On April 4, I wrote about the transition in Germany from the Weimar Republic of the 1920s (post-World War I, lasting fewer than 15 years) to the Nazi Third Reich (lasting 12 years until the defeat of Hitler). I based it on a book When Germany Turned the Clock Back by American journalist Edgar Mowrer, published in the early 1930s, shortly after Hitler’s assumption of power.

You may want to read or reread my April 4 post, both because the subject is so interesting, and because I tried to identify any similarities today with Donald Trump’s rise to power in the United States.

Last night, I started reading another book by an American journalist, published even earlier, in 1920, titled And the Kaiser Abdicates, written by S. Miles Bouton. I am far from finished with the book, but one point made early on by Bouton is worth some thought.

Remember, when he wrote this book, Bouton knew nothing about Nazis. They didn’t exist yet. He only knew that the government of the German Empire was rapidly changing, and he ascribes this to more than the waging of and the loss of the World War. Of course, it was less than 50 years from the time the many separate Germanic states united under Prussian leadership. Prussia remained firmly in control of the new Empire, and Bouton outlines the similarities and the differences (as between Prussia and Bavaria, as an example) of the parts of the German speaking world that banded together.

The radical changes came about, he believes, largely because of the emergence of socialism in the 19th century and the success of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917.

Bouton uses a broad definition of socialism, to include both moderate forms of socialism and the form of socialism that developed into Bolshevism. He traces the development of socialist thought in France, Germany and elsewhere, pointing out the wide variety of socialist programs. But, although all of them do not advocate the destruction of private property like the Bolsheviks do, they all do have certain common elements. And the most important of these common elements is the thinking of humanity as being divided by economic class, rather than by ethnic or national differences. And in Germany, which – in spite of its historic political fragmentation – the concept of ethnicity (and ethnic superiority) had long been strong.

One of the results of dividing humans by economic class was the downplaying of these national and ethnic differences and the development of a much more cosmopolitan outlook, with a thought that at some point in the future (to Communists that point was relatively soon, to most others it was more aspirational), nation states would vanish and all of humanity would work together for the benefit of everyone, equally.

Not only was this anathema to most Germans of middle and upper classes, but it was attractive to the German proletariat and to many German intellectuals. The result was that, immediately after the end of the first World War, the socialist party was the largest political party in Germany, and the threat of its growth and takeover was real, particularly in the mind of those who had watched what was happening in Russia with fear. And, to Bouton, everything that was occurring in Germany was the result of this conflicting vision of a national future, or a socialist future.

Into the mix, Bouton of course throws the Jews. He says (and he is not trying to be critical, I don’t think) that Jews are very prominent in Socialist thinking, not only in Germany, but in Russia as well. He says that this is not surprising, as many Jews are intellectual and even more Jews have cosmopolitan leanings. As they are scattered throughout Europe, and as they naturally interact with each other, Bouton believes that national boundaries are less meaningful to the Jews than they are to members of other ethnic groups. He is undoubtedly correct in all of this.

For this reason (and now I am getting ahead of where I am in the book), it would not be surprising for antisemitism to rise and for Jews to be targeted as enemies of the state.

Let’s now move back to America today, and here I get back on my hobby horse. When you look at Jews today, the picture is different. Yes, Jews are still scattered around the world (and over 5 million are in the US), but now there is a Jewish state, Israel. This means that Jews perhaps are not looked at as anti-state cosmopolitans as they were one hundred years ago. So there is no reason for residents of countries outside of Israel to look upon their Jewish populations are internationalists and socialists who are looking to destroy the political order of the world. Jews have their own state, and they are like everyone else.

Now, unfortunately, the Jewish state is in a terrible neighborhood, so there is a new reason for antisemitism to exist. And for that reason, I don’t think that the antisemitism of the 1920s and the antisemitism of the 2020s are the same. The first dealt with fear that Jews were out to destroy national differences; the second is that Jews have a state in a place where some believe they shouldn’t be and want to oust, or to subordinate, them.

Of course, there are lingering splotches of the old form of antisemitism, just as in the 1920s, there were those who were antisemitic because they thought the Jews killed Jesus. But then, as now, the main reasons were political, and they were different reasons. So, the more conservative forces in the United States can support the Jews because they support the Jewish nation state of Israel, and members of the left can be antisemitic because they believe that Israel is an international trouble maker and a relic of past thinking, of 19th and 20th century thinking, where the results were to hold the nation state as a goal superior to the goal of uplifting the struggling irrespective of national boundaries.

But most people aren’t thinking in these terms and they tend to create a simple definition of antisemitism, such as “they just hate Jews and always will”. I don’t think that is the case. I don’t think that those who are anti-Israel are necessarily broadly antisemitic. This is why most of them can work with Jews who are anti-Israel, or at least who are against the actions of today’s Israeli government, without bashing them as Jews. The fellow who shot the two outside of the Capital Jewish Museum last week. Is he anti-Israel? Obviously. Was he making a political statement? He says so, and there is no reason not to believe him. Is he antisemitic more broadly? Neither you nor I have a clue at this point. The same questions can be asked about Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, who is being held for deportation. Yes, he was an organizer of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia. Is he anti-Israel? Certainly, he is at least against the actions of Israel today; beyond that I don’t know. Is he antisemitic? Based on what I have read about what he has said about the dangers of antisemitism, etc., I could not conclude that he is broadly antisemitic. The conflation of broad antisemitism and being strongly anti-Israel is to me both wrong and very dangerous.