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Behind the Aegis

(53,831 posts)
Mon Dec 19, 2011, 06:18 AM Dec 2011

History: Political antisemitism in the United States, 1873-1932

Last edited Mon Dec 19, 2011, 03:09 PM - Edit history (1)

Introduction: Over the past months I have described the development of anti-Judaism in Christian theology and its transformation into secular antisemitism with the 18th century Enlightenment. In the 19th century secular antisemitism quickly evolved into a political movement with an agenda aimed at excluding Jews from civil society and antisemitic parties appeared throughout the West. In Germany-Austria the political agenda changed from social exclusion to physical extermination with the goal of achieving a final solution to the West’s Jewish Problem. This week we turn to the evolution of political antisemitism in the country with the largest surviving post-Holocaust Jewish Diaspora population, the United States.

As in Europe, organized political antisemitism also appeared in the United States in the 19th century. And, as in Europe, a movement to deny Jews legal and social rights did not just appear: it emerged from an already present antisemitic culture.

The first Jews to set foot in the New World arrived with Christopher Columbus in 1492. In 1584 Joachim Gaunse, a Jewish metallurgist who accompanied Sir Walter Raleigh to the Virginia territory, was threatened with blasphemy and forced to return to England. “In 1647, the Portuguese authorities arrested Isaac de Castro for teaching Jewish rites and customs in Portuguese controlled Brazil and sent him back to Portugal where the Inquisition sentenced him to death and burned him at the stake.” Seven years later twenty-three Jewish refugees fled Portuguese Brazil for the more tolerant Dutch New Amsterdam (later renamed New York under the British) where they were barred entry by the colony’s Director General, Peter Stuyvesant. “The Jews who have arrived,” he wrote the directors of the Dutch West India Company, “would nearly all like to remain here, but learning that they (with their customary usury and deceitful trading with Christians)… [we ask that] that the deceitful race -- such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ -- be not allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony…” The Company apparently felt the Jew’s “customary usury and deceitful trading” would be of value and ordered Stuyvesant to let them stay. As for French colonial areas, the Jews were barred until 1759; and the Spanish, like the Portuguese, planted the Inquisition in the New World and persecuted and executed their “suspect” Conversos, Catholics of Jewish descent.

While the 1789 US Constitution, following Enlightenment principles, protected citizen rights regardless of religion, the first acts of “political” antisemitism came in the form of “states rights,” which allowed states to make local laws, including a state’s relations with Jews. Anti-Jewish legislation would only be rescinded in North Carolina in 1869, while New Hampshire finally relented and allowed “non-Protestants” to hold state office in 1887. Sabbath laws, forbidding commerce on Sunday, was another form of legal antisemitism. Such discriminatory laws remained on the books well into the twentieth century. Their antisemitic intent was clearly described when, “in the 1855 California assembly debate on the topic, the speaker of the house argued that Jews ‘ought to respect the laws and opinions of the majority.’”

[link:blogs.jpost.com/content/political-antisemitism-united-states-1873-1932|more...]

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/political-antisemitism-united-states-1873-1932

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History: Political antisemitism in the United States, 1873-1932 (Original Post) Behind the Aegis Dec 2011 OP
antisemitism...... meti57b Dec 2011 #1
Link? Mosby Dec 2011 #2
I "re-added" the link. Behind the Aegis Dec 2011 #3

meti57b

(3,584 posts)
1. antisemitism......
Mon Dec 19, 2011, 09:21 AM
Dec 2011

.... is an interesting subject.

I think Christianity was the first religion followed by more than one national or ethnic group. Christians offer the opportunity to "live" after they die. I don't think we (Jews) have anything like that. Also back in the day, life was fairly short and it was probably nice to have something else to look forward to.

I have often thought that is the basis of the popularity and widespread acceptance of Christianity and the basis of antisemitism. That is probably a "duh" comment by me, but obviously, I am not a history major.

Behind the Aegis

(53,831 posts)
3. I "re-added" the link.
Mon Dec 19, 2011, 03:10 PM
Dec 2011

I used the style to create a hyperlink and it even shows in my post when I go to edit, but it isn't showing in the post. Sorry about that.

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