Language:
English
Year of publication:
2015
Titel der Quelle:
Jewish History
Angaben zur Quelle:
29,1 (2015) 39-55
Keywords:
Toussenel, A.
;
Antisemitism History 19th century
;
Socialism and antisemitism
Abstract:
Notes that Toussenel, author of the virulently antisemitic work "Les Juifs, rois de l'époque: Histoire de la féodalité financière" (1845), seems to have been ideologically inconsistent. He was a socialist and a follower of Fourier, and at the same time an editor of an ultraconservative Catholic newspaper. Toussenel's association with both the far right and the far left is not surprising, since both camps were deeply antagonistic toward capitalism and the rising bourgeoisie, and often identified the latter (as Fourier did) with Jews. Toussenel's socialism and his Catholicism converged in his fierce Judeophobia. For him, the Jews were both economically and religiously a separate group that threatened the financial and spiritual interests of the French people; they ruled France through the July Monarchy, and the non-Jewish capitalists merely emulated Jewish behavior. Characteristically, Toussenel dubbed a rival socialist group - the Saint-Simonists - as "servants of the Jews" because the latter extolled urbanization and industrialization and also attracted a number of Jews to their circle. Toussenel did not express his antisemitism in racial terms, and he cannot be regarded as a precursor of Nazism. However, Édouard Drumont and other racial antisemites later adopted many of his ideas and merged them with racism.
DOI:
10.1007/s10835-015-9227-4
URL:
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