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The Perils of Plausibility

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The Perils of Plausibility Albert Lindemann. Anti-Semitism before the Holocaust. Harlow, England: Longman, 2000. xx + 144 pp. $ 12.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-582-36964-1. Reviewed by John Abbott Published on H-Antisemitism (May, 2000) Albert Lindemann's new work, Anti-Semitism posits a prior Jewish action. Whether the setting is before the Holocaust, offers a popularly written Hellenistic Alexandria or nineteenth-century survey of Jew-hatred through the ages. With a text Berlin, the author sees recurring patterns of Jew‐ of just over one hundred pages, a short selection ish behavior -- separation, wealth, arrogance -- of primary documents, time lines, and glossary, that usually invited a disproportionate and preju‐ the book has been designed to meet a variety of dicial response. And while he acknowledges that undergraduate teaching needs. Surely the au‐ fantasy, stereotyping, and bigotry played a role in thor's robust exposition and provocative argu‐ the traditions of Jew-hatred, his greater interest ments will generate plenty of classroom contro‐ lies in demonstrating the ways in which real expe‐ versy. riences replenished and reinforced these tradi‐ For the most part, this new book is a popular‐ tions. In his view, this approach is crucial in order ized version of the author's 1997 study, Esau's properly to "understand" the antisemites. Such Tears. As in that work, Lindemann issues sharp understanding, he says, is quite different from the challenge to current academic fashion, which he "uncompromising moral condemnation" charac‐ sees as having embraced a simplistic notion of an‐ teristic of the feld. And such understanding, he tisemitism, as "a single entity with constant suggests, is essential if we are to "remedy" anti‐ traits," in which Jews are viewed as "passive and semitism effectively (pp. 3-4). thus wholly innocent victims." (pp. 4,7) In opposi‐ Unfortunately, Lindemann's survey, far from tion, he offers a history of antisemitism full of va‐ offering remedy, seems destined mainly to com‐ riety and paradoxes, in which Jews are neither pound the problem. This is one seriously imbal‐ passive nor innocent. anced book. Its treatment of other scholarly ap‐ Indeed, Lindemann's exposition seems guided proaches relies upon caricature and straw men. by a kind of inverted Newtonian principle: for [1] Its overview of Jewish-gentile relations is se‐ nearly every anti-Jewish reaction in history, he lective and tendentious. While Lindemann care‐ H-Net Reviews fully qualifies, softens, and contextualizes the his‐ But this notion of plausibility is easily abused; tory of anti-Jewish prejudice, he shows little hesi‐ at most it refers to the subjective realm of appear‐ tation in making defamatory generalizations ances, and is hardly to be confused with truth or about Jews, especially when voices such as the veracity. Surely what passed for plausible in the "noted Jewish author" Arthur Koestler and "cele‐ antisemitic imagination was privileged by excep‐ brated Jewish philosopher" Baruch Spinoza are tionally low standards of proof, fed by a selective on hand to deliver them. In his tour d'horizon of and capricious curiosity, and sustained by a history's leading antisemitic fgures, the author all chronic suspension of critical thinking. None of too often substitutes shallow polemic (e.g. Tre‐ this is acknowledged by Lindemann's book, which itschke, Stoecker, and Marr were no Nazis) for his‐ is far more interested in ratifying the plausibility torical insight (but what then was their signifi‐ of antisemitic perceptions than in critically exam‐ cance?). Even his bid to understand the anti‐ ining them. The result is a consistent indifference semites yields no real illumination; indeed, given to the ways in which prejudice and ideology -- and the importance Lindemann attaches to this con‐ increasingly the organized activities of the anti‐ cern, it is striking how little attention he devotes semites themselves -- framed and informed public to the internal workings of antisemitic belief sys‐ perceptions. tems, or to the rhetorical conceits and imagery When economic hardships mounted during that drove them. Instead, he fxates upon the al‐ the Great Depression of the latter nineteenth cen‐ leged plausibility of anti-Jewish perceptions. tury, for example, "it was hardly surprising that Readers should not be blamed if they fnd his ar‐ those who were unhappy about these develop‐ guments uncomfortably akin to rationalization. ments were inclined to denounce them as the Lindemann's notion of "plausibility" is crucial fault of Jews" (p. 52). Wilhelm Marr's The Victory to his interpretation of antisemitism, and to his of Jewry over Germandom "struck a chord be‐ empathetic reconstructions of anti-Jewish percep‐ cause of the economic difficulties and other ten‐ tions throughout history. The argument that some sions in German society, some of which were re‐ antisemitic cliches enjoyed a limited plausibility is lated to the rise of the Jews" (p. 60). We are given in itself neither wrong nor malicious, and histori‐ to understand the success of Karl Lueger's anti‐ ans have long recognized that certain of the anti‐ semitic politics in turn-of-the-century Vienna in semites' lurid= generalizations overlapped with a supposedly self-evident terms: in this city, "where far more mundane social reality. It should be Jewish numbers had increased about thirty times news to no one that Jews tended to be more ur‐ since the early part of the century, and where the ban, middle class, and commercial than their gen‐ Rothschilds were a large, much-discussed pres‐ tile counterparts, and that they fgured promi‐ ence, attacks on Jews were an irresistible political nently in the great social and cultural transforma‐ temptation" (p. 70). tions of nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe. Much the same approach disfigures the au‐ That Jews were thus to some degree "over-repre‐ thor's discussion of World War I and its after‐ sented" in the arts and professions, in journalism math. Lindemann rightly stresses the importance and fnance, and in liberal and leftist politics is of this period in intensifying and radicalizing Eu‐ inarguable. For many Europeans, especially those ropean antisemitism, pointing especially to the already disposed to anti-Jewish prejudice and role of the Bolshevik revolution, and the failed scapegoating, this alone was often enough to ren‐ revolutions in Central Europe during 1918/19, in der plausible the malicious mythologies of Jewish setting the stage for the more hysterical and vio‐ control and conspiracy. lent antisemitic ideas and movements that fol‐ 2 H-Net Reviews lowed. All the more upsetting, then, that his ac‐ bland interpolations imply. Their beliefs -- and count of these episodes is so misleading, specula‐ they do seem to have been true believers -- em‐ tive, and strangely apologetic. braced a wide range of fantasy and fabrication. As In his discussion of the Russian revolution, one of them declared at trial, Rathenau was "one for example, Lindemann claims that, although of the three hundred Elders of Zion," and his poli‐ most Bolsheviks were not Jewish," the perception cy of fulfilling the terms of the Versailles Treaty of a "peculiar connection" between Bolshevism was dictated by international Jewry's predatory and Jewishness gained credence due to the large designs against the German nation.[2] numbers of "jewified non-Jews" -- Lenin, Dz‐ The killers also believed, among other things, erzhinksy, and Kalinin are identified as such -- in that Rathenau's sister had married the Soviet the Bolshevik government (pp. 80-2). Indeed, Lin‐ agent Karl Radek --the kind of far-fetched, esoter‐ demann maintains that "most Jewish revolution‐ ic, and wholly spurious detail that was far from aries themselves" believed in such a connection, incidental to the teeming antisemitic milieu of the though he does not tell us how he arrived at this time. The manic absorption of Germany's out‐ remarkable conclusion; he certainly cannot be raged nationalists and rightists in piling on such talking about Russia's Bundists or Zionists, who dubious facts, their relentless "exposure" of the di‐ were heavily suppressed during the revolution's abolical connections between Jews, Freemasons, early years. Bolsheviks, and fnanciers, was in direct propor‐ The point of this distorted interpretation, it tion to their furious denial that Germany had lost seems, is somehow to render more plausible the the war. This fateful connection, of antisemitic fantasies and lies about "Jewish communism" that scapegoating and nationalist indignation, had not fueled so much rightist reaction in Europe after happened spontaneously. It was actively promot‐ 1917. Indeed, Lindemann puts the brightest possi‐ ed by powerful antisemitic voices in and around ble spin on this reaction, so that even the assassi‐ Germany's elite -- by the Pan-German League, for nation of Walter Rathenau in 1922 is given an example, whose vice-president declared, in Octo‐ oddly sympathetic hearing. It was not so much ber 1918, that Jews would henceforth be made to "utter irrationality" that drove the German Right serve as the "lightning rod for all the discontent of to its murderous hatred of Rathenau, but rather the masses." But none of this, running contrary as "his great wealth and many fnancial connec‐ it does to Lindemann's thesis, seems to have at‐ tions." Most of all, it was Rathenau's role in direct‐ tracted his interest. ing Germany's wartime economy that had gained Lindemann closes out his survey with a dis‐ him so many enemies: as Lindemann dutifully ex‐ cussion of Adolf Hitler. He rightly stresses Hitler's plains, among the large frms favored by his poli‐ historical singularity, and endorses the couplet, cies "were a disproportionate number led by "No Hitler, no Holocaust." Yet he stretches this Jews." Thus Rathenau and his high-placed Jewish creditable proposition to excessive length, so that friends came to be hated by "those Germans the wider angles of history are replaced with the whose lives were ruined by the conflict" (p.
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