|
View the H-Antisemitism Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-Antisemitism's November 2009 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-Antisemitism's November 2009 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-Antisemitism home page.
Dear list, here is a short essay decoding the politics of a new journal purporting to study our subject: see http://clarespark.com/2009/10/29/the-enigmatic-face-of-philosemitism/. I am looking for scholarly sources that further document Stalin's plans for Soviet Jews. See http://jsantisemitism.org/pdf/jsa_1-1.pdf. You can read the entire contents of the first issue. One of the major contentions of this group of scholars is that the theory of totalitarianism is a way of masking the specificity of the Shoah. They especially are appalled by the equation of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as similarly destructive. I am wondering if they are forgetting Stalin's ambitions to kill Jews, interrupted by his death in 1953. Am I wrong about Stalin and wrong to be suspicious of this group? They seem to see antisemitism as wholly irrational, whereas I see it as both rational and irrational, the rational part being the benefits of expropriating Jewish property and eliminating Jewish rivals in the professions, but also Hitler's view that the Soviet Union was not really socialist, but a front for "finance capital." In other words, the emancipation of the Jews throughout the nineteenth century created a backlash at what was perceived as intolerable Jewish power. That it was based on race theory is one component of the irrational part, unless one thinks that race is real, and that all members of the race have the same mental characteristics: in the case of Jews, hatred of the Other and the desire to dominate the world. Clare L. Spark, Ph.D Director, The Yankee Doodle Society clarespark@verizon.net www.clarespark.com -- Yocheved Menashe List Editor, H-Antisemitism
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|