outsiders. Absolutely. I

26:12

think one of the key factors

26:15

here is, and again,

26:17

sorry about this, paradox again, but

26:19

once the promise of emancipation dawns,

26:21

once people start to, for example,

26:25

to give an example from an area that I

26:27

know a little bit about, Prussia, in 1812 the government

26:30

gets around to saying, okay, look, we

26:32

need to recognize Jews on an equal

26:34

footing with their Christian co-citizens. And

26:37

so an edict of emancipation is

26:39

issued, which states that the Jews

26:41

are citizens of the state and

26:43

in lender. In other words, not our cylinder,

26:45

they're not foreigners, they're natives. So they're declared

26:47

to be natives and citizens of the state.

26:49

Incidentally, and this is an interesting thing, the

26:51

Jews are the only citizens of the state.

26:53

This term is not being used about anybody

26:56

else. Everybody else is just Prussian subjects

26:58

or whatever, but the first citizens of

27:00

the state are the Jews. And

27:03

this is supposed to disconnect their citizenship

27:05

from their religious status. They're citizens regardless

27:07

of their creed. Now, this is still

27:09

a limited offer in the sense that

27:11

they can't occupy political offers, they can't

27:13

wield authority over Christians. This means they

27:15

can't, for example, ascend to the ranks

27:17

of the military, but they are

27:19

at least, you know, they're no longer subject

27:21

to the special negative privileges,

27:23

the special jurisdictions that

27:26

burdened Jews in Ancien Regime Europe. So

27:28

it's the end of a long history of a

27:30

particular kind of discrimination. But there's a

27:33

pushback. As soon as people say the

27:35

Jews are no longer separate, they're one

27:37

of us, they are us, they're the same.

27:40

Then the question arises, well, are they really?

27:43

And if that's so, perhaps we need

27:45

to think again about what the state

27:47

is for, is the state really a

27:49

completely religiously indifferent institution? Do

27:51

we want to have Jewish judges presiding

27:53

over divorce trials, for example, which might

27:55

involve the breach of a sacrament, a

27:57

Christian sacrament? What do we do about

28:00

protecting the Christian legacies

28:02

latent in the state structure from

28:04

the involvement of Jews in public

28:07

offices. That's one of the reasons

28:09

why these emancipation needs often make

28:11

limitations, stipulate limitations. Then

28:13

you have the fact that once

28:16

the Jews are no longer separate, the

28:18

question then arises of what to do

28:20

about their special economic standing, the alleged

28:22

place of the Jews in credit and

28:24

the processes of early capitalism and so

28:26

on. It's interesting that in

28:29

1848, for example, when there are a lot

28:31

of pieces of emancipatory legislation that especially in

28:33

the German states right across Europe, one of

28:35

the consequences of that is that someone like

28:37

Richard Wagner, who's very much involved in the

28:39

1848, 1849 revolutions,

28:41

then writes an essay in 1815 which

28:44

he says, I'm sick and tired of hearing

28:46

these calls for the emancipation of the Jews.

28:49

What we need is the emancipation from

28:51

the Jews because the

28:53

king of creditors has now become the king

28:56

of the credulous. We're

28:58

in danger of becoming the sort of

29:01

serfs, the subjects of this new Jewish

29:03

money power. In some

29:05

ways, the emancipation, though

29:07

it brings relief for Jews in many respects,

29:09

though incidentally, and this is another very interesting

29:11

subject, it divides Jews. I mean, it divides

29:14

Jewish communities. Not all Jews want to be

29:16

emancipated in that sense. Jews

29:18

face a, they don't like the idea of

29:21

having to give up their specialness and one

29:23

can well understand why. So it cuts across

29:25

these communities, but even the promise of relief

29:27

in the form of emancipation then immediately produces

29:29

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Listen. is

30:35

there still a kind of eschatological street to

30:37

this what you just described

30:40

a revolutionary politics can be pretty eschatological it can

30:42

have a kind of end of times quality

30:44

to it and it still sounds like you're talking

30:46

about Wagner there it still sounds like that the

30:49

Jews are being used to

30:52

symbolize a certain kind of all or

30:54

nothing politics seems like two-week word for

30:56

it all or nothing historical

30:58

understanding that something about the Jews is

31:00

there to symbolize whether we are you

31:03

know we are the hinge of history you know a

31:05

lot of people believed 1848 was a

31:07

hinge of history maybe it was maybe it wasn't but

31:09

revolutions can feel like that and the Jews are

31:12

still getting caught up in this in the way

31:14

they were centuries before as

31:16

the people through whom you try

31:18

and understand how high the

31:20

stakes are it's extraordinary in a way

31:22

given as we said most European Jews were

31:25

just on the receiving end of all of

31:27

this yeah what's remarkable is that people

31:29

are still thinking with the Jews and they're

31:31

using the Jews to think for example

31:33

about what capitalism is you know what is

31:35

what are the modern institutions of credit the

31:38

more refined operations of credit viewed

31:40

with suspicion in many quarters of

31:42

society and anti-semitism is one way

31:44

of articulating a kind of ambivalence

31:46

or even antipathy to capitalism to

31:48

moderate modern credit institutions and so

31:50

on and to structures of exploitation

31:52

no even marks who is himself

31:55

of Jewish ancestry connects

31:57

you know users in the

31:59

sense anti-semitism in order to prize

32:01

apart the assumptions that make capitalism work.

32:03

So they're still playing this role, whether

32:05

they want to or not, of being used

32:08

as tokens for thinking about the stuff

32:10

that people worry about most. And

32:12

that's obviously a rather perilous position to be in.

32:15

I think that the point you made about eschatology

32:17

is interesting because it is still in a way

32:19

about all or nothing. It's about

32:21

are we going to wind up having all

32:23

of the valuable – and this is

32:25

the kind of language anti-Semites would use in the

32:28

19th century. Is everything sort of green and lush

32:30

and valuable in life going to be sucked

32:32

out of us by capitalists for

32:35

which you understand Jewish capitalists? Or

32:38

is there going to be some kind of fight back

32:40

and are we going in the end to win? Is

32:42

Jesus going to win? Or soulless

32:44

moneylenders going to drive us to hell

32:46

in the hand basket? So

32:49

it's always this kind of either or

32:52

and it's always about ultimate outcomes, ultimate

32:54

states. And that's another

32:56

one of the perils of being Jewish in

32:58

the year of 19th century anti-Semitism, namely

33:00

that it's about all or nothing. Everything

33:03

depends on them. And as this then

33:05

morphs into Nazi anti-Semitism, this

33:07

is a big question. I don't know

33:10

if it's an answerable question, but is

33:13

the fascist version of this

33:15

recognizably drawing on this

33:17

body of thoughts and prejudices and fears

33:20

so you can hear the echoes? Well,

33:22

when you look at the – fascism

33:24

is itself, Nazism is an eschatological movement

33:26

too. When you look at

33:28

the versions of these arguments in the 20s and

33:31

30s and where they led to, is it a

33:33

mistake to see this as part of a single

33:35

history? Was there a break? Was there something

33:37

qualitatively different about

33:40

the Hitler version? I mean,

33:42

I think there are breaks all the way

33:44

along and there are inflection points. There's another

33:46

way of telling the history of anti-Semitism, which

33:48

is to think of it as there have

33:50

obviously been long periods which are not particularly

33:52

crisis-prone. And you can think

33:54

of it in terms of disruptions and moments

33:56

of inflection points and moments of change and

33:59

so on. looking at something

34:01

like the first Crusades. For example, it

34:03

would produce a massive deterioration in the

34:06

sort of safety or massive surge in

34:08

the precarity of Jewish life in Western Europe

34:10

and create this massive build-up of

34:12

Jews in Central Europe as they flee from

34:15

the West into what would become the Polish-Lithuanian

34:17

Commonwealth. And then there would be the

34:19

lack of death as another difficult

34:21

moment. Then the Reformation is obviously in many

34:23

ways a transformative moment and so on and

34:25

so forth. I think that there

34:27

are continuities. I mean, one way one could think

34:29

about this is that one

34:32

way of summarizing Paul's promise that

34:34

the Jews would be restored to

34:36

Christianity, as he put it, the fullness in

34:39

the English translation, the fullness of Israel has

34:41

not yet gone in. And when

34:43

the fullness of Israel is going to go

34:45

in, the promise was sometimes summarized in the

34:48

words, you know, the Jews are our salvation,

34:50

the Judens into Unzahail. That was one way

34:52

of thinking about this future conversion

34:54

of the Jews. But then you have Teichke,

34:57

the anti-Semitic historian, using

34:59

the words, the Judens into Unzahail. They

35:01

are our unsalvation. They are not

35:03

our salvation. They're not our redemption. They

35:06

are our perdition. Now, that

35:08

is the precise inversion from

35:10

hope to dread. It's still apocalyptic.

35:12

It's still about eschatology. It's still about the

35:14

doctrine of the last things. But this time,

35:16

it's not going to end well. It's going

35:19

to end in disaster. What's common in the

35:21

two positions is that it's going to be

35:23

the Jews who are pivotal to this story.

35:25

And that, I think, is interesting. And you

35:27

see in the transition to Nazism,

35:29

I mean, Nazism is special against

35:32

that longer background because Nazism scientizes

35:34

anti-Semitism. There's a very good book

35:36

about this by Michael Burley

35:38

and Wolfgang Wipperman called The Racial Stage in

35:40

which they point out that Nazism

35:43

melds together the science, the

35:45

scienciness of eugenics with a

35:47

very unsciencey quality of anti-Semitism,

35:50

which was traditionally about having

35:52

killed Jesus. It was sociological.

35:55

It was about being involved with capital or

35:57

being a money lender or being exploitative or

35:59

whatever. you put these things together

36:01

and you end up with something like national

36:03

social style anti-Semitism and the

36:05

eradicable racial contamination. And yet the stakes

36:08

are all or nothing. In fact, I

36:10

don't know why I say and yet.

36:13

In a sense, the logic of that is

36:15

almost to raise the stakes. I mean,

36:17

you have something that was already eschatological,

36:20

but now you've injected it with not

36:22

science, as you say, but a kind of

36:25

sciencey 20th century understanding, which apart from anything

36:27

else raises the possibility that there is a,

36:30

and this is the word, right, there is a solution

36:32

to the Jewish question. Well, exactly.

36:34

I mean, the whole idea of

36:37

a final solution, entleusons, which is,

36:39

of course, only one of the

36:41

many eschatological end times terms

36:43

that the Nazis trafficked with, you know,

36:46

ent-zik, you know, the final victory,

36:48

the final struggle, the final solution.

36:51

It was all about this finality, this

36:53

final state of affairs and Hitler's writing

36:55

and imagination are organized to

36:57

an extraordinary extent around this anticipation of

36:59

a final state of affairs. So

37:01

yes, it is still all or nothing. In

37:04

fact, in Mein Kampf, Hitler links the defeat

37:06

of Germany in the First World War, his

37:08

understanding that Germany had lost and his grief

37:10

at that discovery, at that understanding

37:13

with his hatred of the Jews, at least

37:15

retrospectively, he connects it and he says, you

37:17

know, and then I realized there can be

37:19

no negotiating with the Jew. There is only

37:21

all or nothing, the brutal all or nothing,

37:23

en fida oder. So, you know, it really

37:26

is a massive intensification and

37:29

in some respects, you know, a transition. And

37:31

I think we should take seriously this change

37:33

in quality and intensity, because if

37:36

you go back in history to the, you know, let's say

37:38

to the late 19th century, the 1880s and 90s, and

37:41

you asked an intelligent contemporary, European contemporary who

37:44

was well informed about conditions across Europe, and

37:46

you said, you know, there's going to be

37:48

a tremendous, you know, massacre of the Jews,

37:50

a tremendous killing off, where do you

37:52

think this will happen? Nobody would have said

37:55

Germany, people would have said Russia was

37:57

the most likely place where this would happen,

37:59

because there was an extremely virulent anti-Semitism there

38:01

and frequent pogroms and terrible violence against the

38:03

Jews in 1903 and again

38:05

in 1905. And there

38:07

was the Dreyfus affair in France in

38:09

a really virulent anti-Semitism and lots of

38:12

anti-Semitic journals and public discourse and so

38:14

on. So people might have said France,

38:16

they probably wouldn't have said Germany, where

38:18

there was a very impressive sort of

38:21

almost Spanish style symbiosis

38:23

of Jews and Germans had

38:26

produced a really extraordinary cultural

38:28

and technical and scientific flowering

38:30

across the German states. Nevertheless,

38:32

this transition did come about largely

38:34

in the context of the deep

38:37

disturbance caused by defeat in the

38:39

First World War and the political

38:41

disturbances that followed. And

38:43

Germany then embarks on this, I

38:45

mean initially in the form of

38:47

fairly loosely organized right-wing networks and

38:49

then the National Socialists who gather

38:51

together a lot of these rather

38:53

scattered splinter groups and then eventually

38:55

of course the imposition of National

38:57

Socialist power on Germany after 1933.

39:00

And then of course you do get something

39:02

that is completely unique even against the background

39:04

of this terrible history rich in

39:06

in trauma to something which has

39:09

no precedent, you know expressed in the

39:11

creation of purpose-designed killing facilities for example.

39:13

I mean that's not all of the

39:15

Holocaust happens in those facilities, there's a

39:18

book called Holocaust by Bullet which is

39:20

about the enormous numbers of people who

39:22

are simply shot and killed in various

39:24

more traditional ways. But I think that

39:26

truly if you really want you know

39:28

to capture the essence of what's unique

39:30

about the Holocaust it is those

39:33

purpose-designed killing centers in the sort

39:35

of system known as Operation Reinhardt,

39:37

named for Reinhardt Heidrich, the sort

39:39

of sidekick of Henry Himmler assassinated

39:41

in Czechoslovakia. And in his memory

39:43

this thing was known as Operation

39:45

Henry, the camps called Sobibor, Treblinka,

39:47

Nelzets and Hjelno and so on,

39:50

which existed solely for killing. People

39:52

turned up, they were killed, they

39:54

were disposed of, more people turned

39:56

up and so on. And there's

39:58

never been anything more. remotely

40:00

like that. I hesitate to ask this question, but I

40:02

think it does come out of what we were talking

40:04

about earlier. Is there a

40:07

relationship between the totality of

40:09

what happened in Germany, particularly

40:11

after 1939, and what

40:13

you just described there, which was the

40:15

preceding symbiosis, as it were,

40:18

the success of the coming together

40:20

of Jewish life and Christian

40:22

life in Germany? That is,

40:25

is there a relationship between the success

40:27

of the integration and then when the

40:30

reaction comes, unlike say

40:32

in Russia, where there was no

40:34

successful integration, when the reaction

40:36

comes there is something totalizing about the reaction.

40:38

It sort of has to undo everything. That's

40:42

a really interesting thought. I mean, if

40:45

you think about where are the two

40:47

great catastrophes of Jewish

40:49

life, I mean, there are many catastrophes

40:51

obviously, and we're approaching in the midst

40:53

of Passover right now, and

40:56

of course part of the liturgy of Passover

40:58

is the acknowledgement that there's been an enemy,

41:00

a threat to every generation. But

41:04

if we think where are the two

41:06

great existential catastrophes, there would be, I

41:09

think, Spain and Germany, and

41:11

both of those places were

41:13

the location of a remarkable

41:15

flowering of Jewish Spanish,

41:18

Sephardic, and later of Judeo-German

41:20

culture and civilization. I mean,

41:22

and the loss of the

41:24

Jews, you know, destroyed Germany's

41:26

standing worldwide intellectually. It ruined

41:28

German science. It turned

41:30

the German universities from absolutely leading

41:32

international institutions that everybody wanted to

41:35

go to into backwaters. So

41:37

it was a remarkable episode. It

41:39

was a remarkable achievement of, you

41:42

know, combined efforts and mutual understanding

41:44

and rapprochement. And I think you're

41:46

right that there must be a

41:48

relationship between the violence of the conclusion

41:50

of this episode and the

41:53

density and intricacy of the

41:55

interactions that have preceded it. So

41:57

if we bring this story up closer to it,

42:00

maybe write the way up to the present. I'm

42:02

sure people listening to this will hear echoes in

42:04

the description that you've

42:06

given about Jewishness standing in

42:08

sometimes as a proxy for

42:10

capitalism in contemporary antisemitism. The

42:12

Rothschilds then, the Rothschilds now. I mean,

42:14

some features of antisemitism are creepily

42:17

persistent in their details, right? You

42:19

can find a sort of Rothschilds

42:21

based conspiracy theory across

42:23

almost any period of the last 200 years right up

42:25

to 2024. Yes,

42:27

it's very interesting in that connection actually to think

42:29

that, you know, I think we should

42:31

also think briefly about where are the situations

42:34

in which Jews have not faced this kind

42:36

of threat? Because there are plenty

42:38

of those as well. And one interesting thing

42:40

is that they tended not to face threat

42:42

in highly commercialized societies, where the

42:45

Jews are not pushed into a situation

42:47

where they are the only ones or

42:49

they are specialists in a particular form

42:51

of credit transaction, but where there already

42:53

exists an entire sector of society. So

42:55

for example, the Netherlands, a highly commercialized

42:57

society, never developed powerful

42:59

native forms of antisemitism. I mean,

43:01

there's some Dutch antisemitism history of the

43:03

Netherlands, obviously, but it's not a salient

43:05

feature of that society. Britain is another

43:08

case in point, although Britain had in

43:10

the Middle Ages been a place of

43:12

very, or anti-Judaism at least, in

43:14

the modern era as a highly

43:16

commercialized culture, which looked fondly

43:19

on banks and commercial transactions, the

43:21

Jews didn't stand out in that

43:23

way. And the United States would be

43:25

another example. Yeah, so if you have

43:28

sophisticated commercial societies where

43:30

people are used to this kind of thing and don't

43:32

think it's amazing if someone wants to be paid for

43:34

lending you money, you know, then the Jews are probably

43:36

going to be okay. It's in places where

43:38

that is not the case, that

43:40

they become the tokens for hatred

43:43

of a particular kind of

43:45

allegedly exploitative transaction. But

43:47

it's also the case that those

43:49

recognizable features have gone along with

43:51

a persistent use of the

43:54

Jews. I don't know any other word to call

43:56

it than that, for thinking through end of times

43:58

politics as well. And And some of this does

44:00

focus on the state of Israel. I mean, we

44:02

can't, in what remains of this podcast, talk

44:05

about how to understand the state

44:07

of Israel. But there is, I

44:09

think, unquestionably some echo of some

44:11

of what you described in the way

44:14

people through to the 21st century think

44:16

about Israel, which is both

44:18

the special state, you know, some of

44:21

the circumstances of its origin make it

44:23

unique, including coming after the Holocaust. It's

44:26

a state that for many people belongs in

44:29

a particular time in history. There is among

44:31

many people now a nostalgia for a previous

44:33

version of the Jewish state, which is only

44:35

a couple of generations ago, but the kind

44:37

of socialist kibbutz version of Israel.

44:40

And Israel is blamed for having

44:42

evolved and having, as it were, escaped

44:45

its historical origins. And

44:47

Israel both plays the role as the

44:49

special state and the state that provokes

44:51

understandable rage and fury because it just

44:54

behaves like any other state, sometimes worse

44:56

than many other states. It's a brutal

44:58

state. It's a state. It's not just

45:00

the Jewish state. It's a state. Yeah,

45:02

with an army and navy and an air

45:04

force. Yeah, you hear that kind of doubleness

45:07

in the way people talk about or think

45:09

about Israel, you know, that sort of uncertainty

45:11

as to whether Israel is or is

45:13

not a state apart. And

45:15

it's fueled in part by the rhetoric of

45:17

the Israeli state, which also plays on this

45:19

in the sense that one does

45:21

often hear that Israel is a state apart.

45:24

And yet, in many respects,

45:26

Israel is a recognizable and

45:28

sometimes brutal modern state.

45:31

Yes. And I mean, no one can feel

45:33

anything but horror, the video feeds we get

45:36

of the events taking place

45:38

in Gaza. But I think that it's

45:40

complicated. I can already feel myself, you

45:42

know, my temperature going up half a

45:44

degree just as I enter into this

45:46

domain because we're dealing with a domain

45:48

in which emotions are flowing

45:50

in every direction. People are

45:52

very upset about this. There's anger. There's

45:54

a sense of, you know, grief and

45:56

outrage. And these these feelings need

45:58

to be taken seriously. There's also the

46:00

grief and outrage of Israelis at the enormities

46:03

committed by Hamas and also of

46:05

Jews around the world and of people sympathetic with the state

46:07

of Israel. So it's a

46:10

very complex domain to tread on. I

46:12

think that myself, that, you

46:15

know, at Doubtless discourses about

46:17

Israel are in some respects implicated in

46:20

the history of atsevitic discourses that that

46:22

history is not dead and that it's

46:24

still alive in parts of the

46:26

world of what is said about Israel. But

46:29

I must say that I'm not sure that

46:31

it's very helpful to deploy the term anti-Semitism

46:33

in discussing the Israel-Gaza conflict at the moment.

46:36

There's a lot of outrage about what's going

46:38

on. I understand that and I'm just as

46:40

horrified by what I see on my television

46:42

screens as everybody else is. I think that

46:45

it's not anti-Semitic to be upset by the

46:47

extremist theocratic turn that this particular Israeli

46:49

government has taken in recent years. I

46:52

don't think that's anti-Semitic. I don't think

46:54

it's anti-Semitic to be upset or even

46:56

angry on behalf of the Gazans and

46:58

in the face of what they are

47:00

suffering. What interests me is

47:03

the pattern of attention. People

47:05

who are very, very aroused

47:07

about Gaza were not at

47:09

all aroused about the hundreds of thousands who have

47:11

died in the Yemen conflict, for example, or the

47:13

500,000 Syrians who have perished

47:16

in exactly the same way in houses that

47:18

have been smashed by bombs and, of course,

47:21

women, children, you name it, civilians of all

47:23

kinds. What's going

47:25

on there? I don't think it is anti-Semitism, but I think

47:28

it is a remnant of a lensing

47:31

of our attention around

47:34

what for many people is still the

47:37

Holy Land. It's still perhaps part

47:39

of a habit of over

47:41

expectations of Israel, a hypersensitivity

47:44

to what Israel does and so

47:46

a tendency to assign world historical

47:49

significance to a conflict that

47:51

is deadly and brutal and terrible, but

47:53

no more deadly and brutal and terrible than other conflicts

47:56

that are happening not a million miles away. So

47:58

I think that it's probably true that, well,

48:00

this is not about antisemitism, that there are

48:03

bits of submerged eschatological

48:05

reasoning. They're not

48:07

present as consciously religious arguments, otherwise

48:09

secular people wouldn't use them. But

48:12

they're bobbing around there in the discourse. And

48:15

that is what I think is interesting. They

48:17

operate in this way precisely because they're not

48:19

recognized as such. And

48:21

even among secular people, this is quite

48:23

an eschatological age that we're living in.

48:25

It's a millenarian age, and maybe with

48:27

good rational secular reasons behind it. This

48:30

is an incredibly dangerous world. There

48:33

are many existential risks. People talk about the

48:35

end of humanity, the end of the species

48:37

in a way that would have been familiar

48:39

seven or eight centuries ago, but less

48:41

familiar, I think, in the 19th century.

48:43

The risks, the stakes are enormously high.

48:45

And it does sometimes feel like the

48:47

focus, the lensing, as you called it

48:49

on this, is partly because

48:52

of the story that you've been telling

48:54

here of a people who are perceived

48:56

as both uniquely vulnerable and

48:59

uniquely powerful. That double quality,

49:02

which has been part of the history

49:04

of non-Jewish thinking about the Jews, you

49:06

can still hear echoes of it. The

49:08

heightened emotion that there is around the

49:10

state of Israel is partly engendered by

49:12

that sense that one

49:14

is being asked to think about and to

49:17

believe two things that are quite hard to

49:19

hold together. This is a unique state, and

49:21

it's like any other state. This is a

49:23

uniquely vulnerable state. It's also not uniquely powerful,

49:25

but it's a pretty damn powerful state. And

49:28

I certainly, in the story that

49:30

you told earlier, hear the deep, submerged,

49:33

not explicitly religious echoes

49:37

in the way that, as

49:39

you say, this conflict focuses

49:42

the attention, not just of the Jewish

49:44

world, but the non-Jewish world. Yes,

49:47

and we're still thinking with the

49:49

Jews. This conflict prompts us to

49:51

think about colonial structures, the history

49:53

of imperialism, the relationship between the

49:55

West and the non-West. It's still

49:58

working. It's still an instrument. for

50:00

thinking about the largest problems we have in

50:02

the world today. And this

50:04

has been part of the predicament of the

50:06

Jews from the beginning. There

50:15

will be more from Chris Clark, not in

50:17

this series, but in a series that we're

50:19

going to be recording soon and putting out

50:21

later this summer, about the big historical counterfactuals,

50:24

the what-ifs of political history. And I'm going

50:26

to be talking to Chris among other things

50:29

about the big what-ifs of 1914. If

50:32

you would like to subscribe to Past,

50:35

Present, Future Plus to get bonus episodes

50:37

and ad-free listening, and that will include

50:39

two bonus bad ideas to accompany this

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series, just go

50:44

to ppfideas.com or click

50:46

on the link that you'll find with

50:48

the show description that comes with this

50:50

episode. Next time on

50:52

The History of Bad Ideas, we're

50:55

talking again to Adam Rutherford, and

50:57

he's going to be explaining why

50:59

taxonomy, which sounds pretty innocuous, isn't.

51:02

Why ordering the natural world is

51:04

a really bad idea. This

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