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A Nicaraguan Exceptionalism? Debating the Legacy of the Sandinista
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Edited by Hilary Francis
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A Nicaraguan Exceptionalism?
Debating the Legacy of the Sandinista Revolution

edited by Hilary Francis

INSTITUTE OF LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

A Nicaraguan Exceptionalism?
Debating the Legacy of the Sandinista Revolution

edited by Hilary Francis

Institute of Latin American Studies, School of Advanced Study,
University of London, 2020

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

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This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-

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ISBN:
978-1-908857-57-6 (paperback edition)
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978-1-908857-77-4 (PDF edition)

DOI: 10.14296/220.9781908857774 (PDF edition)

Institute of Latin American Studies

School of Advanced Study
University of London
Senate House
London WC1E 7HU

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 Contents
List of illustrations v
Notes on contributors vii
Introduction: exceptionalism and agency in Nicaragua’s
revolutionary heritage 1
Hilary Francis
1. ‘We didn’t want to be like Somoza’s Guardia’: policing,
crime and Nicaraguan exceptionalism 21
Robert Sierakowski
2. ‘The revolution was so many things’ 45
Fernanda Soto
3. Nicaraguan food policy: between self-sufficiency and dependency 61
Christiane Berth
4. On Sandinista ideas of past connections to the Soviet Union
and Nicaraguan exceptionalism 87
Johannes Wilm
5. Agrarian reform in Nicaragua in the 1980s: lights and shadows
of its legacy 103
José Luis Rocha
6. The difference the revolution made: decision-making in Liberal
and Sandinista communities 127
Hilary Francis
7. Grassroots verticalism? A Comunidad Eclesial de Base in rural
Nicaragua 145
David Cooper
8. Nicaraguan legacies: advances and setbacks in feminist
and LGBTQ activism 165
Florence E. Babb
9. Conclusion: exceptionalism and Nicaragua’s many revolutions 179
Justin Wolfe
Index 185

iii
 List of illustrations
Figure
1.1 ‘Courtesy and respect for the law are inseparable’. ‘A man who
does not respect a woman is a coward. A man who does not
respect a young female police officer (una muchacha policía) and
does not follow her instructions is twice as cowardly and also an
enemy of the law.’ (Tomás Borge). 29
3.1 Basic grain production, 1977–90 (in t). 67
5.1 Evolution in the size of farms by range (in percentages of land
used for agriculture). 120

v
 Notes on contributors
Florence Babb is Harrington Distinguished Professor in Anthropology at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She specializes in gender and
sexuality as well as race and class in changing contexts in Latin America. Her
publications include After Revolution: Mapping Gender and Cultural Politics in
Neoliberal Nicaragua (University of Texas Press, 2001), The Tourism Encounter:
Fashioning Latin American Nations and Histories (Stanford University Press,
2011), and Women’s Place in the Andes: Engaging Decolonial Feminist Anthropology
(University of California Press, 2018).

Christiane Berth is Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt Chair in

Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Costa Rica. A historian
of food politics and consumer history in global perspective, with a particular
focus on Mexico and Central America, Dr Berth has published widely on the
history of food politics in Nicaragua. Other recent works include a book on
the history of the coffee trade between Germany and Central America; a chapter
on Sandinista comics for the University of Pittsburgh Press; and an edited
volume on the culture of Sandinismo in Nicaragua.

David Cooper is a social anthropologist, and received his PhD from the
department of anthropology at UCL in 2015. He has since held several
postdoctoral positions, most recently the ESRC-funded ‘Politicised provision:
development and welfare under Latin America’s new left’. His publications
include ‘Grounding rights: populist and peasant conceptions of entitlement
in rural Nicaragua’ (Social Analysis) and ‘Pentecostalism and the peasantry:
domestic and spiritual economies in rural Nicaragua’ (Ethnos). He is currently
teaching at the University of Bristol.

Hilary Francis is a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow at the University of

Northumbria. Her doctoral research – on Nicaragua’s Contra War – drew
on extensive oral history research with ex-combatants in Nicaragua. She is
currently working on two postdoctoral projects: a history of the relationship
between US aid and pesticide use in Nicaragua; and a collaborative study of
the environmental and health impacts of the Masaya volcano from 1850 to the
present.

vii
viii A NICARAGUAN EXCEPTIONALISM?

José Luis Rocha is Senior Researcher at the Universidad Rafael Landívar in

Guatemala and Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas” in El
Salvador, and associate Researcher with the Brooks World Poverty Institute at
the University of Manchester. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the Philipps-
Universität Marburg, Germany. His work focuses on issues relating to youth
gangs, social movements, political analysis, and migration. He is a member
of the editorial committee of the academic journal Anuario de Estudios
Centroamericanos (Costa Rica) and the magazine Envío. His last publications
include the books Autoconvocados y conectados. Los universitarios en la revuelta de
abril en Nicaragua (UCA publicaciones y UCA editores, 2019), El debate sobre
la justica maya. Encuentros y desencuentros del pluralismo jurídico en la Guatemala
del siglo XXI (EDUSAC, 2019), La desobediencia de las masas. La migración no
autorizada de centroamericanos a Estados Unidos como desobediencia civil (UCA
editores, 2018), and Expulsados de la globalización (IHNCA, 2011).

Robert Sierakowski received his PhD in history from UCLA. His book
Sandinistas: A Moral History is forthcoming from the University of Notre
Dame Press. Dr Sierakowski is a history teacher and advisor in the Department
of History, Trevor Day School. He is a former lecturer in the Department of
History and Archaeology at the University of the West Indies.

Fernanda Soto (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is the author of Ventanas

en la Memoria: recuerdos de la Revolución en la Frontera Agrícola (UCA, 2011).
Dr Soto is Projects Coordinator at the NGO Winds of Peace and a researcher
at the Center for Global Education and Experience, Ausgburg University, USA.

Johannes Wilm obtained his PhD from Goldsmiths College in 2013. His
book Nicaragua, Back from the Dead? An Anthropological View of the Sandinista
Movement in the Early 21st Century was published by New Left Notes in 2011.
Wilm is currently affiliated with the Historical Studies section at the Department
of Society, Culture and Identity at the University of Malmö.

Justin Wolfe is a William Arceneaux Professor of Latin American History

and Suzanne and Stephen Weiss Presidential Fellow. He specializes in Central
America, particularly post-colonial social and cultural history. His research
interest include nation-formation, race and ethnicity, and the African Diaspora.
His publications include Blacks and Blackness in Central America: Between
Race and Place (Duke University Press, 2010) and The Everyday Nation-State:
Community and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-Century Nicaragua (University of
Nebraska Press, 2007).
 Introduction: exceptionalism and agency
in Nicaragua’s revolutionary heritage
Hilary Francis

O
n 10 January 2017, ten days before Donald Trump took his oath of
office, Daniel Ortega was sworn in as President of Nicaragua for the
fourth time. These two very different presidents both gave inauguration
speeches suffused with nationalism, but only one of them claimed that his
country was exceptional. In his remarks to scattered crowds on Pennsylvania
Avenue, Donald Trump promised to make America great again (again), but
in spite of his inflated jingoistic rhetoric, Trump is not, in fact, an American
exceptionalist. He does not believe that his country is innately different, nor that
accidents of geography or history have conspired to set the United States apart
as a nation with a particular role in the world. It was Ortega, not Trump, who
used his inauguration speech to emphasise, once more, his belief in Nicaragua’s
exceptionalism, calling this small Central American country of six million people
a ‘blessed’ nation.1
The contrast between the two indicates something fundamental about the
nature of exceptionalism: it relies on a sense of a particular moral purpose. Trump
rejects the concept because he rejects morality. For him, international politics is
a zero sum game in pursuit of material resources. Therefore, the United States
cannot be exceptional as long as other countries ‘are eating our lunch’.2 This
logic leads him to conclude that the Iraq War was a bad idea because Americans
did not ‘take the oil’ before getting out.3 Daniel Ortega, in contrast, asserts that
Nicaragua is exceptional precisely because, in spite of an acute lack of material
resources, the particular moral character of Nicaraguans allows them to overcome
great odds. Claiming that Nicaragua has ‘the lowest crime rate in Latin America
and one of the lowest on the planet’, Ortega argues that ‘These goals have
been reached with limited material resources, because we have infinite moral

1 ‘Toma de posesion e investidura de Daniel Ortega en 2017’, YouTube video, available at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAKUaAWvX9k (accessed 15 Apr. 2019); S. Wertheim,
‘Trump and American Exceptionalism’ (2017).
2 Wertheim, ‘Trump and American exceptionalism’.
3 Ibid.

H. Francis, ‘Introduction: exceptionalism and agency in Nicaragua’s revolutionary heritage’, in

H. Francis (ed.), A Nicaraguan Exceptionalism? Debating the Legacy of the Sandinista Revolution
(London: University of London Press, 2019), pp. 1–19. License: CC-BY-NC-ND.

1
2 A NICARAGUAN EXCEPTIONALISM?

resources, that is our strength.’4 Rosario Murillo, who is both vice-president and
first lady, claims that Nicaragua is a peaceful country in the midst of a ‘world full
of conflict’ because ‘Nicaraguans have accumulated within themselves a heritage
of respect, moral strength, and admiration which is unbreakable, unyielding,
hard-working and heroic, qualities which are recognised around the world.’5
This collection is, in part, a reaction to this government rhetoric. Its chapters
began life as a set of papers presented at a conference at the Institute of Latin
American Studies at the University of London in March 2015. At that time,
several of us were thinking independently about the idea of Nicaraguan
exceptionalism. The FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) government’s
claims were always clearly overblown, but they belied a range of phenomena
which suggested that Nicaragua really was different. Nicaragua was not wracked
with violence in the same way as her Central American neighbours: homicide
rates and levels of emigration to the United States were both substantially lower.
Furthermore, beyond the rhetoric, it was clear that many Nicaraguans outside
of the party of government – and vehemently opposed to it – also considered
Nicaragua’s heritage to be unique. They believed that their country’s history
bestowed on Nicaragua’s citizens a particular set of strengths and traits, even as it
imposed a particular – sometimes unbearable – burden upon them.
Nicaraguan exceptionalism is unique among exceptionalisms for the
emphasis it places on the moral duty of the individual. Many cultures of
exceptionalism rely upon a belief in the particular moral virtues of a nation’s
citizens, but most combine this with a conviction that certain material factors
have contributed to this cultural exceptionalism. The United States, it is argued,
is exceptional because of the vast resources that were mobilised by westward
expansion. Venezuela is exceptional because of its oil reserves. Cuba is exceptional
because its strategic importance meant that independence came late and, once
the revolution had triumphed, the island’s topography ensured ease of control.6
In the Nicaraguan case a similar retreat to the concrete is impossible. Before the
revolution in 1979 nobody had suggested that Nicaragua was exceptional nor
that the nation possessed any intrinsic assets that made the revolution more
likely. Nicaraguan exceptionalism is seen as the result of human endeavour,
achieved by sheer force of will.
The lens of exceptionalism gives us a new way to consider an old question,
much discussed in scholarship on Nicaragua: what remains of the revolution?7
4 La Voz del Sandinismo, ‘Daniel: Policía Nacional tiene resultados excepcionales’, 9 Dec. 2014.
5 Y. Prado Reyes, ‘Compañera Rosario’, 12 Dec. 2016.
6 I. Tyrrell, ‘American exceptionalism in an age of international history’, 96 (4) (1991); S. Ellner
and M. Tinker Salas, ‘The Venezuelan exceptionalism thesis: separating myth from reality’
(2007); L. Whitehead, ‘On Cuban political exceptionalism’, (2007).
7 D. Rodgers, ‘Searching for the time of beautiful madness (2009); F. Babb, After revolution
(2001); R. Montoya, Gendered Scenarios of Revolution (2012). The idea of Nicaraguan
exceptionalism is addressed explicitly in S. Martí i Puig and D. Close, ‘La excepción
Nicaragüense?’ (2009); and J.M. Cruz, ‘Democratization under assault: criminal violence
in post-transition Central America’, PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 2010.
 INTRODUCTION 3

Were the sacrifices that brought the Sandinistas to power in 1979 entirely in
vain? What tangible (and not so tangible) changes survived the upheaval of
the revolutionary decade? It was clear to us that any credible answer to this
question required scholarship that was fully grounded in both the past and the
present, and which gave a detailed account of the connections between the two.
As a group of historians, sociologists and anthropologists, that task forced all of
us out of our immediate comfort zones. It demanded that the social scientists
think in more detail about the historical antecedents for the phenomena they
described, and it required the historians to write all the way up to the present.
At the time of writing, the historians especially have reason to curse the hubris
that pushed us into this endeavour. The present is always a moving target, but
in 2018 Nicaragua experienced the most intense period of political upheaval
since the revolution of 1979. The verdict of the Envío editorial team in the
month after the violence began cannot be disputed: ‘There is a clear dividing
line between the Nicaragua that existed before these unexpected days of rebellion
and the Nicaragua of today. We still don’t know how this new country, born of
this outburst of unrest, will take shape. But we know that nothing will be in the
same place as it was before.’ 8
The violence of 2018 ripped Nicaraguan society open in ways that may
never be repaired. But it also exposed continuities that were a surprise to many.
In 2007, when Daniel Ortega first returned to power, former vice-president and
leading dissident Sergio Ramírez spoke of a Nicaragua that was divided into
three: the deluded who chose to believe Ortega’s promises about a second stage
of the revolution; the betrayed, who felt that their revolutionary-era sacrifices
had come to nothing; and the young, who viewed ‘what has come down to
them from history as a cacophony so confused as to induce only oblivion’.9
In fact, events of recent months have shown that young Nicaraguans are not the
apathetic, self-involved consumerist types that their elders had hitherto perceived
them to be.10 Young Nicaraguans have led the current protest movement – and
they have done so by drawing widely and creatively on Nicaragua’s revolutionary
traditions. In their actions and analysis they have made it clear that they are
keenly aware of their country’s recent past. They have shown that they are heirs
to a particular sense of agency and duty, a particular moral imperative, which we
call Nicaraguan exceptionalism. This introduction has three sections. The first
discusses the evolution of exceptionalist ideas from 1979 until 2017. The second
looks at the ways in which these same ideas have played out during the protest

8 Envío, ‘Abril 2018: La insurrección de la conciencia’, no. 434, May 2018, http://www.envio.
org.ni/articulo/5479 (accessed 15 Apr. 2019).
9 S. Ramírez, ‘Nicaragua: through the abyss’, 3 Sept. 2007.
10 M. Córdoba, ‘La apática generación post-revolución sale a las calles y hace tambalear al
gobierno de Daniel Ortega’, Infobae, 22 Apr. 2018. There is substantial survey data and
other research which suggest that most young people are not interested in politics. See,
e.g., F. Maradiaga, ‘Youth analysis for strategic planning’, 28 Nov. 2017.
4 A NICARAGUAN EXCEPTIONALISM?

movement and government crackdown of 2018. The last explores in more detail
each chapter’s particular contribution to this volume.

Exceptionalism in the ‘first’ and ‘second’ stages

of the revolution: 1979–2017
In 1979 the FSLN led a broad-based popular movement which overthrew the
dictatorship of the Somoza dynasty. The Somozas had ruled Nicaragua for
43 years, relying on US support and increasingly brutal repression to remain
in power. When Ronald Reagan’s administration began an undeclared war
on Nicaragua, the country’s plight became an international cause célèbre.
International supporters of the Sandinistas were drawn by the conflict’s
stark injustice – with the might of the United States ranged against a tiny,
impoverished Central American nation – but they were also attracted by the
Sandinistas’ policies. A mixed economy, the county’s first free elections in 1984,
and a commitment to grassroots democracy, via a series of mass organisations,
all suggested that Nicaragua might be the first example of viable, democratic
socialism, succeeding where so many others failed before. At the time, academics
frequently referred to the Nicaraguan experience as a ‘unique experiment’.11
In 1990, with the economy in crisis and the country struggling with the
impact of a decade of war, Nicaraguans voted the Sandinistas out of office,
opting instead for a coalition of mainly right-wing parties backed by the United
States. Sixteen years of right-wing neoliberal government ensued, until Daniel
Ortega was elected to the presidency in November 2006, and then won further
elections in 2011 and 2016. He has held office continuously for more than
a decade, overturning Nicaragua’s constitutional prohibition on re-election in
order to do so. Ortega’s new period in office has been characterised by an acute
intolerance for any threat to his hold on power, however slight. In 1990, Ortega
had agreed to bring elections forward as part of the Central American peace
process, because he and the FSLN assumed that they would win comfortably.
The shock of that defeat, and the fact that it took the FSLN 16 years to return to
office, created the conditions for the paranoia and increasing authoritarianism
that have characterised the FSLN’s attitude to power since 2007.12
From the beginning, there were clear irregularities in the way that elections
were run. In the 2008 municipal elections – the first held with the FSLN as
national incumbent – the number of votes cast exceeded the number of voters

11 The phrase ‘unique experiment’ is used, to give just a few examples, in R.S. Garfield and
G. Williams, Health and Revolution: The Nicaraguan Experience (1989), 197; C. Robinson,
Nicaragua: Against All Odds (1989), 12; D. Faber, Environment under Fire: Imperialism and the
Ecological Crisis in Central America (1993), 189; T. Walker, Nicaragua: The Land of Sandino
(1986), 120; H.E. Vanden and G. Prevost, Democracy and Socialism in Sandinista Nicaragua
(1996), 75.
12 For a visceral account of the Sandinista experience of the 1990 electoral defeat, see S. Ramírez,
Confesión de amor (1991).
 INTRODUCTION 5

on the electoral roll in multiple districts in 40 different municipalities.13 In 2011,

there were widespread irregularities in the electoral process, even though opinion
poll data suggest that the government could have won comfortably without
fraud: the FSLN’s goal was not just to win, but to win an absolute majority
in the National Assembly. IPADE, a respected Nicaraguan NGO with a long
history of election monitoring, was denied accreditation. International observers
from the European Union and the Organisation of American States (OAS) were
accredited in 2011, but their work was significantly undermined: 20 per cent
of the OAS observers were prevented from observing election-day preparations
at the polling stations to which they had been assigned, which meant that they
could not verify that the ballot boxes were empty when they were sealed.14 No
independent election observers, national or international, were accredited for the
2016 presidential elections. In any event, the contest was a foregone conclusion
because Eduardo Montealegre, leader of the main opposition party, was removed
from office by Nicaragua’s Supreme Court less than five months before the vote.15
This need for absolute control is also clear in the Ortega administration’s
attitude to peaceful protest. Orteguista officials clearly subscribe to the notion
that ‘whoever has the streets has the power’ and in the years since 2007 they
have acted accordingly.16 In 2013 a group of elderly protestors and their student
supporters staged a sit-in demonstration at the Institute of Social Security (INSS)
to demand pension reform. They were beaten, threatened and robbed by an
organised group of assailants who had been transported to the scene in vehicles
belonging to the Managua mayor’s office. The attacks took place in full view of
the Nicaraguan police, who did not intervene as the violence unfolded.17 Since
2013 anti-canal protestors have fiercely resisted the government’s transoceanic
canal project. Their protests have repeatedly been thwarted by Nicaraguan police
and groups of pro-government supporters: in 2014 a demonstrator lost an eye
after police shot him with a rubber bullet, and in 2016 a bridge was destroyed to
prevent peasant protesters taking part in a march.18

13 Such discrepancies were not apparent in subsequent elections because the government
stopped releasing district-by-district statistics. Consorcio Panorama Electoral, ‘Informe
preliminar elecciones 2016’, 4.
14 Envío, ‘Elecciones 2011: Perdió Nicaragua’, no. 356, Nov. 2011; The Carter Center,
‘The 2011 Elections in Nicaragua’, Study Mission Report, 7.
15 N. Lakhani, ‘Nicaragua suppresses opposition to ensure one-party election, critics say’,
Guardian, 26 June 2016.
16 G. Rothschuh, ‘Observatorio de los medios’, Confidencial, 17 Apr. 2018.
17 Envío, ‘The challenge of the others’, no. 384, July 2013; Centro Nicaraguense de Derechos
Humanos (CENIDH), ‘Violaciones de derechos humanos en el contexto de la protesta de los
adultos mayores por su derecho a una pensión reducida de vejez’, 27 June 2013; C. Salinas, ‘El
gobierno de Ortega reprime la protesta de los “viejitos” en Nicaragua’, El País, 23 June 2013.
18 CENIDH, Derechos humanos en Nicaragua: Informe 2013 (2014), 39; CENIDH, Derenchos
humanos en Nicaragua: Informe 2015 (2016), 42–4; M. Aguilera, ‘Destrozan puente para
impidir marcha campesina’, Hoy, 30 Nov. 2016; V. Vásquez, ‘Perdió un ojo en marcha
anticanal, pero continúa en la protesta’, Confidencial, 18 June 2017.
 INTRODUCTION 17

to develop ‘the strategic tools necessary to develop a way of struggling for sexual
rights’. At the same time, the heteronormative ethos of the revolution, and
the emphasis on state-based development, placed restrictions on autonomous
initiatives for change, restrictions which are also apparent in the actions of the
current FSLN administration.
In his prescient conclusion to this volume, written before the outbreak of
violence in 2018, Justin Wolfe notes the fragility of the apparent consensus
forged by the FSLN. He wonders whether the legacies of the revolution will
provide the necessary springboard for change when the status quo inevitably
crumbles. At the time of writing, Nicaraguans are bitterly divided on that
question. For every young protestor who claims the ideals and tactics of the
revolution as their own, there is another Nicaraguan who regards the violence
of 2018 as yet another reason to obliterate all traces of the Sandinista past once
and for all. Future debates about the legacy of the revolution will be belligerent
and near-impossible to resolve, but they are nonetheless preferable to the silence
about the traumas of the 1970s and 80s that has prevailed for the last thirty years.
Any new consensus will require a nuanced and unflinching attempt to reckon
with Nicaragua’s recent history. We hope that this book will contribute in some
small way to that essential task.

Bibliography
Babb, F. (2001) After Revolution: Mapping Gender and Cultural Politics
in Neoliberal Nicaragua (Austin, TX).
The Carter Center (n.d.) ‘The 2011 Elections in Nicaragua’, Study Mission
Report, https://www.cartercenter.org/resources/pdfs/peace/americas/
nicaragua_2011_report_post.pdf (accessed 15 Apr. 2019).
Chamorro, C.F. (2016) ‘La reeleccion de Daniel Ortega, sin
legitimidad’, El País, 11 June, http://internacional.elpais.com/
internacional/2016/06/11/actualidad/1465603218_994900.html
(accessed 15 Apr. 2019).
Consorcio Panorama Electoral (n.d.) ‘Informe Preliminar Elecciones
2016’, www.eyt.org.ni/2016/INFORME%20PRELIMINAR%20
PANORAMA%20ELECTORAL%202016%20Nov%206%20
version%20final.pdf (accessed 15 Apr. 2019).
Cruz, J.M. (2010) ‘Democratization under assault: criminal violence
in post-transition Central America’, Vanderbilt University PhD thesis.
Diario Las Americas (2016) ‘Exguerrillera de Nicaragua llama “fascista” al
gobierno de Ortega’, 5 Feb., www.diariolasamericas.com/5051_portada-
america-latina/3606266_exguerrillera-nicaragua-llama-fascista-gobierno-
ortega.html (accessed 15 Apr. 2019).
Ellner, S. and M. Tinker Salas (2007) ‘The Venezuelan exceptionalism thesis:
separating myth from reality’, in S. Ellner and M. Tinker Salas (eds.)
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as was the case years ago, an unhealthy excitement in the minds of
220
the people.”
But, facts being more convincing than official denials, the exodus
grew more alarming, because the forces to which it owed its origin
continued in operation. The “Jewish Colonization Association” now
came to the aid of the indigent exiles, and endeavoured to save
them from additional suffering by preventing those who were not
provided with the necessary passage money, or were not physically
221
fit, from leaving their homes. These wise measures restrained to
a certain extent indiscriminate expatriation, but, as might have been
foreseen, failed to check it entirely. The exodus continued, and the
outcry against Roumania spread, for now the countries into which
the undesirable current flowed were compelled by self-interest to do
what they had hitherto vainly attempted to effect from a sense of
philanthropy.
America, the favourite haven of refuge for the fortune-seeker of
every colour and clime, undertook the task of spokesman. The late
Mr. Hay, Secretary of State, in September, 1902, through the
representatives of the United States in the countries which took part
in the Congress of Berlin, reminded the Governments of those
countries of Art. 44 of the Treaty signed by them in 1878, urging
them to bring home to Roumania her flagrant and persistent failure
to fulfil the conditions on which she had obtained her independence.
After a handsome tribute to the intellectual and moral qualities of the
Jew, based on history and experience, the American Minister
protested, on behalf of his country, against “the treatment to which
the Jews of Roumania are subjected, not alone because it has
unimpeachable ground to remonstrate against resultant injury to
itself, but in the name of humanity.” He concluded with a vigorous
appeal to “the principles of International Law and eternal justice,”
and with an offer to lend the moral support of the United States to
222
any effort made to enforce respect for the Treaty of Berlin.
This powerful impeachment, coming as it did from a distant party
in no way connected with the affairs of Continental Europe, may
have caused heart-searchings in nearer and more immediately
concerned countries; but it failed to awaken those countries to a
proper sense of their interests, not to say duties. The only quarter in
which America’s appeal to humanity found an echo was England. A
number of representative men, such as the late Archbishop of
Canterbury, the present Bishop of London, Lord Kelvin, the
Marquess of Ripon, the late Mr. Lecky, Sir Charles Dilke, the Master
of Balliol, and others, publicly expressed their profound sympathy
with the victims of persecution. Mr. Chamberlain also seized the
opportunity of declaring that, as history proves, the Jews, “while
preserving with extraordinary tenacity their national characteristics
and the tenets of their religion, have been amongst the most loyal
subjects of the states in which they have found a home, and the
impolicy of persecution in such a case is almost greater than its
223
cruelty.” Other Englishmen also joined in the denunciation of
Roumania not so much from pity for the victims of oppression as
from fear lest, unless the Roumanian Government was compelled to
change its policy, England should have to face another inroad of
“undesirable” Jewish immigrants.
In like manner, the only Government which volunteered to
second Mr. Hay’s Note was the British, and on the common basis of
these two representations, the signatory Powers of the Treaty of
Berlin “exchanged views.” The results of this exchange can be
summed up only too easily. The historian of the future will probably
derive therefrom some interesting lessons regarding European
politics and ethics in the beginning of the twentieth century. They are
as follows:
Germany, under whose presidency the stipulation concerning the
Jews of Roumania was framed, did not choose to consider herself
called upon to insist on the execution of that stipulation. The Liberal
section of the German press received the American Note with
sincere, but ineffectual, appreciation; while of the Conservative
majority some pronounced it naïve, and others affected to regard it
as an attempt on America’s part to interfere in European affairs, or
even as an electioneering trick having for its sole object to enhance
President Roosevelt’s political prestige! The German Government,
though more courteous than the German press, proved equally cold.
As we have already seen, that Government was the last to join in the
efforts to improve the lot of the Roumanian Jews and the first to
declare itself satisfied with the deceptive revision of Article 7 of the
Roumanian Constitution. This attitude, when considered in
conjunction with the fact that a Hohenzollern reigns in Roumania,
and with that kingdom’s place in the present political combinations of
the Continent, enables us to understand, if not to applaud,
Germany’s reception of Mr. Hay’s Note.
Austria-Hungary, whose proximity to Roumania pointed her out
as the Power primarily concerned, and entitled to act, declined to
take any steps singly or collectively. The self-restraint of Austria, like
that of Germany, and even in a greater degree, was dictated by
political considerations, Roumania being practically the only State in
the Balkans, where the influence of Austria-Hungary and of the Triple
Alliance still counts for something. Besides, the Vienna Cabinet
could not decently join in advocating Jewish emancipation, for it was
Austria which in May, 1887, concluded with Roumania a treaty
whereby some seventy thousand Jewish residents in the latter
kingdom—who, according to a practice common in Mohammedan
countries, had enjoyed Austrian protection while Roumania was
under Ottoman rule—were deprived of the status of Austrian
subjects, without receiving any other status in exchange.
Italy was deterred from lending her support to the American Note
by Roumania’s relations with the Triple Alliance and also by the
vogue which the “Roman” idea obtains in the land which the
Roumanians are pleased to regard as “the cradle of their race.”
Russia, whose treatment of her own Jewish subjects would have
made an appeal to “humanity and eternal justice” on behalf of the
Jews in another country a sad mockery, decorously refrained from
supporting the American Note. It is true that the Russian press
imitated the Teutonic in scoffing at America’s action as a pretext for
gaining admission to the counsels of the European Areopagus, and
in condemning it as an impertinence! But the Czar’s Government,
with better taste, extricated itself from an awkward position by basing
its refusal on the ground that the grievances set forth in Mr. Hay’s
despatch were so old that it was hardly worth while troubling about
them. In the opinion of the Russian Ministers, the Jews must by now
be thoroughly accustomed to starvation.
France, with all the good intentions in the world, could do nothing
without Russia’s consent and, therefore, contented herself with the
expression of a modest hope that the Roumanian Government might
of their own accord decide to fulfil their obligations, seeing that the
real sufferer is Roumania itself, and with pointing to the lack of
224
means of enforcing such fulfilment.
In brief, the European Powers considered that they did their duty
by expressing their platonic concurrence with that part of the
American Note which referred to the obligations of humanity and
civilisation generally. But to the more definite appeal to the Treaty of
Berlin they refused to pay any attention whatsoever. Nor can we
wonder at their refusal. The appeal was not a very happy one; for
every party to that contract has conscientiously broken it in turn.
Russia, in defiance of its provisions, has fortified Batoum; Turkey has
not even attempted to carry out the reforms in the European
Provinces of the Empire, ordained by the Treaty; Great Britain has
done nothing for the Armenians. Why then should poor Roumania
alone be called upon to carry out her share of an agreement, already
disregarded with impunity by everyone else concerned?
Such a retort would, of course, have been too candid and too
rational for diplomacy. Instead, the Roumanian Government had
again recourse to the more correct, if somewhat hackneyed,
expedient of an official contradiction of the truth. The Roumanian
Minister in London declared that “the idea that any persecution
existed was absolutely erroneous.” The Jews were foreigners, and
“the disabilities imposed upon foreigners were absolutely necessary
for the protection of his countrymen, who had bought their
independence with the sword, and had a right to manage their
225
economic affairs according to their requirements, etc., etc.” What
the Roumanian conception of such a right is has been very
eloquently explained by Roumania’s accomplished Queen. After
having drawn a pitiful and, although exaggerated, in the main faithful
picture of Roumania’s economic misery, Her Majesty declares that,
under such conditions, the civilised world ought not “to require her to
harbour and support others, when she herself stands in dire need of
assistance.” Those “others” are “foreigners,” that is, Roumanian
Jews; their exodus is represented as the voluntary emigration of “a
foreign population” due to the instinct which prompts a rat to quit a
sinking ship, and their departure is welcome, because they, being
traders, drain the country of its wealth. This interesting economic
doctrine is expounded by Her Majesty as follows: “It is a fact that no
money has ever been introduced into Roumania through any one in
trade. Any that such a man may possess goes abroad, first to
purchase his stock and outfit, and later for supplies to carry on his
business, even such articles as buttons and the commonest kinds of
braids not being manufactured here except on the very smallest
226
scale.” Here again the Jewish apologist is more convincing than
his Roumanian accuser. Admitting that, on the whole, the Queen’s
statements are correct, he asks: “But why is it so? For the reason
that the ruling class prohibits ‘foreigners’ to acquire lands in the
country, and by means of this and other laws keeps foreign capital
227
from coming in.”
Protests pass away, grievances remain. The well-meant action of
Mr. Hay and Lord Lansdowne, far from bettering, really aggravated
the condition of the people on whose behalf it was taken. The
Roumanian politicians, with characteristic astuteness, perceived that
the immediate cause of the complaint was the emigration of the
Jews to the United States, England and Canada, and, naturally
enough, arrived at the conclusion that the one thing needful was to
remove the ground of complaint by stopping emigration. A
telegraphic order was sent to all the local authorities, forbidding the
issue of passports to the Jews. Those who had already reached the
frontier were forcibly turned back, and hundreds of others, who had
sold all they possessed in order to raise the funds necessary for the
228
journey, were compelled to return home and perish. Thus an act
intended as a blessing proved an unmitigated curse, and modern
Roumania by this new measure has outstripped even mediaeval
Spain in cruelty. For the Spanish sovereigns, blinded by religious
bigotry, had yet given to the Jews the alternatives of conversion or
exile. Their Roumanian imitators, infatuated by racial fanaticism, will
not baptize the Jews, nor dare they banish them; but, like Pharaoh of
old, they virtually bid them stay and be slaves.
 CHAPTER XXIII

ANTI-SEMITISM

We have followed the fortunes of the Jewish people from the

moment of its first contact with the nations of the West to the last
quarter of the nineteenth century. We have seen that this contact
was from the beginning marked by mutual antipathy, enfeebled at
times, invigorated at others, always present. Some Jewish writers
have endeavoured to show that the hatred of the Gentile towards the
Jew in the Middle Ages was an artificial creation due entirely to the
efforts of the Catholic Church; that it flowed from above, and that the
masses of Christendom, when not incited by the classes, were most
amicably disposed towards Israel. This view is hardly tenable. It is
inconceivable that the Church, or any other authority, could have
succeeded so well in kindling the conflagrations which we have
witnessed, if the fuel were not ready to be kindled. It is also a view
contrary to the recorded facts. We have seen in the earlier Middle
Ages popular prejudice spontaneously manifesting itself in the insults
and injuries which were heaped upon the Jews, and restrained with
difficulty by the princes and prelates of Europe. In the time of the
Crusades also it was not St. Bernard who fanned the fury of the mob
against the Jews of the Rhine, but an obscure monk. The
exhortations of the saint were disregarded; but the harangues of the
fanatic found an eager audience, simply because they were in
accord with popular feeling. During the same period bishops and
burgomasters strove to save the victims, in vain.
Again, the persecution of the Spanish Jews in the fifteenth
century would never have attained the dimensions which it did attain,
were it not for the deep-rooted animosity which the bulk of the
Spanish people nourished against them. Castile was then the home
of chivalry and charity. The pretensions of the Pope to interfere in the
affairs of the kingdom had met with scornful opposition on the part of
the Castilian nobles. Three centuries before an Aragonese monarch
had given away his life in defence of the persecuted heretics of
Provence. Less than two centuries before Aragon was one of the few
countries that refused to comply with the joint request of Philip the
Fair of France and Pope Clement V. to persecute the Knights
Templars. At the time when the Inquisition was established in Spain
both Castile and Aragon were hailing the revival of culture. Under
Ferdinand and Isabella, as well as in the subsequent reigns, the
Castilians and the Aragonese vigorously resisted an institution so
contrary to the principles of freedom dear to them. Nor was in Spain
the danger of dissension sufficiently great to justify recourse to so
terrible an instrument of concord. The Spaniards less than any other
people had reason to sacrifice liberty of conscience for the sake of
political conquest. It is, therefore, highly improbable that the Holy
Office would ever have gained a firm footing in Spain, but for the fact
that its way was paved by the popular prejudice against the Jews
and the Moors, and its success assured by the persecution of those
races. Though the Spaniards hated the Inquisition bitterly, they hated
the Semites more bitterly still; and of the two the Jew more bitterly
than the Moor.
We have also seen that neither the Renaissance nor the
Reformation, both movements directly or indirectly hostile to the
Church, brought any amelioration to the lot of the Jew. In every
country Jew-hatred existed as the product of other than
ecclesiastical influences. Here and there, under exceptionally
favourable conditions, the Jews may have been tolerated; they were
not loved. This negative attitude was liable to be at any moment
converted into active hostility. All that the Church did was to turn the
feeling to account, to intensify and to sanctify it. Lastly, we have seen
that the emancipation of the Jews did not come about until the end of
the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth century—a period no
longer of protest against the Church, but one of rebellion against all
the prejudices of all the ages. It was not until the gospel of humanity,
in its broadest sense, was accepted that the secular clamour against
the Jewish portion of the human race was silenced; and even then
not without difficulty. But, though the plant of anti-Judaism was cut at
the root, the root remained, and it was destined in our own day to put
forth a new shoot.
Writers have expended much ingenuity in defining the origin and
the nature of modern anti-Semitism. Some regard it as a
resuscitation of mediaeval religious bigotry; others as the latest
manifestation of the old struggle between Europe and Asia; a third
school, rejecting both those theories, interprets it as a purely political
question arising from the social and economic conditions created by
the emancipation of the Jews; while a fourth sect have attempted to
show that the modern revival is “the fruit of a great ethnographical
and political error.” Those who see in anti-Semitism nothing but a
revival of mediaeval religious rancour ignore the conflict between
Jew and Gentile before the rise of the Mediaeval Church, or even
before the rise of Christianity. Those who explain it as a purely racial
struggle forget the Crusades and the Inquisition and the superstitious
horror of usury. Those who interpret it simply as a question of
modern European politics disregard both those periods of history.
Finally, whatever may be said of crude ethnographical theories and
of nebulous nationalist creeds, it would be doing them too much
honour to suppose that they are the real causes of anti-Semitism.
Men do not slaughter their fellow-men for the mere sake of an
abstract hypothesis, though priests may. All these things do nothing
but give a name and a watchword to a movement born of far less
ethereal parents. In our day the political activity which has used anti-
Semitism as an instrument has only done what clerical activity had
done in the past. It has availed itself of a force not of its own
creation. The fact is that every human action is the result of manifold
motives. The complexity of the motives is not diminished by the
multitude of the actors. There is a strong temptation to simplify
matters by singling out one of those motives and ignoring the rest.
But, though truth is always simple, simplicity need not always be
true. There may be new things under the sun. Anti-Semitism,
however, is not one of them. Its roots lie deep in the past.
Viewed, then, in the light of two thousand years’ recorded
experience, modern anti-Semitism appears to be neither religious,
nor racial, nor economical in its origin and character. It is all three,
and something more. We find in it all the motives which led to the
persecution of the Jews in the past. In antiquity the struggle was
chiefly due to racial antagonism, in the Middle Ages chiefly to
religious antagonism, in the nineteenth century we might expect it to
assume chiefly a nationalist garb. But, as in antiquity religious
antipathy was blended with racial hatred, as in the Middle Ages
economic rivalry accentuated religious bigotry, so in our time
religious, racial, and economic reasons have contributed to the
movement in various degrees according to the peculiar conditions,
material and moral, prevailing in each country where anti-Semitism
has found an echo. If it were possible to unite all these causes in one
general principle, it would be this: every age has its own fashionable
cult, which for the time being overshadows all other cults, gives a
name to the age, explains its achievements, and extenuates its
crimes. Every age has found in the Jew an uncompromising
dissenter and a sacrificial victim. The cult par excellence of the
nineteenth century is Nationalism.
What is this dreadful Nationalism? It is a reversion to a primitive
type of patriotism—the narrow feeling which makes men regard all
those who live in the same place, or who speak the same language,
or who are supposed to be descended from a common ancestor, as
brethren; all others as foreigners and potential foes. This feeling in
its crudest form is purely a family-feeling, in the worst sense of the
term. It grows into a larger allegiance to the tribe, then to the race,
and that in its turn develops into the broad patriotism which
manifests itself now as Imperialism, now as Catholicism.
There is yet a third form of patriotism—the purest and noblest of
all: loyalty to common intellectual ideals. The Greeks attained to this
lofty conception, and an Athenian orator, in enumerating his
country’s claims to the admiration of mankind, dwells with just pride
on this product of its civilisation. Athens, he says, “has made the
name of the Hellenes to be no longer a name of race, but one of
mind, so that Hellenes should be called those who share in our
229
culture rather than in our nature.” Isocrates in making this
statement, however, gave utterance to a dream of his own rather
than to a feeling common among his countrymen. The Macedonian
Empire strove to convert that philosophical dream into a political fact.
Alexander and his successors studded Asia with Greek theatres,
Greek schools, Greek gymnasia, and the East was covered with a
veneer of pseudo-Hellenic civilisation. But their success was only
partial, superficial and ephemeral. The intellectual unity could not go
deep and therefore did not last long. The barriers—social, religious
and racial—which separated the Hellene from the Barbarian proved
insuperable; and the Isocratean ideal of a nationality based on
community of intellectual aims remained an ideal. Hellenism
demanded a degree of mental development to which mankind has
never yet attained. Hence its failure as a political bond. This was not
the case with Imperialism and Catholicism. They both appealed to
more elementary and therefore less rare qualities in man. Hence
their success. Rome achieved more than Greece because she
aimed at less.
The Roman Empire represented the first, the Roman Church the
second variety of this broad patriotism. Civis Romanus was a title
which united in a common allegiance the Italian and the Greek, the
Jew and the Egyptian, the Spaniard, the Briton and the Gaul.
Catholic Rome inherited the imperial feeling of Pagan Rome, but
dressed it in a religious form. The dictatorship of the Caesars was
divided between the Christian Emperor and the Pope: the former
inheriting their political power, the latter the spiritual and moral.
Charlemagne wielded the authority of an Imperator Romanus, his
papal contemporary that of a Pontifex Maximus. Then came the
decay and fall of the Carlovingian fabric; and, gradually, the Papacy
built up a spiritual empire with the débris of the secular. All Catholics
were subjects of that Empire. In the Middle Ages Europe presented a
picture of wonderful uniformity in sentiments, ideals, customs,
political and social institutions. All countries, like so many coins
issued from one mint, seemed to be cast in the same mould,
stamped with the same effigy and adorned with the same legend.
National consciousness was in the Middle Ages practically non-
existent, or, if it did exist, in the later centuries, it was obscured by
the religious sentiment. As in modern Islam we find Arabs, Persians,
Indians, Malays, Chinese, Syrians, Egyptians, Berbers, Moors,
Turks, Albanians—nations differing widely in origin and language—
united by the ties of a common creed, so in mediaeval Christendom
we find English, Scotch, French, Italian, German and Spanish
knights all forming one vast brotherhood. The reader of Froissart
cannot fail to notice this community of feeling and the marvellous
ease with which gentlemen from all those nations made themselves
at home in one another’s countries. The chronicler himself, in his
style and mental attitude, supplies a striking example of this
cosmopolitanism. By the mediaeval Christian, as by the modern
Mohammedan, the human race was divided into two halves: true
believers and others. The universal acceptance of Latin as the
medium of communication was another token and bond of
brotherhood among the Christians of mediaeval Europe, as the use
of Arabic, as a sacred tongue, is a token and a bond of brotherhood
among the Mohammedans of the present day.
This feeling of international patriotism, which found its highest
development and expression in the Crusades, began to fade as soon
as Catholic faith began to decay. Disintegration followed both in the
Church and in the State. Loyalty to one ideal and to one authority
was gradually superseded by local and later by racial patriotism.
Various political units succeeded to the Unity of mediaeval Europe,
the vernaculars ousted the Latin language from its position as the
one vehicle of thought, and the old cosmopolitan universities of Paris
and Bologna were replaced by national institutions. Since the
fifteenth century nationalism has been growing steadily, but in the
eighteenth its growth was to some extent checked by
humanitarianism. The great thinkers of that age extolled the freedom
and the perfection of the individual as the highest aim of culture,
describing exclusive attachment to one’s country and race as a
characteristic of a comparatively barbarous state of society: a
remnant of aboriginal ancestor-worship. Nationalism, accordingly, did
not reach its adolescence until the nineteenth century. Then the zeal
for peace was eclipsed by the splendour of the French exploits in
war, and the doctrine of universal freedom was forgotten in
Napoleon’s efforts at universal dominion. These efforts aroused in
every country which Napoleon attacked a passionate protest which
resulted in successful revolt. But the triumph was won at a
tremendous cost. Each nation in proportion to its sense of what was
due to itself was oblivious of what was due to others. The principles
of the brotherhood of men and of universal toleration were denied,
the narrow jealousies of race which the philosophers of the
preceding century had driven from the realm of culture were re-
installed, and Nationalism—arrogant, intemperate, and intolerant—
arose on the ruins of Humanitarianism. This evolution, or revolution,
has added a new element in social troubles, and has brought into
being a new set of ideas.
For the last hundred years ethnographical theory has dominated
the civilised world and its destinies as theological dogma had done
during the Middle Ages. Consciously or not, the idea of race directs
the policy of nations, inspires their poetry, and tinges their philosophy
with the same prejudice as religion did formerly. Aryan and non-
Aryan have become terms conveying all but the odious connotation
of Christian and infidel; and in place of the spiritual we have adopted
a scientific mythology. The fiction of our Aryan origin has flattered us
into the benevolent belief of our mental superiority over the Mongol,
and of our moral superiority over the Semite. To dispute this tenet is
to commit sacrilege. But even within the bosom of this imaginary
Aryan fold there are schisms: so-called Celtic, Germanic, Latin,
Anglo-Saxon, and Slavonic sects, divided against one another by the
phantom barriers of ethnographical speculation as frantically as in
older days Christendom was divided by the metaphysical figments of
Arian, Manichaean, Nestorian, and what not. In the name of race are
now done as many great deeds and as many great follies are
committed as were once in the name of God. The worship of race
has, as the worship of the Cross had done before, given birth to new
Crusades which have equalled the old in the degree to which they
have disturbed the peace and agitated the minds of men, and in the
violence of the passions which they have excited. Nationalism more
than any other cause has helped to bring discredit upon the
principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity—to prove the eighteenth
century dream of world-wide peace a glorious impossibility—and to
show the enormous chasm which still gapes between the aspirations
of a few thinkers and the instincts of the masses.
 Though common to all European countries, the creed of the age
found articulate exposition first in Germany, and gave rise to various
academic doctrines which attempted to account for the genesis and
evolution of Nationalism in scientific or pseudo-scientific terms. But
names do not alter facts. Ethnographical speculations are in this
case mainly interesting as having supplied a plausible explanation
for the rise of anti-Semitism. Those who are able to see through new
guises, and to detect what old things they conceal, know that anti-
Semitism is little more than a new Protean manifestation of Jew-
hatred. Divested of its academic paraphernalia, the movement is
revealed in all its venerable vulgarity—a hoary-headed abomination
long since excommunicated by the conscience of civilised mankind.
This reactionary movement began in Eastern Germany and
230
Austria. In those countries the Jews are very numerous, very
wealthy, and very influential. Both countries are famous as hot-beds
of racial fanaticism. In Germany Nationalism was begotten of the
independence secured by the Thirty Years’ War in the seventeenth
century, was nursed by the patriotic preachers and poets of the
eighteenth, was invigorated by the wars for emancipation from
Napoleon’s rule, and was educated by Hegel and his disciples. The
Jews in Germany, as elsewhere, are the one element which declines
to be fused in the nationalist crucible. Their international connections
help them to overstep the barriers of country. Their own racial
consciousness, fostered by the same writers, is at least as intense
as that of the Germans; but it does not coincide with any
geographical entity. They are, therefore, regarded as a cosmopolitan
tribe—“everywhere and nowhere at home.” They are distinct not only
as a race, but as a sect, and as a class. Accordingly, the reaction
against tolerance includes in its ranks clerics and Christian
Socialists, aristocrats, as well as Nationalists, that is, the enemies of
dissent and the enemies of wealth, as well as the enemies of the
alien and the enemies of the upstart. And the term “Jew” is used in a
religious or a racial sense according to the speaker. In both Germany
and Austria we saw that the philosophical gospel of social liberty was
very slowly applied to practical politics, and that, even when it had
been accepted, it was subject to reactions. When Jewish
manumission was finally accomplished, the Jews by their genius
filled a much larger place in the sphere of national life than was
deemed proportional to their numbers. And this undue
preponderance, rendered all the easier by the superior cohesion of
the Jewish over the German social system, was further accentuated
by specialisation. The Jews, whose training in Europe for centuries,
owing partly to their own racial instincts and Rabbinical teaching, but
chiefly to the conditions imposed upon them from outside, had been
of a peculiar kind, showed these peculiarities by their choice of fields
of activity. They abstained from the productive and concentrated
their efforts to the intellectual, financial, and distributive industries of
the countries of which they became enfranchised citizens. Jews
flooded the Universities, the Academies, the Medical Profession, the
Civil Service, and the Bar. Many of the judges, and nearly one-half of
the practising lawyers of Germany, are said to be Jews. Jews came
forth as authors, journalists, and artists. Above all, Jews, thanks to
the hereditary faculty for accumulation fostered in them during the
long period when money-dealing was the one pursuit open to them,
asserted themselves as financiers. It is impossible to move
anywhere in Berlin or Vienna without seeing the name of Israel
written in great letters of gold not only over the shops, but over the
whole face of German life. Success awakened jealousy, and
economic distress—due to entirely different causes—stimulated it.
What if the competition was fair? What if the Jews were
distinguished by their peaceful and patriotic attitude? What if they
supplied the least proportion of criminals and paupers? What if
German freedom had been bought partially with Jewish blood, and
German unity achieved by the help of Jewish brains and Jewish
money?
The landed gentry, richer in ancestors than in money or
intelligence, had every reason to envy the Jew’s wealth, and much
reason to dislike the Jew’s ostentatious display of it. They could not
respect in the Jew a gifted arrivé. They saw in him a vulgar parvenu
—one who by his “subversive Mephistophelian endowment, brains,”
demolishes the fences of creed and caste, and invades the highest
and most exclusive circles, thus acting as a solvent in society. If he is
wise, the proud nobleman of narrow circumstances makes his pride
compensate for his poverty, and magnanimously despises the
luxuries which he cannot procure. If, as more often happens, he is
foolish, he enters into a rivalry of vanity with the upstart, and the
result is a mortgaged estate—mortgaged most likely to his rival. In
either case, he can have little love for the opulent and clever
interloper. The animosity of the aristocracy is shared by the middle
classes, and for analogous reasons. The German professional man,
and more especially his wife, resents his Jewish colleague’s
comparative luxury as a personal affront. The excessive power of
money in modern society, and the consequent diminution of the
respect once paid to blood or learning, naturally enable the Jewish
banker to succeed where the poor baron fails; and the Jewish
professor or doctor, though many of these latter are poor enough, to
outshine his Christian competitor. This excessive power of money is
due to causes far deeper than the enfranchisement of the Jews. It is
the normal result of Germany’s modern development. The influence
of the nobles depended largely on their domains of land; and when
industries arose to compete with agriculture, the importance of land
necessarily declined. At the same time, industry and commerce
began, with Germany’s expansion, to divert more and more the
attention of the intelligent from the path of academic distinction—
once the only path to honour open to the ambitious burgher—into
that of material prosperity. Chrematistic enterprise has introduced a
new social standard, and an aristocracy of wealth has come to
supplant the old aristocracies of birth and erudition. This social
revolution, through which every country in the world has passed and
has to pass, was unhesitatingly ascribed to the Jew, who was thus
accused of having created the conditions, which in reality he had
only exploited.
If from the aristocratic and the cultured classes we turn to the
rural population, we find similar causes yielding similar results. In the
German country districts it is objected to the Jews not cultivating the
land themselves, but lying in wait for the failing farmer:
“Everywhere,” says an authority, “the peasant proprietor hated the
Jew,” and he proceeds to sketch the peasant tragedy of which that
hatred was the consequence. The land had to be mortgaged to pay
family claims; the owner had recourse to the ubiquitous and
importunate money-lender; the money-lender, whose business it is to
trade upon the necessity of the borrower, took advantage of the
latter’s distress, and extorted as much as he could. “The Jew grew
fat as the Gentile got lean. A few bad harvests, cattle-plague, or
potato-disease, and the wretched peasant, clinging with the
unreasonable frantic love of a faithful animal to its habitat, had, in
dumb agony, to see his farm sold up, his stock disposed of, and the
acres he had toiled early and late to redeem, and watered by the
sweat of his stubborn brow, knocked down by the Jewish interloper
231
to the highest bidder.” In the Austrian country districts it is urged
that the presence of the Jew is synonymous with misery; his
absence with comparative prosperity. In Hungary, the late M. Elisée
Reclus—the famous author of the Nouvelle Géographie Universelle
—informs us, “The rich magnate goes bankrupt, and it is almost
always a Jew who acquires the encumbered property,” and another
witness adds: “The Jew is no less active in profiting by the vices and
necessities of the peasant than by those of the noble.” In Galicia,
especially, we are told that the land is rapidly passing into the hands
of the Jews, and that many a former proprietor is now reduced to
work as a day-labourer in his own farm for the benefit of a Jewish
master. All this is an absurdly exaggerated version of facts in
themselves sad enough. The Jews as a whole are by no means a
wealthy community, and the gainers by the supposed exploitation
are the few, not the many. And if, as is the case, the condition of
affairs in agricultural states is bad, who is to blame? Wherever there
is agrarian depression there are sure to be money-lenders enough
and Shylocks too many. It does not appear that Christian money-
lenders have ever been more tender-hearted than their Jewish
confrères. Why then set down to the Jew, as a Jew, what is the
common and inevitable attribute of his profession? The ruin of the
borrower does not justify the slaughter of the lender. Philanthropists
would be better employed if, instead of bewailing in mournful
diatribes the woes of the bankrupt peasant and inveighing against
the cruelty of his oppressor, combined to establish agricultural banks
where the farmer could obtain money at less exorbitant interest. This
measure, and measures like this, not slaughter and senile
lamentation, would be a remedy consonant both with the nature of
the evil and with the dictates of civilisation and justice. Until
something of the sort is done, it is worse than futile to demand that
dealers in money, any more than dealers in corn, cotton, or cheese,
should work from altruistic motives. But nothing rational is ever
attempted. Instead, everywhere the nobles ruined by their own
improvidence and extravagance, the peasants by their rustic
incompetence, and both by the exactions of a wasting militarism,
complain of the extortion of the Jewish usurers. It was inevitable that
the old-world monster of Jew-hatred, never really dead, should have
raised its hoary head again. All the elements of an anti-Jewish
movement were present. The only thing that lacked was opportunity.
The deficiency was not long in being supplied.
The Franco-German war and the achievement of German unity
fanned the flame of patriotism. As in the time of Napoleon the First,
so in that of Napoleon III., a great national danger created a strong
fellow-feeling between the different members of the German race; a
great national triumph stirred up an enthusiasm for the Empire which
was indulged in at the cost of individual liberty. Despotism throve on
the exuberance of nationalism. The Germans were led back from the
constitutional and democratic ideals of 1848 to an ultra-monarchic
servility which made it possible for the present Kaiser’s grandfather a
few years after, prompted by Bismarck, to assert openly the
ridiculous old claim to divine right. Thus the ground was prepared for
any anti-alien and anti-liberal agitation. Other causes came to
accelerate the movement. The war had involved enormous
pecuniary and personal sacrifices. The extraordinary success,
instead of satisfying, stimulated German ambition. It aroused an
extravagant financial optimism and self-confidence. Germany,
intoxicated with military victory, was still thirsting for aggrandisement
of a different kind. Economy was cast to the winds, and a fever of
wild speculation seized on all classes of the community. Companies
were floated, and swallowed up the superfluous capital of the great
as well as the savings of the humble. Sanguine expectation was the
temper of the day. Berlin would vie with Paris in elegance and with
London in suburban comfort, and every one of its citizens would be a
millionaire!
 Then came the terrible crash. The bubble burst, and the
magnificent day-dreams were dispelled by misery. A succession of
bad harvests, and the rapid increase in American corn competition,
by impoverishing the agricultural class, added to the general
depression. The disillusioned public wanted a victim whereupon to
vent its wrath. Those who promoted the companies had to suffer for
the folly of those who were ruined by their failure. A great many of
the former, by selling out at the right moment, rose to affluence. The
discontented public, naturally enough, noticing these large fortunes
in the midst of the general wreck, jumped to the conclusion that the
few had enriched themselves by robbing the many. “Exposures”
followed, and among the implicated financiers there were found
many Jews. It was then in order to fill Jewish pockets that the heroes
of Germany had bled on the battlefield, and the burghers of
Germany had been bled at home! The nationalist ideal of Germany
for the Germans, then, was to lead to a Germany for the Israelites!
All those trials had been endured and all those triumphs achieved in
order to deliver up the Fatherland to an alien and infidel race—a race
with which neither the intellect nor the heart of Germany has any
affinity or sympathy! This was the cry of anguish that succeeded to
the paeans of self-glorification, and those nationalists who uttered
these sentiments forgot that their very nationalism had been largely
created and fostered by Jewish thinkers. They also forgot that it was
a Jewish statesman, Lasker, who, at the cost of all personal and
party interests and of his popularity, had alone had the courage to
expose in the Prussian Chamber the evils of extravagant
speculation, in 1873, and to urge both the public and the
Government to turn back, while there was yet time, from the road to
ruin which they pursued. But it has been well said: “Who would think
of gratitude when a scapegoat is required?”
A tongue was given to the popular indignation in a pamphlet by
an obscure German journalist, Wilhelm Marr by name, who seized
the opportunity of attaining to fame and fortune by a plentiful effusion
of his anti-Jewish venom. The work anathematized the Jews not only
as blood-sucking leeches, but as enemies of the Germanic race, and
as forming a distinct and self-centred solecism in German national
life. The Coryphaeus was ably supported by a crowd hitherto mute.
The opponents of industrial and the opponents of religious liberalism,
men of rank, men of letters, and high ecclesiastics joined in the
chorus, and another “black day” (July 30, 1878) was added to the
Jewish calendar. In Adolph Stöcker, a Christian Socialist and court
preacher, and a staunch Conservative in the Prussian Diet, the new
crusade found its Peter the Hermit. He was the first man of position
to preach from the pulpit and to declare in the press that Hebrew
influence in the State was disastrous to the Christian section of the
community, that Semitic preponderance was fatal to the Teutonic
race. As though the printing presses of Germany were only waiting
for the signal, a whole library of anti-Semitic literature was rapidly
produced, and as rapidly consumed. Some of the most popular
journals opened their columns to the campaign, Jewish journalists
opposed violence with violence, and the feud daily assumed larger
dimensions, until by the end of 1879 it had spread and raged over
the whole of the empire.
“It is not right that the minority should rule over the majority,”
cried some. Others accused the Jews, loosely and without adducing
any proofs, of forming a freemasonry and of always placing the
interests of their brethren above those of the country. That there was
some kind of systematic co-operation among the Jews seems
probable. It is also probable that there was a certain degree of truth
in the charge of “clandestine manipulation of the press” for the
purpose of shielding even Jews unworthy of protection. But for this
the Germans had only themselves to thank. By attacking the Jews
as a tribe they stimulated the tribal feeling among them. The social
isolation to which they condemned the Jew intensified his gift of
reciprocity. To the German Christians the Jew, however patriotic and
unexceptionable he may be as a citizen, as a man is a Jew—an
alien, an infidel, an upstart, a parasite. His genius is said to be purely
utilitarian, his religion externally an observance of empty forms,
essentially a worship of the golden calf, and worldly success his
highest moral ideal. German professors analysed the Jewish mind
and found it Semitic, German theologians sought for the Jewish soul
and could find none. Both classes, agreeing in nothing else,
concurred in denouncing the Jew as a sinister creature, strangely
wanting in spiritual qualities—a being whose whole existence, devoid