SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: Is there such a thing as ‘antisemitism’, conceived of as racism against the Jews? T

https://x.com/Tracking_Power/status/2082435891545403897

David Miller

Is there such a thing as ‘antisemitism’, conceived of as racism against the Jews? The dominant picture in academic discourse regarding antisemitism is that the term was coined by a Nazi-adjacent writer, Wilhelm Marr, in 1879, and that it was either rapidly transformed into a term which targeted only the Jews, or that it only ever was a term targeting the Jews. 

My new investigation shows that view to be entirely incorrect.

The most famous exponent of that view was probably Bernard Lewis (seen below in the image with Benjamin Netanyahu and Henry Kissinger).  He was a fanatical Zionist and inveterate Islamophobe.

Amazingly my investigation shows that: 

1. The first person ever described as an "antisemite" - the French scholar Ernest Renan -  was actually a Judeophile. In 1883 he said: “The history of the Jewish people is one of the most beautiful in existence, and I do not regret having consecrated my life to it”.
2. Renan's  view was that "Semitic" race was inferior to "Aryan" race.  But he did not believe that Ashkenazi Jews were Semites.  They were instead "civilised".
3. The people he was really describing with the term "Semitic" were Arabs and Muslims.  He hated Muslims with a passion.
4. The person who described Renan as an "antisemite", coining the term, was a German scholar called Steinschneider. How did he get it so wrong? Well, at least part of the reason was that he wanted to believe that the Ashkenazim, of which he was one, were actually Semites.  
5. Why did he want to believe that?  Because he was a Zionist, who had created a secret proto-Zionist society in Vienna in 1838 with two lifelong friends who would go on to play key roles in the development of the Zionist movement.

So, all of the received wisdom about the term "antisemitism" is wrong.

Read the whole unbelievable story at the link below via @ukcolumn