What is Anti-Semitism?

I thought I would start by courting immediate controversy. That is easy: just mention Wagner. Let's not only do that, but let's also discuss Wagner and anti-Semitism.

For a start let's try to define anti-Semitism. At one extreme, you could say that anyone who stands in any way opposed to the Law, or the Torah is anti-Semitic. That means that anyone who is not a strictly observant Jew stands opposed to the Law of God and is thereby in the same basket as a Nazi in rejecting the Torah. If you are Jewish by birth, but you are not observant, you are no better.

It is certainly true that if you reject the notion that the Chosen People are still waiting for the arrival of the Messiah, because you think that the Messiah (namely Jesus) has already arrived to give all humanity salvation, and not just to the chosen few, then that too puts you at odds with orthodox Jewish thought. That does make your position one that stands opposed to that of Judaism i.e. one is against, or anti-Semitic. The prefix anti just means against.

There is more, since traditionally religious Christians tended to feel aggrieved by Jews as being the betrayers of Christ. Some particularly religious souls would not let Jews into their homes because of it. This whole tension between Christianity and Judaism over whether the Messiah has arrived on earth or not, is an ancient one.

With that, you could actually make the argument that the rejection of the Law of the Torah by St Paul makes Christianity anti-Semitic by definition. "Anti" in this case once again just means "against" and standing opposed to.

Most reasonable Jews do not pick a bone with Christians who believe that Jesus represents the arrival of the Messiah, or that the word of the true Prophet of God is that dictated to Mohammed by the archangel Gabriel.  Nor would most reasonable Jews charge that either Christians, Muslims or those of who hold any views different to theirs stand opposed to Judaism as anti-Semitic savages, no better than Nazis.

At what point then does overt rejection or even criticism - implicit or overt - of Jewish religious thought cross over dangerously into the sort of anti-Semitism which we use as a a negative word along with "racism", "sexism", and "discrimination"?

Then here is another thing to think about. In the past, British migrants or visitors to the Antipodes (Australia/New Zealand) would be greeted with a hearty  exclamation of "bloody Poms!" and "the only good Pom is a dead one!" Even Prince Charles reports being greeted this way. (Pom, BTW, is an acronym for "prisoners of the Motherland" and originally a term for the convicts sent to Australia)

Imagine if you had said not only said "bloody Jews", but the equivalent of the second exclamation. Of course, he never said that. Still some insist on quoting the following sentence about the ultimate Redemption for all Jews as evidence that Wagner thought along precisely these lines:

Aber bedenkt, daß nur Eines eure Erlösung von dem auf euch lastenden Fluche sein kann: die Erlösung Ahasvers, – der Untergang!

But remember that only one thing can be your redemption from your burdensome curse: the redemption of Ahasver, - the destruction (or going under)!

Apologists for the official Nazi interpretation of Wagner, see in this such an obvious call to genocide that blind freddy coud see it. The first thing that strikes us being wrong about this interpretation is the occurrence of the expression "redemption". Why would he want redemption for the Jews? You have to read a couple of sentences before this sentence to truly appreciate what Wagner meant when he spoke of his hope of redemption for the Jews.  It is a healing redemption that Wagner also granted another one cursed like Ahasver to eternal wandering: the Flying Dutchman. Here it is:

Aus seiner Sonderstellung als Jude trat er Erlösung suchend unter uns: er fand sie nicht und mußte sich bewußt werden, daß er sie nur mit auch unsrer Erlösung zu wahrhaften Menschen finden können würde. Gemeinschaftlich mit uns Mensch werden, heißt für den Juden aber zu allernächst so viel als: aufhören, Jude zu sein.

Out of his unique position as a Jew he appears before us seeking redemption among us: he found it not, and had to realise that he could only find it through our salvation to become a true person. In order to be become part of the community of mankind with us, means nothing less than: stop being Jews.

It is thought that the legend of the Wandering Jew, Ahasver, comes from the book of Matthew:

Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom

Wagner's Final Solution to the Jewish problem is the redemption through Christ, the Messiah, so that Jew and German can be united in the universal brotherhood of man. The essay Jews in Music is ultimately about a call for assimilation of Jews into the community of Christ.

It seems the biggest influence in his critiques of Jews was Wagner's highly religious wife, Cosima - born Cosima Liszt. It was not unusual whether in Germany or elsewhere for religious Christians to refuse to have much to do with Jews because they viewed them as the betrayers of Christ, the offspring of Judah.

The other thing was that Wagner was, all throughout his life, something of a revolutionary (albeit a pro-democratic and anti-communist one). Marx wrote some sharp critiques of Judaism too, because he rejected the notion that they there were two people - the Chosen and the rest. There was one humanity and one only. Nobody within that subset was an elite subset, God's chosen ones. Jews were to be assimilated into the one community of mankind.

Of course, one can hold strong views about how the Messiah has already appeared on earth and that there is no race of Chosen People, just as one can hold strong views about whether the Koran is right in calling Jesus just another prophet along with Moses, but that the One True Prophet is Mohammed. The problem is when this disagreement leads one to behave in ways that is uncivilised, discriminatory and worst of all violently criminal towards those who hold views different to one's one.

How did Wagner behave? After all, actions speak louder than words. Wagner had close Jewish friends all his life, and counted them amongst his most devoted admirers. Rather than discriminating against Jewish musicians, and depriving them of all employment opportunities, he hired a Jewish conductor, Hermann Levi, son of a Rabbi, to premier his Parsifal. Typically, he tried to convert Levi to Christianity first, but on failing to do so, he still let him continue his work. And that there clearly reveals his main source of "anti-Semitism", his opposition to the failure of Jews to embrace Jesus as the Messiah, and his belief in a universal salvation (Erlösung) for a common humanity granted by the Suffering of Christ.

Does that make him a Nazi?

Admittedly, Wagner does write things in his times that amount to a "bloody Jews" type of statement, but that is "all". However, we are judging such statements by the standards of a history that wasn't even written. Fortunately, actions speak louder than words, and trying to convert all Jews to Christianity hardly demonstrates blood-thirsty homicidal or genocidal intent - though admittedly, had he succeeded in getting all Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah, it is true that there would no Jews left.

 In the end we find a man who had the chutzpah to give Jews a mighty hard ribbing, and who did not shy of vigorously disagreeing with their worldview, but while still accepting them even amongst the ranks of his most devoted friends, admirers, or work colleagues.

And that is hardly the behaviour of someone who Nazi apologists even today try to tenaciously defend  as their alleged pure and beloved proto-Nazi ideological Father. Note too the following passage that Wagner himself wrote in a letter to Angelo Neumann:

I distance myself completely from the modern "anti-Semitic" movement [of German political parties]. In an upcoming issue of der Bayreuther Blätter, a passage will appear by me that will vigorously state how it is impossible for me to associate with that movement...

Der gegenwärtigen "antisemitischen" Bewegung stehe ich vollständig fern; ein nächstens in den Bayreuther Blättern erscheinender Aufsatz von mir wird dies in einer Weise bekunden, daß Geistvollen es sogar unmöglich werden dürfte, mich mit jener Bewegung in Beziehung zu bringen... 

My translation from German edition of Personal Reflections on Wagner p139.

In Heroism and Christianity (1881), Wagner evens says that:

The overall oneness of the human species is impossible to ignore... The ability to recognise suffering . . . is the foundation for the highest moral development. [In anyone] in whom this noble process leads to a corresponding deed, has fulfilled his heroic nature . . . Who should commit such an outrage as to ask [frevelnd fragen] whether the blood of the Saviour, that flowed from his head, his wounds...belongs to the white or any other race?

. . . beim Überblick aller Rassen die Einheit der menschlichen Gattung unnmöglich zu verkennen . . . die Fähigkeit zu bewußten Leiden . . . ist die Anlage zur höchsten moralischen Entwicklung. . . [in jene Mensch] in welchen dieser erhabene Prozess durch eine ihm entsprechende Tat als Kundgebung an uns sich vollzieht, Heldennaturen. . . Wer sollte so frevelnd fragen [ob das] Blut des Heilandes, von seinem, Haupte, aus seinen Wunden am Kreuze fließend, [ob es] der weißen oder welcher Rasse sonst angehörte?

Note in particular his condemnation, as an "outrage", any notion that the Redemption of Christ belonged to any particular race.

Indeed, Wagner described as "an totally immoral world order" ("eine schlechthin unmoralische Weltordnung") the ideas of Arthur de Gobineau and his racist theories about the Aryan master race.

Wagner - ever the ideological radical - then goes so far as to write of a:

. . . possibility that everyone will become the same through the intermixing of increasingly similar becoming races . . . only conceivable through a commonly agreed moral ground, just as we must think that the True Christianity calls us to carry out.

  . . . mögliche Gleichheit aller durch ihre Vermischung sch änhlich gewordener Rassen . . . einzig nur dadurch denkbar ist, daß sie sich auf den Gewinn einer allgemeinen moralischen Übereinstimmung gründet, wie das wahrhafte Chistentum sie auszuüben uns berufen dünken muß.

The chances are that you will be stunned to discover that Wagner wrote such things. You will wonder why this side of his thought is never allowed to see the light of day, or even disbelieve he ever wrote such things. The fact is that Wagner the liberal and enlightened thinker has been actively suppressed - and continues to be suppressed to this day - by the followers of the likes of monstrous Nazi propagandists like H.S. Chamberlain. English translations of what Wagner really wrote are usually avoided by their ilk, or even systematically censored out.

If you can, read a book by Dieter David Scholz called Ein Deutsches Missverständnis.

A review of Joachim Köhler's Wagner's Hitler.