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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In autumn 1962 Theodor W. Adorno gave a lecture on fighting antisemitism to the German Coordinating Council of Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation, a lecture that remains as topical and urgent today as it was in the 1960s.
After the Second World War, Germany was grappling with a reluctance to admit collective guilt for the horrors of the Holocaust and German society was witnessing the emergence of various forms of hidden or ‘crypto’ antisemitism. In his lecture Adorno demonstrated that antisemitism is a central and essential element of right-wing extremism and is identical in structure to racism. It is accompanied by an authoritarian mindset and a conformist anti-intellectualism. Moreover, a classic trick used by anti-Semites is to protest against taboos which prevent them from freely spreading their hate by classing them as a form of persecution, and to present themselves as victims of it. The only antidote to this poison is an unwavering loyalty to the truth in dealing with historical and political realities.
Adorno advocates an anti-authoritarian programme to prevent antisemitic character development and advises taking firm action against outbreaks of antisemitic behaviour. His brilliant analysis of the sources and dangers of antisemitism is as relevant now as it was sixty years ago.
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Seitenzahl: 72
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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CONTENTS
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Introductory Note
On Fighting Antisemitism Today
Editor’s Note
Afterword
Notes
About the Authors
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Introductory Note
Begin Reading
Editor’s Note
Afterword
About the Authors
End User License Agreement
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Fighting Antisemitism Today
A Lecture
Theodor W. Adorno
With an Afterword by Peter E. Gordon
Translated by Wieland Hoban
polity
Originally published as Zur Bekämpfung des Antisemitismus heute. Ein Vortrag. Mit einem Nachwort von Jan Philipp Reemtsma © Suhrkamp Verlag AG Berlin 2024. All rights reserved by and controlled through Suhrkamp Verlag AG Berlin.
This English translation © Polity Press, 2025
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-6692-1
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024942163
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
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Introductory Note
As grateful as the author is for the initiative of the German Coordinating Council of Societies for Christian–Jewish Cooperation, which aims to make this lecture accessible to the participants of the European Educators’ Conference in printed form, he is nonetheless hesitant to agree to its publication. He is aware that, in his case, the spoken and the written word diverge in their respective types of effectiveness even more than is generally the case today. If he were to speak in the same way that he is obliged to write for the sake of a rigorous factual description, the result would be incomprehensible; but no spoken words could do justice to the demands he must make of a text. The more general the objects are, the more difficult things become for someone of whom a well-meaning critic recently said that his texts follow the principle that ‘the good Lord dwells in the details’. While a text has to provide exact references, lectures are necessarily restricted to the dogmatic assertion of their conclusions. Therefore, the author cannot take responsibility for what is printed here and regards it merely as an aide-mémoire for those who were present at his improvisation and would, of course, like to continue reflecting on the matters examined, based on the modest suggestions conveyed to them. To the author, the fact that there is a universal tendency to record off-the-cuff speeches on tape and then disseminate them is itself a behavioural symptom of the administered world, which seeks to pin down even that ephemeral word whose truth lies in its transience in order to commit the speaker to it. A tape recording is something akin to the fingerprint of the living spirit. The author hopes that, by making use of the German Coordinating Council’s kind licence to express all of this openly, he can at least prevent some of the misinterpretations he would otherwise inevitably face.
T. W. A.
On Fighting Antisemitism Today
Ladies and gentlemen,I feel a little as if I have been forced into the situation of Hans Sachs when he says, ‘You take it lightly, but for me you make it hard; you do me, poor man, too much honour.’ So you should not expect too much of what I am about to tell you.
I will quite simply restrict myself to a discussion of a few key points. I will endeavour not to say anything that will be more or less familiar to all of you but, rather, one or two things that are perhaps not so present in the general consciousness.
To speak about antisemitism and the possibility of combating it today seems a little anachronistic at first, since people generally say that antisemitism is not currently a problem in Germany. This claim is supported by the figures from opinion polls, especially the commercial polling institutes, which constantly report that the number of antisemites is in decline. The reasons for this are very tangible: firstly, the official taboos that apply to antisemitism in today’s society, at least in Germany, and, secondly, the terrible fact that there are barely any Jews left in Germany who could be the objects of antisemitic prejudice. I do not intend to deny all this, but I do think that the question is not as simple as its statistical structure. You should not assume that antisemitism is an isolated, specific phenomenon. Rather, as Horkheimer and I put it in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, it is part of a ‘ticket’, a plank in a platform. Wherever people preach a certain kind of militant and excessive nationalism, antisemitism is automatically included. It has proved itself in such movements as a suitable common denominator to bring together the otherwise highly divergent forces underlying all right-wing extremism. In addition, the potential has very much survived. You need only take a look at the far-right press in Germany, which has a considerable number of representatives, to find many statements that could be declared crypto-antisemitic, and whose implications, underlined with a nod and a wink, nurture antisemitism. After all, in our work at the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research, we have good reason not to trust the pretty numbers supplied by the polling institutes without reservations. For example, it emerged in a survey some time ago that children from lower-middle-class circles, and to an extent also working-class ones, show a certain inclination towards antisemitic prejudices. We attribute this to the fact that the parents of those children belonged to the active supporters of Nazi Germany. Today they feel obliged to justify their past stance, which almost automatically leads them to warm up their antisemitism from the 1930s. Our staff member Peter Schönbach coined the rather fitting term ‘secondary antisemitism’ for this. Such things should be investigated. In doing so, it would be important to turn one’s attention from the outset towards those groups in which this survival of fascist antisemitism can be observed. Any research in this zone must be guided by an awareness of the necessity to understand and acknowledge such phenomena and manifestations instead of being outraged by
