Wednesday, May 22, 2019
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| Wilhelm Marr 1819-1904 |
Antisemitism should be spelled
without the hyphen. It’s something I’ve known for years, even if auto-correct
just won’t get the message. Neither will the media, of course, or even most
dictionaries.
“What’s the difference?” you
might well ask. “It’s just a little mark on the page. Meaningless.”
Ah, but it’s not.
The concept of “antisemitism”
(without the dash, thank you) and the term, were introduced by Wilhelm Marr when
he founded the Die Antisemitenliga, the League of
Antisemites, in 1879. Materials put out by the league often employed the word “antisemitism.”
The league, in fact, was the first popular political movement based solely on
anti-Jewish sentiment. Marr’s famous and oft-reprinted tract, The Victory of Judaism Over Germandom, made
the claim that “the
Jewish spirit and Jewish consciousness have overpowered the world.”
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| Statutes of the Antisemitism League flanked by two of Marr's antisemitic tracts |
Marr wore the title “antisemite”
as a badge of honor. From the perspective of Marr and his colleagues, to be an
antisemite was to be “woke.” But then, politics with a specifically anti-Jewish
flavor and focus were big all over Europe in the years leading up to the 20th
century.
The word “antisemitism” had its
roots in an 18th-century treatise on languages which analyzed the
differences between Aryan and Semitic languages. The terminology that was used
led to the false assumption that there were racial groups corresponding to
these two groups of languages. The minds of the time made a leap so that “Jew”
became synonymous with “semite” in the lexicon of the day.
The interesting thing here is
that there was already the perfectly good expression Judenhass, or “Jew hate,” in the popular lexicon. But Marr wanted
to make his hatred about race, rather than religion. The new term he coined
avoided altogether the question of religion. “Antisemitism” also sounded more
scientific, more intellectual, therefore more credible and more acceptable. Also,
people just liked it. So the word “antisemitismus”
spread like wildfire as a new way to speak about hating the Jews.
But the thing is, there’s no such
thing as a “semite” or even a “semitic” people. The terms were invented by some
historians in the 1770s
to refer to people who speak Semitic languages But in truth, there are only Semitic languages. There
is no race or people that are “semites.”
In other words, when you spell
the word with a hyphen, the word makes no sense. Because you can’t be against
something that doesn’t exist. And there’s no such thing as a semite.
The other problem is that
people say that Arabs are semites, too, therefore Arabs can’t be antisemites,
because they can’t be against themselves.
Except there’s no such thing as
a semite.
The term antisemite, you see,
is standalone. It only means “someone who hates Jews.” And that is all it was
ever intended to mean.
Antisemitism, as a term, is based on racist claptrap. The word was lifted from the field of linguistics to give
weight to the idea of hating the Jews (and only the Jews) as a race (which they
aren’t). The pseudoscientific sound of the term gave it loft and validity.
Which is stupid.
To be clear: Jews aren’t
semites. Neither are Arabs.
Antisemites hate Jews, not
Arabs.
So when you use the hyphen you’re
unwittingly espousing turn of the century European racism. You’re also ignorant
of history. If Marr had meant to include Arabs he would have spelled the word
he invented with a hyphen to include them.
Historians, at least those who care
about academic rigor, are careful to spell the word without the hyphen. But the media
continues to hyphenate the word. And spell-check and the auto-correct function
of Word just won’t get the message. Historian Shmuel Almog, in
fact, wrote about the problem
with the hyphen all the way back in 1989:
“So the hyphen, or rather its omission, conveys a message; if
you hyphenate your 'anti-Semitism', you attach some credence to the very
foundation on which the whole thing rests. Strike out the hyphen and you will
treat antisemitism for what it really is—a generic name for modern Jew-hatred
which now embraces this phenomenon as a whole, past, present and—I am
afraid—future as well.”
