Economic antisemitism

Economic antisemitism is antisemitism that uses stereotypes and canards that are based on negative perceptions or assertions of the economic status, occupations or economic behaviour of Jews, at times leading to various governmental policies and laws that target or which disproportionately impact the economic status, occupations or behaviour of Jews.

Relationship to religious antisemitism

Leon Poliakov writes that economic antisemitism is not a distinct form of antisemitism but merely a manifestation of theological antisemitism (without the theological causes of economic antisemitism, there would be no economic antisemitism). On the other hand, Derek Penslar contends that in the modern era, economic antisemitism is "distinct and nearly constant" but theological antisemitism is "often subdued".

Stereotypes and canards

Derek Penslar describes modern economic antisemitism as a "double helix of intersecting paradigms, the first associating the Jew with paupers and savages and the second conceiving of Jews as conspirators, leaders of a financial cabal seeking global domination".

Throughout history, stereotypes of Jews as being connected to greed, money-lending and usury have stoked anti-Jewish sentiments and still, to a large extent, influence the perception of Jews today. Reuveni and Wobick-segev suggest that we are still haunted by the image of "the mighty, greedy Jew".

Allegations on the relationship of Jews and money have been characterised as underpinning the most damaging and lasting antisemitic canards.

Antisemites have often promulgated myths related to money, such as the canard that Jews control the world finances, first promoted in the '' Protocols of the Elders of Zion'', and later repeated by Henry Ford and his '' Dearborn Independent''. Many such myths are still widespread in the Islamic world such as in books like ''The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews'', published by the Nation of Islam, as well as on the internet.

Abraham Foxman cites examples of economic antisemitism found around the world, particularly in the United Kingdom, Germany, Argentina, and Spain. He also cites many modern instances of money-related antisemitism that are found on the Internet.

Gerald Krefetz and the rise of Jews to the middle and upper classes in Europe the myths evolved and began to assert that Jews were "clever, devious, and manipulative financiers out to dominate" world finances.

Foxman describes six facets of canards used by proponents of economic antisemitism:
#All Jews are wealthy.
#Jews are stingy and greedy.
#Powerful Jews control the business world.
#Judaism emphasizes profit and materialismFoxman, p. 98
#Jews may cheat non-Jews
#Jews use their power to benefit "their own kind."

Statistics

The Anti Defamation League conducted a poll in Europe in 2007 that asked respondents if they agreed with the statement that "Jews have too much power in international financial markets". Polling data showed that respondents agreed with that statement as follows: 61% in Hungary, 43% in Austria, 40% in Switzerland, 40% in Belgium, 21% in the United Kingdom and 13% in the Netherlands.

Another poll conducted by the ADL in 2009 found that 31% of Europeans surveyed blamed Jews for the global financial crisis that began in 2008.

Motivations

Allegations of unethical business practices

William I. Brustein describes popular economic antisemitism in Europe before the 19th century as based on accusations of Jews using alleged unethical business practices in second-hand trade, petty commerce and money-lending.

In the 17th and the 18th centuries, anecdotal remarks from Christian merchants and traders show that there were negative feelings towards Jewish business people, who were sometimes regarded as liars or cheats. Werner Sombart hypothesized that the perceptions of cheating or dishonesty were simply a manifestation of Christian frustration at innovative commercial practices of Jews, which were contrary to the customs and traditions of the Christian merchants but were otherwise ethical.

Restrictions on occupations and professions

One form of economic antisemitism in the Middle Ages was a mass of legal restrictions imposed on the occupations and professions of Jews. Local rulers and church officials closed many professions to the Jews, pushing them into marginal occupations considered repugnant, such as tax- and rent-collecting and money-lending, but tolerated them as a " necessary evil".

Catholic doctrine then held that lending money for interest was a sin and forbade it to Christians. Not being subject to that restriction, Jews dominated this business. The Torah and the later sections of the Hebrew Bible, but interpretations of the Biblical prohibition vary. Since few other occupations were open to them, Jews were motivated to take up money-lending. That was said to show Jews were usurers, which then led to many negative stereotypes and propaganda. Natural tensions between creditors, typically Jews, and debtors, typically Christians were added to social, political, religious and economic strains. More dangerous was lending to the monarchs of Europe, which enabled them to finance their endless wars and projects. Some monarchs would renege on repayments, often accusing their Jewish money lenders of various crimes. The nobility would also borrow large sums to maintain their lavish lifestyles. On numerous occasions the monarchs would cancel loans made by Jewish lenders, and some would also expel Jews from their realms.

Peasants who were forced to pay their taxes to Jews could personify them as the people taking their earnings and remain loyal to the lords on whose behalf the Jews worked.

Also present in the Middle Ages was the insistence by European sovereigns that "the Jews belonged to them in a peculiar way, different from that of their other subjects", which was evident in examples from the English legal code '' Leges Edwardi Confessoris'', which portrayed the king as "tutor" and "defender" of the Jews, and of the Jews as his "possessions"; writing that "for those Jews, and all that they possess, belong to the kind, ��as if they were his private property". Similar depictions were presented by legal scholars working for King Alfonso II of Aragon.

Occupational preferences

Throughout history, the economic status and occupations of Jews have been the subject of antisemitic stereotypes and canards. Some of the stereotypes and canards are based on economic and social restrictions placed on the Jews.

Writing about 130, the Roman satirist Juvenal mockingly depicted Jews as grotesquely poor.

Another aspect of economic antisemitism is the assertion that Jews do not produce anything of value but instead tend to serve as middlemen, acting as "parasites in the production line" of non-Jews, who are doing the real work. Krefetz lists middlemen occupations subject to that canard as distributors, shoppers, wholesalers, brokers, financiers, and retailers and writes that they are "all notably Jewish occupations".

Since the Middle Ages, Diaspora Jews have been characterised by a real or perceived "inverted occupational pyramid": they were perceived to be more prevalent in the tertiary sector, working in service jobs such as accounting, finance, medicine, law or commerce, than in the secondary and primary sectors. Perceptions that Jews are more prevalent in certain occupations or in the professions (medicine or law) have been the target of antisemitic sentiment at different periods in history.

Jews have been the targets of antisemitic criticism for their occupational preferences. For example, Robert von Mohl characterised European Jews of the 19th century as being concentrated in trade and finance, with some representation in the artistic and intellectual fields. Perceptions of overrepresentation of Jews in certain occupations have driven antisemitic sentiment in the Soviet Union.

There have been a number of theories for the reason for the "inverted occupational pyramid". Gerald Krefetz writes that the livelihood of Jews, particularly their business activities, has been influenced by religious, cultural, social and historical factors. Krefetz asserts that those factors have led to a predisposition for occupations marked by independence, professionalism and scholarship. Jews have tended to show an "entrepreneurial spirit" and "capacity for risk-taking", which lead them to innovate financial concepts like negotiable instruments of credit, international syndicates, department stores, holding companies and investment banks. Krefetz suggests that Jews have frequently chosen professions that are "portable" or involve duties as a middleman, because of their long historical background, based on trading and "heightened awareness of continual persecution". In a similar vein, Foxman argues that many medieval Jews were especially well suited for commerce because the Jewish diaspora caused many Jews to have far-flung networks of friends and family, which facilitated trade:Foxman, p. 58:
:"This ommercewas a business to which the Jews were well suited for historical reasons ��many Jews had friends and family members spread out over a large part of the then-known world, which became the basis of trading networks ��
Zvi Eckstein and Maristella Botticini argue that widespread literacy and a focus on education are primary factors in Jewish occupational tendencies. During the first century, high priest Joshua ben Gamala made it mandatory for all young Jewish boys to get a primary education. Mandatory primary education was not a common practice during this time and did not become so for the rest of the world till well over a millennium later. Another factor in widespread literacy among Jews was the focus on study and interpretation of the Torah, Mishna, and Talmud. This led to the acquisition of basic literacy and argumentative skills. These cultural and religious developments caused many Jews to adopt a skill set that was well adept for urbanization and modernization.

According to Werner Sombart, one complaint of Christian businesses was that Jews did not limit themselves to one particular trade or market but were often "jack of all trades" or "ubiquitous" and "paid no heed to the demarcation of all economic activities into separate categories". When Jews entered trades or business areas in Europe, that frequently resulted in complaints from Christian competitors that the Jews were depriving them of customers and profit.

Sombart, analysing 17th- and 18th-century Christian views of Jewish merchants, concluded that Jewish merchants were considered to pursue profit blatantly, openly and aggressively in contrast to the Christian approach, which was willing to seek profit but viewed the aggressive pursuit of profit as unseemly, uncivilized and uncouth.

Sombart also asserts another cause of Christian frustration with Jewish businesses, who imported raw materials, which was considered inappropriate by Christian merchants.

Jealousy

Niewyk and Nicosia describe economic antisemitism as focusing on "excessive" Jewish wealth and power growing out of the Jews' success in commerce, banking and professional careers.

Marvin Perry asserts that much antisemitism in the European commercial world derived from the fact that non-Jewish merchants could not match the "economies of scale and advertising promotions" of Jewish competitors. Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) wrote, "I am persuaded that in Russia, Austria, and Germany nine-tenths of the hostility to the Jew comes from the average Christian's inability to compete successfully with the average Jew in business in either straight business or the questionable sort".

Similarly, Foxman writes that it is likely that non-Jews in medieval or Renaissance Europe had feelings of fear, vulnerability and hostility towards Jews because they resented being beholden to Jewish lenders. He claims that money-based antisemitism is a result of resentment and jealousy of Jews. Krefetz also makes a similar point: the ability of Jews to make money occasionally stirs jealousy and hate in non-Jews, contributing to a fear that Jews will "ascend too high" in the economic sphere and begin to manipulate and control world finances. Krefetz asserts that US antisemitism seems "rooted less in religion or contempt and more in envy, jealously and fear" of Jewish affluence and of the hidden power of "Jewish money".

However, Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin offer a different perspective. Addressing the premise that "the Jews' disproportionate wealth and concentration in business and in the professions is said to provoke anti-Jewish hostility", they assert that "while economic factors can and often do exacerbate antisemitism, ��economic factors do not cause Jew-hatred; they only provide opportunities for it to be expressed". As one of the arguments supporting their thesis, Prager and Telushkin point out, "Jews have often suffered the worst antisemitism when they were poor, as was true with the overwhelming majority of Jews in ��Poland and Russia, and have encountered the least amount of antisemitism when affluent as in the United States and Canada today".

Anti-mercantilism

Penslar characterised economic antisemitism as "an extreme form of the antimercantile sentiments that are rooted in pagan antiquity and the early Christian tradition".

Blame for the ills of capitalism

In the 19th century, Jews came to be so closely associated with capitalism that some even viewed the Jews as the "creators of capitalism". According to Muller, those who embraced capitalism tended to be sympathetic to Jews, and those who rejected capitalism tended to be hostile to Jews.

Richard Levy writes that although there were local variations, most modern economic antisemitism is defined by "the scapegoating of Jews for capitalism's ills". Similarly, Steven Beller writes that economic antisemitism at the turn of the 20th century was "based on fear and envy at the supposed stranglehold of 'the Jews' over finance and accused Jews of being behind the depredations of capitalism on the traditional economy".

Laurel Platt attributes antisemitic attitudes that extend back to the Middle Ages for the tendency to blame Jews for the problems of capitalism and urbanisation that arose in the late 19th century.

Scholars have noted the antisemitic attitudes of mid-19th-century French socialists such as Charles Fourier and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Fourier vilified the Jews as the "incarnation of commerce: parasitical, deceitful, traitorous and unproductive". Proudhon used even more vehement invective, attacking Jews as the "incarnation of finance capitalism" and characterizing them as anti-producers by temperament. Alphonse Toussenel, a follower of Fourier, wrote finance, meaning the Jews, was dominating and ruining France. Similarly, Auguste Blanqui commented in his correspondence on Jews as being usurers and "Shylocks".

Karl Marx – himself from a Jewish background – argued that earning a living from collecting interest or acting as a middleman was an unjust and exploitive aspect of capitalism.Perry, pp. 153-156 Because many Jews were employed in occupations that Marx considered "non-productive", he singled out Jews for particular criticism and blamed Judaism for the exploitation and alienation of workers. Moses Mendelssohn argued to the contrary that commercial activity was just as valid and beneficial as manual labour: "Many a merchant, while quietly engaged at his desk in forming commercial speculations, ��produces ��more than the most active and noisy mechanic or tradesman".

Penslar wrote that Marx argued not that Jews merely embraced capitalism but that they "embodied" it. Penslar stated that Marx claimed that the Jewish religious culture shared many key characteristics of capitalism, such as materialism and egoism.

Marx concluded that Judaism was responsible for the alienation of many Jewish workers. In his 1844 work ''On the Jewish Question'', Marx distinguished between the "Sabbath Jew" and the "everyday Jew." Marx argued that, practically speaking, everyday Judaism was a commercial practice, not a theology. According to Perry, Marx believed that "Jews are the embodiment of capitalism (money-system) in action and the creators of all its evil consequences for humanity".

Several other commentators have noted that economic antisemitism increases in times of recession or economic hardship, such as during the Depression of 1873.

Identification of Jews as socialists or communists

Jewish Bolshevism is an antisemitic and anti-communist canard that is based on the claim that Jews have been the driving force behind or are disproportionately involved in communism, sometimes more specifically Russian Bolshevism.

The expression was the title of a pamphlet, '' The Jewish Bolshevism'', and became current after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, featuring prominently in the propaganda of the anti-Bolshevik "White" forces during the Russian Civil War. That idea spread worldwide in the 1920s with the publication and circulation of ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion''. That was popularised by the Jewish ancestry of many leading Bolsheviks, most notably Leon Trotsky, during and after the October Revolution. Daniel Pipes says that "primarily through ''the Protocols of the Elders of Zion'', the Whites spread these charges to an international audience". James Webb wrote that it is rare to find an antisemitic source after 1917 that "does not stand in debt to the White Russian analysis of the Revolution".

The label "Judeo-Bolshevism" was used in Nazi Germany to equate Jews with communists, implying that the communism served Jewish interests and/or that all Jews were communists. Jews and Communists were both blamed for having allegedly betrayed Germany during World War I and resulting in Germany signing The Treaty of Versailles, in what is known as the " stab-in-the-back myth". In Poland before World War II, '' Żydokomuna'' was used in the same way to allege that Jews were conspiring with the Soviet Union to invade Poland. According to André Gerrits, "The myth of Jewish Communism was one of the most popular and widespread political prejudices in the first half of the 20th century, in Eastern Europe in particular". The allegation still sees use in antisemitic publications and websites today.

Historical development

Jerome Chanes identifies six stages in the historical development of antisemitism:
#Pre-Christian anti-Judaism in ancient Greece and Rome, which was primarily ethnic in nature
#Christian anti-semitism in antiquity and the Middle Ages, which was religious in nature and has extended into modern times
#Traditional Muslim antisemitism, which was, at least in its classical form, nuanced in that Jews were a protected class
#Political, social and economic antisemitism of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Europe, which laid the groundwork for racial antisemitism
#Racial antisemitism, which arose in the 19th century and culminated in Nazism
#Contemporary antisemitism, which has been labelled by some as the New Antisemitism

Middle Ages

According to Norman Roth, "far more attention has eenfocused on Jewish moneylending than on any other occupation". He asserts that general histories of the medieval period, if they mention Jews at all, refer to them as moneylenders or as being involved in the slave trade. He asserts that there is not a great abundance of research on commercial activity of Jews in the Middle East. He accuses scholars of making "sweeping generalizations that would be "laughable and unthinkable in any other context".

Throughout the Middle Ages, Jews were subjected to a wide range of legal disabilities and restrictions, some of which lasted until the end of the 19th century. At times, even moneylending and peddling were forbidden to them. The number of Jews permitted to reside in different places was limited. They were concentrated in ghettos, they were not allowed to own land, they were subject to discriminatory taxes on entering cities or districts other than their own, they were forced to swear special Jewish Oaths, and they suffered a variety of other measures.

The exclusion of Jews from many trades and craft guilds began after the First Crusade (1096–1099). The exclusion often came at the urging of the clergy, local guild members, state and local governments.Sachar Jews were excluded in certain places from certain crafts as they were excluded by the craft guilds in certain trades and, indirectly, agriculture by bans on land-ownership. That often led Jews into peddling, second-hand goods, pawnbroking and moneylending.Perry, p. 125

In Southern Europe, Christian competitors of Jews in several occupations, including moneylending, asked leaders to expel Jews to reduce competition.

The result of those occupational restrictions was to push Jews into marginal roles, considered socially inferior, such as tax and rent collecting and moneylending, which were tolerated as a "necessary evil".

Although Jews had not been particularly associated with moneylending in antiquity, a stereotype of them doing so was developed beginning in the 11th century. Jonathan Frankel notes that the stereotype, though obviously an exaggeration, had a solid basis in reality. While not all Jews were moneylenders, Jews were probably disproportionately represented in that trade.

Catholic doctrine then held that lending money for interest was a sin and so was an occupation forbidden to Christians. Not being subject to the restriction, Jews made that business their own despite possible criticism of usury in the Torah and later sections of the Hebrew Bible

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