his life spanned the final years of one kind of anti-Semitism and the first years of a much more dangerous kind. The first kind sought to preserve the Jews in their pre-emancipation condition, as far as was possible. It resisted liberal efforts to bring Jews into civil society on equal terms; in politics it maintained Christian suspicions of Judaism. It was not violent so much as exclusionary. When it failed at the legal level, it persisted at the social level — keeping Jews out of clubs, societies, universities and so on. It expressed itself in snobbery and ill-tempered condescension.
The second kind of anti-Semitism was quite different. It was predicated on beliefs in the immense power of the Jews, their malignity, their responsibility for everything that was wrong about the modern world. It was based, as Kirsch writes, “no longer on contempt but on fear and hatred.” It was lethal in its ultimate object. Jews here constituted not a vexation, but a menace.
from here, on Disraeli, by Anthony Julius
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