Language:
German
Year of publication:
1992
Titel der Quelle:
Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung
Angaben zur Quelle:
1 (1992) 253-273
Keywords:
Parsons, Talcott,
;
Antisemitism Philosophy
;
Jews History 1939-1945
;
Antisemitism History 1500-
Abstract:
Discusses Parsons' analysis of Nazi antisemitism in the context of his sociological analysis of Nazism in general. In his essay "The Sociology of Antisemitism" (1942), Parsons sees nationalism and antisemitism in their extreme forms as paranoid reactions to social instability. He sees the Jew as a natural scapegoat because of his foreignness as well as Jewish characteristics developed in reaction to discrimination, but he ascribes Nazi antisemitism to specific conditions in Germany and to German Lutheranism and feels it would not develop in this form in the U.S. (In a review, Ben Halpern criticized Parsons for promoting tolerance of American "normal" antisemitism by his distinction between it and Nazi "pathological" antisemitism.) Argues that Parsons' analysis is closer to that of the Frankfurt School than is usually admitted. In his later writings, Parsons shows the influence of Franz Neumann's "Behemoth". Thus, in a 1944 memorandum on the redemocratization of Germany, he advocates prohibition of antisemitism, in which, like Neumann, he sees the ideology by means of which the Nazis unified the disparate elements of their state against a common enemy.
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