Sunday, September 06, 2009

Did I Forget To Tell You To RTWT?

Georg Ritter von Schonerer led the left-wing, anti-Semitic movement in Austria. Schonerer’s German Liberal Party, developed a lower-middle-class, anti-Semitic, anti-capitalistic platform in the 1880s. Schonerer directed his anti-Semitism at the economic activity of the Rothschilds; he advocated nationalization of their railroad assets. Later, he broadened his charges to attack Jewish merchants more generally. Hitler was an avid admirer of Schonerer, and as a young man even hung Schonerer’s slogans over his bed.

The growing nineteenth-century socialist movements did little to stem the anti-Semitic tide and often explicitly promoted anti-Semitism. The initial link between socialism and anti-Semitism arose through intellectual affinity. Throughout the nineteenth century, the socialist critique of capitalism and the anti-Semitic critique used the same arguments. Many socialists considered anti-Semitism to be a way station on the path toward a more consistent socialist viewpoint.