Wilders is net zo schuldig aan Breivik als Rousseau aan de holocaust

Comments (5)

• 

  Arjan Fernhout

  01/08/2011 at 22:18 | #

  Wat krijgen we nu? Je slaat de plank mis. Of beter gezegd, je gebruikt het verkeerde gereedschap. Wilders heeft altijd gezegd dat er geen gematigde islam bestaat. Indien dit waar, dus indien je stelt dat bepaalde ideologieën, dat een religie met meer dan 1 miljard aanhangers in deze wereld, verantwoordelijk is voor de daden van een handvol fanatici en terroristen die 9/11 op hun geweten hebben, dan is het onmogelijk om niet te beargumenteren dat de grote infrastructuur van anti-jihadisten, anti-moslims, anti-multiculturalisten en anti-liberal websites niet exact hetzelfde effect hebben gehad op Anders Breivik en mogelijk anderen.

  Reply

• Je bent geschorst van het VKBlog » Mihai Martoiu Ticu

  02/08/2011 at 05:49 | #

  [...] Martoiu Ticu Politiek, Internationaal Recht, Filosofie, Argumentatie HomeDogma ← Wilders is net zo schuldig aan Breivik als Rousseau aan de holocaust [...]

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• 

  Mihai

  02/08/2011 at 21:47 | #

  Iemand vroeg naar onderbouwing voor mijn stuk:

  The Jewish Question in Eighteenth-Century France
  Ronald Schechter *
  Eighteenth-Century Studies – Volume 32, Number 1, Fall 1998, pp. 84-91
  ________________________________________
  For more than a century historians have discussed the relationship between the Enlightenment and the Jews. They have recorded, cataloged and analyzed the opinions of philosophes, social commentators and revolutionaries vis-à-vis the Jews. They have considered whether enlightened thinkers were favorably or unfavorably disposed toward them. Insofar as the Enlightenment is supposed to have led to “Emancipation,” or the elimination of legal discrimination as well as the abolition of communal autonomy, historians have assessed the impact of both phenomena on Jews and Judaism, some celebrating them as a liberation, others denouncing them as a prelude to assimilation and the consequent loss of Jewish identity. 1 Yet these retrospective judgments have largely been variations on a justifiably parodied question: was it good or bad for the Jews? In their eagerness to cast ballots for or against, historians have tended to treat the Jewish question in eighteenth-century Europe as a given rather than a historical problem and have consequently overlooked the more interesting question of why philosophes, reformers, and revolutionaries were interested in the Jews in the first place. [End Page 84]

  Before answering this question, it is necessary to establish that contemporaries were indeed interested in the Jews. With respect to France at the time of the Revolution, Eugen Weber has claimed that “the Jewish question was a Jewish question,” of little or no interest to French Gentiles, who “thought about Jews hardly at all.” 2 Ironically, even Arthur Hertzberg, who has written the only important book in the last three decades on the Jews in eighteenth-century France, diminished the significance of his subject by claiming that “the question of the Jews was never, not even in the 1770s and 1780s, of dominant importance in France.” 3 Citing this statement, one reviewer wrote that there “was no ‘Jewish problem’ in eighteenth-century France,” and that Hertzberg had “create[d] one.” 4 To be sure, as Weber points out, only 40,000 Jews lived in France at the time of the Revolution and constituted a minuscule 0.16 percent of the total population. 5 They were almost uniformly poor, many indeed destitute, and confined for the most part to those parts of the Alsatian countryside where lords had found it profitable to protect them. 6 Under these circumstances, one might be forgiven for supposing that the French “thought about Jews hardly at all.” Yet this supposition, which depends on the assumption that only practical significance produces interest or concern, is nevertheless mistaken.

  The ARTFL database of French literature suggests that the French of the eighteenth-century were extraordinarily interested in the Jews. A search of ARTFL’s 473 volumes from the eighteenth century yields 2,346 instances of “juif[s]” and “juive[s].” By contrast, the same corpus yields only 1,755 references to “anglais” and “anglaise[s],” despite the fact that the English constituted the most obvious threat to French power in the century and were objectively far more important. To find a group of comparable size and importance to the Jews one would have to turn to the Basques, though even this small minority was more than twice as populous as the Jews. Yet the ARTFL corpus contains only 34 instances of “basque[s],” suggesting that eighteenth-century French authors were nearly 70 times more likely to mention Jews than Basques.

  Although interest cannot be precisely quantified, the ARTFL statistics are nevertheless suggestive. Combined with a closer look at individual authors and works, they reveal an unusual interest by French writers–and presumably their readership–in the Jews. Voltaire wrote voluminously on the subject, sometimes denouncing persecution of the Jews, sometimes lambasting the Jewish religion itself. 7 Montesquieu made the Jews a prominent subject in De l’esprit des loix and Les lettres persanes. The Marquis d’Argens wrote a multi-volume epistolary novel, modeled after Montesquieu’s, in which the principal characters were Jews. 8 Baron d’Holbach wrote a spirited criticism of the Jewish religion in L’esprit du judaïsme. 9 Rousseau and d’Alembert wrote relatively little about the Jews, but the publishing team of d’Alembert and Diderot referred to them in more than 100 articles in the Encyclopédie. Diderot wrote about Jews outside the confines of the Encyclopédie as well. 10

  In addition to the works of the philosophes themselves, from the mid-1770s on legal cases involving Jews began to attract public attention. Two such cases received extensive coverage in the causes célèbres so popular with French readers. The first occurred in 1775, when the refusal of authorities in Thionville to grant shopkeeping licenses to Jewish merchants attracted national attention and launched the career of a famous barrister and future revolutionary, Pierre-Louis Lacretelle. 11 The second was a contested divorce involving a Sephardic couple in 1779. The barrister-star of that case was Guy-Jean-Baptiste Target, who would go on to help frame the Constitution of 1791 and the Code civil under Napoleon, and who invoked Talmudic law to show that the divorce was invalid. 12

  The 1780s witnessed even greater attention to the Jewish question. In 1785 the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts in Metz sponsored a widely-publicized essay contest on the question, “Is there a way of making the Jews more useful and happier in France?” The contest was organized by Pierre-Louis Roederer, a political philosopher who would later serve as a member of the Directory government. 13 One of the winning replies, Essai sur la régénération physique, morale et politique des Juifs, was the work of another commentator who would play an important role in the Revolution: Abbé Henri Grégoire. 14 Significantly, other future revolutionaries also showed a pronounced interest in the Jews during the final decade of the Old Regime. Jean-Pierre [End Page 85] Brissot de Warville, the leader of the Brissotins or Girondins during the Revolution, favorably reviewed an English translation of Christian Wilhelm Dohm’s proposal for the “civic improvement of the Jews” in Prussia. 15 The Comte de Mirabeau was also interested in the Jewish question in Prussia and wrote a book urging civic equality for the Jews in France. 16 On the other side of the controversy, the Jew-baiting pamphleteer of the 1770s and 80s, François Hell, would represent his Alsatian constituents in the Constituent Assembly, and the anti-Jewish agitator Philippe-François de Latour-Foissac would become a general for the Republic. 17

  French preoccupation with the Jews continued into the Revolution, and during the two-year tenure of the Constituent Assembly, deputies would discuss their status at no less than thirty sessions. Among those calling for legal equality were Robespierre, Mirabeau, Talleyrand, Grégoire, and the triumvirate of Barnave, Duport, and Lameth, who argued against the discriminatory proposals of a coalition of clergymen and anti-Semitic Alsatian republicans. Some of the debates lasted for hours and degenerated into shouting matches. 18 The time and energy spent on debates about a tiny and powerless minority is extraordinary given the pressing issues the revolutionaries faced. It is more extraordinary still when one reflects on just what the debates on the Jewish question consisted of. They were not about civic equality, since no one disputed that all restrictions on Jewish commerce, residence, education, trades, and professions should be lifted, and all special taxes abolished. The primary point of contention was the eligibility of Jews for full political rights, most notably the right to hold public office. Yet as early as October 1789 the deputies had agreed that political rights for all Frenchmen would depend on the fulfillment of stringent economic qualifications. Since the vast majority of Jews were too poor to qualify for such rights, they would remain disenfranchised regardless of the outcome of the debates. Few could meet the property qualifications required for suffrage, fewer still could meet those required of deputies, and none could seriously hope to be elected.

  The spectacle of political leaders repeatedly returning to an almost strictly academic question in the midst of a revolution is indeed curious and only underscores the initial question of why French commentators thought, spoke, and wrote so much about the Jews in the eighteenth century. In an important article and the only serious attempt to explain the strange obsession of French revolutionaries with the Jews, Gary Kates has perceptively argued that the Jews must have been “symbols of something else.” More problematically, however, he claims that the Jews provided revolutionaries with a vehicle for talking about the extent to which the Constitution should be democratic. He maintains that the Jewish question was a means of testing whether “the promises inherent in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen” would “translate into equal political power for all Frenchmen, regardless of status,” or whether the revolutionaries would “stop short of democracy by limiting the political power of certain kinds of people.” 19 This hypothesis is elegant, but a closer look at which deputies supported Jewish eligibility and which ones opposed it reveals that it is mistaken. Although Robespierre, Brissot, and Grégoire were democratic supporters of Jewish eligibility, most of the deputies who supported it had serious reservations about democracy, namely Clermont-Tonnerre, Le Chapelier, Barnave, Duport, Lameth, Dupont de Nemours, Talleyrand, Mirabeau, and Charles Bouche. Meanwhile, the anti-Jewish deputies Rewbell and Hell were decidedly on the democratic left of the Constituent Assembly. Finally, since the deputies had already agreed on property restrictions for all active citizens, the enfranchisement of propertied Jews could not have been seen as a democratic move.

  Indeed, the Jews were of symbolic significance to the French, not only during the Revolution, but throughout the eighteenth century. To borrow a phrase from Claude Lévi-Strauss, one could say that they were “good to think.” But what, precisely, were they good to think about, if not democracy as such? It would be a mistake to reduce the Jews to a single meaning. Indeed, the proliferation of references to Jews suggests that they could be used to articulate any number of ideas, to support any number of arguments, and to function in any number of thought experiments. For some Christians the existence of suffering Jews proved, as in previous centuries, God’s wrath at their treachery and, by implication, the divinity of Jesus Christ. By contrast, in the work of the philosophes, especially Montesquieu and Voltaire, the presence of [End Page 86] Jews (as well as Muslims) served to relativize claims about the truth of Christianity. Jewish suffering, moreover, was presented as evidence of Christian fanaticism, not Christian truth, though (as mentioned earlier) Voltaire sometimes cast Jews as fanatics themselves.

  The use of Jews in polemics on tolerance and fanaticism continued throughout the century. Yet from the 1770s on they were increasingly associated with discussions about the nature of citizenship. Although the Jews attracted the attention of persons interested in the legislative and representative aspects of citizenship, 20 they were especially “good to think” for those concerned with defining the moral qualities of the ideal citizen. Like so many other concepts, that of the citizen required defining others. When emphasizing republican virility, moralists often used women or effeminate men as defining opposites. When stressing the qualities of simplicity, honesty, and transparency, they conjured up the opposing figure of the overly mannered and dissimulating city-dweller or noble. It is well-known that during the Revolution the image of the aristocrat comprised the vices most anathema to citizenship. What is less well-known is the extent to which, prior to the Revolution, the Jews embodied what the ideal citizen was not.

  A perfect example of the tendency to characterize the Jew as anti-citizen is François Hell’s 1779 pamphlet, Observations d’un Alsacien sur l’affaire présente des Juifs d’Alsace. The author had been charged with forging receipts for the repayment of loans by Jews to Alsatian peasants, and his pamphlet was largely an effort at self-exoneration. Yet what is significant is the way in which he chose to argue his innocence and that of his Christian compatriots. His pamphlet was a republican polemic that cast the Christians of Alsace as virtuous citizens and Jews as the very opposite. Hell began the Observations by professing his “patriotism,” the “precious sentiment” that has been “nearly extinguished by the cold of egoism that rules,” and expressed his hope that a “happy revolution” will “re-heat the hearts” of the French and “develop in them . . . the germ of this social virtue [patriotism], which forms the distinctive character of the good Citizen” (3). He viewed himself as a defender of “so many oppressed citizens” against “the tyranny of the Jewish nation” (7, 86). To elicit the reader’s pathos for the Alsatian peasants, he constructed a sentimental narrative, at once indictment and cautionary tale, about Jewish usury. The story begins when a Jew approaches a young peasant and “offers [him] his purse.” The peasant resists, sensing but not fully comprehending the danger of the offer. The Jew persists, and ultimately the peasant accepts his money and his terms. The Jew reappears frequently, and at the prospect of his money the “passions are inflamed” in the young man. At the sight of his victim “in this violent state,” the Jew “pretends to be firm” and demands repayment, then renegotiates the loan at terms more advantageous to himself. Ultimately the young man is ruined. “It is thus that this fils de famille, altered by the fire of debauchery, drinking from the perfidious cup of usury, swallows in one stroke the patrimony he does not yet possess and the dowry of a woman to whom he is not yet engaged” (41).

  Hell’s language is clearly sexual. The Jew manipulates the young man’s “inflamed passions” and “violent state,” teases him by appearing “firm” and conciliatory by turns, and stokes his “fire of debauchery,” causing the fils de famille to betray his domestic duties. Yet the seduction scene has distinctly political implications. The power as well as the villainy of the Jew consist in his opacity, a characteristic that was anathema to the republican ideal of transparency. Like the proverbial aristocrat, the Jew in Hell’s account “composes his exterior; there is prestige in his gesture and enchantment in his word” (43-44). By contrast, the naive peasant’s emotions are written on his body, and this transparency signals both natural virtue and vulnerability.

  The Jews thus symbolized for Hell what the aristocracy would symbolize for the revolutionaries: a class of calculating, treacherous enemies. Not only did Hell characterize the Jews in terms similar to those used by sans-culottes to denounce les riches egoistes. He called them “a nation within the nation . . . a small powerful state” within the French state (66). This accusation, to be repeated in subsequent anti-Jewish polemics, bears a striking resemblance to Siéyès’s description of the nobility as “a people apart in the grande nation” and “imperium in imperio,” and reveals a common conviction that all corporate particularism is inimical to the indivisible [End Page 87] nation. 21 The similarities do not end here. In the peroration Hell presented himself as the champion of the Third Estate, and in particular the peasantry, as he claimed that “the most useful portion of the people, the nourishing class of the state,” after paying disproportionate taxes to the state, is “crushed” by “the arbitrary tax of Jewish usury” (86).

  Paradoxically, Hell’s populist republicanism was used to support medieval accusations long dismissed by Voltaire and others as signs of popular fanaticism. Thus the ancient libel that Jews caused the Black Death in 1349 by poisoning the wells was “proved” by the claim that the people accused them “with a single voice.” Throughout the pamphlet Hell sees the “unanimous voice” of the virtuous people as proof of the veracity of their accusations (46, 76, 90). In a passage strikingly reminiscent of Rousseau’s claim that the general will cannot err, Hell writes that “a general, unanimous, constant cry cannot deceive,” and therefore judges the Jews guilty as charged (48). 22 Even the punishments that Jews have suffered throughout the ages have been justified. Hell writes, “Thanks to the severity with which the laws have been armed, thanks to the terror of the signal executions that these monsters of the human race have been forced to undergo, the atrocious crimes . . . have become more rare in this century.” Yet “all these expiations” had “not in the least tamed” the Jew’s “ferocious heart” (25, Emphasis added). In a different context, Marat would say very similar things about the perpetual need for Terror to root out the aristocratic enemies of the nation.

  A comparable picture of the Jew as anti-citizen characterizes Le cri du citoyen contre les Juifs de Metz, written in 1786 by an infantry captain named Latour-Foissac. The title itself is significant, with its binary opposition between the citizen and the Jews. Ostensibly Latour-Foissac’s complaint concerned Jewish usury. But the way in which he characterized the usurer and his victim reveals the extent to which the image of the Jew helped him articulate a converse conception of ideal citizenship. Like Hell, Latour-Foissac embedded his accusations in a seduction narrative that opposed the naive yet honest citizen to the scheming Jew. He took on the role of the virtuous citizen, and launched into a Rousseauian confession of his own trials at the hands of Jews. Recalling his experiences in the third person, he wrote of “a young officer” with a “petulant concern for liberty” and an “open, honest and loyal heart . . . still in the heedlessness of a profound calm.” As soon as he arrives at his quarters, this perfect victim becomes “the object of the Synagogue’s scrutiny.” The Jews recognize the vulnerability of naive soldiers away from home for the first time, and whereas Hell’s story suggested a seduction, Latour-Foissac quite explicitly referred to the “opportune moments that can make seductive and pleasant the ruinous offers they make.” As in Hell’s narrative, the Jew has the quasi-magical ability to read the heart of his victim, then puts on the appropriate performance. “There is not a . . . single story . . . that [the Jews] won’t invent to assure you that they do not mind lending their money,” and inevitably “the transaction is going to be completed, to the certain ruin of the unfortunate borrower.” That this is unpatriotic and un-civic as well as dishonest Latour-Foissac made clear in his conclusion to the story: “It is thus that the Hebrew People seduces, robs, oppresses the least wealthy and most precious part of the nation: the part that honor destines to shed its blood for the support of the state and the glory of its king.” 23 For both Hell and Latour-Foissac, then, the Jew stood for everything the virtuous citizen was not. Hell concluded that the Jews were “tyrants,” and Latour-Foissac called them “oppressors.” The similarities between these images of Jews and republican images of aristocrats are clear. Indeed, Latour-Foissac made the connection explicit in the fall of 1789, when he wrote, “It is doubtless difficult to conceive, but it is no less true that aristocratic despotism has presented us with roses in comparison to the ills that Jewish despotism has spread around itself.” 24
  Yet it was not only the Jews’ enemies who viewed them as anti-citizens. Those who called for an improvement in their legal status did not doubt that they were morally rotten and bereft of civic virtue in their current state. Thus Abbé Henri Grégoire, in his Essai sur la régénération physique, morale et politique des Juifs, argued that the Jews of his day were in desperate need of regeneration precisely because they were currently so corrupt and that this project was as much a matter of self-defense on behalf of French Christians as it was a humanitarian [End Page 88] measure. He maintained that “the Jews do not believe they are sinning by defrauding the Christians.” 25 He claimed that “false oaths do not make an imprint on their consciences,” since they believe that “God erases them on the Day of Atonement,” and wrote, “A multitude of their casuists authorize . . . bad faith, equivocation, mental restrictions, hypocrisy.” 26 He thus suggested, like Hell and Latour-Foissac, that the Jew was an opaque being who said one thing and thought or felt something different.

  What separated Grégoire from Hell and Latour-Foissac was his belief that Jews, after a period of greatness in Biblical and classical times, had fallen into a state of corruption as a result of centuries of persecution, and that the process could be reversed by the introduction of good laws as well as certain police measures. Education alongside Christian pupils and students would instill sound philosophy and useful knowledge in young Jews, who would then reject the superstitions and Talmudic dreams of their parents and rabbis. Access to useful trades and professions, especially agriculture, which was physically salutary as well as morally improving, would lead them away from usury. Service in the military would instruct them in courage and patriotism, and access to certain offices of state would teach them civic responsibility. Grégoire’s plan was not based on the notion of equal rights and included many discriminatory measures: the cancellation of outstanding Christian debts to Jews, a prohibition on Jewish acquisition of mortgages on Christians’ property, the exclusion of Jews from positions involving the handling of public money, and a highly coercive program of education, including the medieval practice of requiring Jews to listen to sermons by enlightened Christian clergymen such as himself. 27 Like the recalcitrant minorities in Rousseau’s hypothetical state, it appears that the Jews in Grégoire’s regime would be “forced to be free.” 28 Other advocates of reform in the status of the Jews, most notably Mirabeau, were less inclined to resort to coercion, and believed that liberty and equality themselves would produce the desired regeneration. 29 What Mirabeau and Grégoire had in common, however, was the belief that Jewish regeneration was possible through legal means. This confidence, moreover, reflects their optimistic belief that the state, through good laws, interventionist policies, or both, could improve public morality more generally.

  By contrast, Hell, Latour-Foissac, and their allies on the clerical right and the republican left showed a pronounced pessimism in the ability of the state to produce good citizens. They conceived of citizenship as a reward for proven virtue, not a condition capable of producing virtue, even with the help of discriminatory measures such as those outlined by Grégoire. This pessimism clashed with the utopian optimism of the Revolution, especially in the years 1789-91, when political actors of all stripes were proclaiming the imminent regeneration of the French nation, if not humankind. Indeed, the argument for Jewish regeneration must be seen in the context of the revolutionary valorization of the principle of regeneration tout court. According to Mona Ozouf, the meaning of the Revolution is not to be found in the revision of laws and the creation of a more equitable constitution, but in the utopian belief in the possibility of regeneration, i.e., the creation of a new man (l’homme nouveau) equipped with a superior level of virtue. 30 It was the optimism of the majority of deputies regarding the regenerative qualities of citizenship, then, not republican or democratic convictions, that led to the formal abolition of legal differences between Jews and their non-Jewish compatriots on September 27, 1791. The success of this piece of legislation is all the more extraordinary given the conviction expressed by all parties that the Jews in their current state did not exhibit the moral attributes required of good citizens–and indeed embodied the idea of the anti-citizen. Seen in this context, support for legal equality between Jews and Christians was a way of expressing the utopian belief in the possibility of moral regeneration under the auspices of the state. The implication was that if the Jews, nearly synonymous with corruption, could be regenerated in this fashion, then, a fortiori, anyone could be regenerated.

  Thus the Jews of the eighteenth-century French imaginary served as a means of thinking about and discussing other, more urgent matters, which, beginning in the 1770s, related primarily to questions of political philosophy. As an emblem of civic vice, the Jew was a vehicle for conceiving of and articulating its opposite: the transparent, selfless, useful, and courageous citizen. If this image was wholly imaginary, it was all the more potent for that reason. [End Page 89] Indeed, the very fact that the French had so little real knowledge of Jews, their customs and beliefs, and had to rely on inherited prejudices about usury and dissimulation made claims to knowledge about the Jews all the more plausible. The resulting unanimity regarding the Jewish character made the Jew a perfect symbol for thought experiments about the possibility of moral regeneration. Since everyone agreed on what the symbol meant, the experiment could proceed. Commentators could think about whether and under what circumstances the object in question could be altered, and what the implications were for objects in a lesser state of moral decay. It is not a coincidence, in this respect, that commentators on the Jewish question in the years prior to 1789 would become active and often prominent in the Revolution. While it would be teleological to suggest that they were somehow preparing themselves for their future role as revolutionaries, it is clear that they were using the Jews–or more accurately, their image of the Jews–to think about the revolutionary ideas of citizenship and regeneration.

  Ronald Schechter is Assistant Professor of History at the College of William and Mary. He is the author of “Translating the Marseillaise: Biblical Republicanism and the Emancipation of Jews in Revolutionary France” (in Past and Present) and “Gothic Thermidor: The Bals des victimes, the Fantastic, and the Production of Historical Knowledge in Post-Terror France” (in Representations). He is currently working on a book entitled Jews and Frenchmen: Perceptions and Presentations, 1715-1815.
  Notes

  1. For the celebratory view see Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, vol. 10 (1870; reprint, Leipzig: Oskar Leiner, 1900), esp. 1-94, 119-250; and Robert Badinter, Libres et égaux . . . l’émancipation de Juifs 1789-1791 (Paris: Fayard, 1989). For the critical view see Simon Dubnow, Weltgeschichte des jüdischen Volkes von seinen Uranfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1928), vol. 7, 404-11 and vol. 8, 88-166; and Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1968).
  2. Eugen Weber, “Reflections on the Jews in France,” in Frances Malino and Bernard Wasserstein, eds., The Jews in Modern France (Hanover: Univ. Press of New England, 1985), 8, 16.
  3. Hertzberg, French Enlightenment, 48.
  4. Leon Apt, “The French Enlightenment and the Jews,” review in the Journal of Modern History, 42 (1970): 247.
  5. Weber, “Reflections,” 9.
  6. For the general history of the Jews in Old Regime France see Bernard Blumenkranz, ed., Histoire des Juifs en France (Toulouse: Privat, 1972), 77-261.
  7. ARTFL identifies 922 references to “juif[s]” and “juive[s]” in its corpus for Voltaire. Voltaire’s negative remarks about the Jewish religion, especially in his biblical criticism and classical history, have prompted Arthur Hertzberg to see the philosophe as the prototypical “enlightened anti-Semite.” The French Enlightenment and the Jews (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1968), esp. 280-313.
  8. Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, marquis d’Argens, Lettres juives, ou, Correspondence philosophique, historique, et critique entre un juif voyageur a Paris et ses correspondans en divers endroits, 7 vols. (Amsterdam, 1736-39).
  9. Paul Henri Thiry, baron d’Holbach, L’esprit du judaïsme, ou examen raisonné de la loi de Moyse, et de son influence sur la religion chrétienne (London, 1770).
  10. Denis Diderot, Pensées philosophiques (1746; reprint Geneva: Droz, 1950), 27, 44-45; “De la suffisance de la religion,” in vol. 1 of Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1875), 262-71; “Additions aux pensées philosophiques,” in vol. 1 of Oeuvres complètes, 161-62; and Le neveu de Rameau (1779; reprint Geneva: Droz, 1950), 73-75, 100-102.
  11. “LVIIIe cause. Question d’état sur les Juifs de Metz,” Causes célèbres, curieuses et intéressantes, de toutes les cours souveraines du royaume, avec les jugemens qui les ont décidées, vol. 23 (Paris, 1776), 64-98. On Lacretelle see David A. Bell, Lawyers and Citizens: The Making of a Political Elite in Old Regime France (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994), 164-67, 175-80.
  12. “CLXXIe cause. Question d’état sur les mariages des Juifs. Le divorce est-il admis parmi eux?” Causes célèbres, vol. 65 (Paris, 1780), 3-240.
  13. Mercure de France, February 11, 1786, 69-84; May 26, 1787, 186; December 15, 1787, 131-32; November 7, 1789, 6-11; Journal de Paris, no. 187, July 6, 1789, 840-41; and no. 258, September 15, 1789, 1167-68. Prix proposés, en 1788, par la Société royale des sciences et des arts de Metz, pour les concours de 1789 et 1790 [Metz, 1788].
  14. Abbé Henri Grégoire, Essai sur la régénération physique, morale et politique des Juifs (Paris, 1789; reprint, Paris: Flammarion, 1988).
  15. “L’état civil des Juifs,” Journal du licée de Londres, ou Tableau de l’état présent des sciences et des arts en Angleterre, vol. 2, no. 4, 206-28. Cited in Leonore Loft, “Mirabeau and Brissot Review Christian Wilhelm von Dohm and the Jewish Question,” History of European Ideas 13 (1991): 616n.
  16. Honore Gabriel Riquetti, comte de Mirabeau, Sur Moses Mendelssohn, sur la réforme politique des juifs: et en particulier sur la révolution tentée en leur faveur en 1753 dans la grande Bretagne (London, 1787).
  17. [Hell], Observations d’un Alsacien sur l’affaire présente des Juifs d’Alsace (Frankfurt, 1779); [Philippe-François de Latour-Foissac], Le cri du citoyen contre les Juifs de Metz. Par un capitaine d’infanterie (Lausanne [Metz], 1786).
  18. Ronald Schechter, “Competing Proposals for the Regeneration of the Jews,” in Barry Rothaus, ed., Proceedings of the Western Society for French History: Selected Papers from the Annual Meeting, vol. 24 (Boulder: Univ. Press of Colorado, 1997), 489, 492.
  19. Gary Kates, “Jews into Frenchmen: Nationality and Representation in Revolutionary France,” in Ferenc Fehér, ed., The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1990), 109.
  20. Claude Emmanuel Joseph Pierre, marquis de Pastoret, Moyse, consideré comme législateur et comme moraliste (Paris, 1788). Pastoret, who would go on to become a deputy in the Legislative Assembly and the Council of Five Hundred, lauded the legislative wisdom of Moses and praised the “limited monarchy” of Joshua, who governed with the consent of phylarchs or tribal leaders, but condemned the “oriental despotism” of later kings, who suppressed the influence of the tribes. A comparable allegorical view of the ancient Jewish constitution is in M. Senger, L’esprit des loix mosaïques (n.p., 1785).
  21. Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Siéyès, Qu’est-ce que le tiers-état? (1789; reprint Paris: Société de l’histoire de la Révolution Française, 1888), 31.
  22. Cf. Rousseau, Du contrat social, book 2, ch. 3.
  23. Cri du citoyen, 5-24. Emphasis added.
  24. [Philippe François de Latour-Foissac], Plaidoyer contre l’usure des Juifs des Évechés, de l’Alsace et de la Lorraine (N.p., n.d.), 1-2.
  25. Grégoire, Essai, 93.
  26. Grégoire, Essai, 87-88.
  27. Schechter, “Competing Proposals,” 487.
  28. Rousseau, Contrat social, book 1, ch. 7.
  29. Schechter, “Competing Proposals,” 483-85.
  30. Mona Ozouf, “La Révolution française et la formation de l’homme nouveau,” in L’homme régénéré: Essais sur la Révolution française (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 116-45.

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• 

  Kitty

  03/08/2011 at 13:51 | #

  1787 ligt qua tijd wel erg ver van de Holocaust (1940)vandaan.
  De opvattingen van Wilders en Breivik ontstonden vrijwel in hetzelfde tijdvak.

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• 

  Serge van Erkelens

  03/08/2011 at 20:21 | #

  Volkskrant en Israel (mede geplaatst op de Volkskrantblog)

  De Volkskrant is nu eenmaal zwaar verdacht in alle zaken betreffende Israel en de Israellobby. Dankzij de normloosheid bij de Volkskrant, weet de gemidelde lezer na 25 jaar absoluut niet meer, hoe te oordelen over die zaak? Het hele westerse beoordelingsmodel, dat tot stand kwam na vele eeuwen van bezettingen en zware onderdrukking in Europa, en uiteindelijk zijn beslag kreeg in vele internationale verdragen, verdween bij de Volkskrant geruisloos uit beeld, om plaats te maken voor behangpapier, waarop vooral ranzige visies van de Israellobby volop de kans krijgen, inclusief de zeer gewiekste propaganda van de Israelische Hasbara. Leve de omzet.

  Zodra het gaat over moord of verkrachting, begrijpen ze bij de Volkskrant nog wel, dat bij de berichtgeving en de opinie de vervolging en de preventie centraal dienen te staan. Pedo’s, die graag betogen waar ze hun handjes mogen hebben, krijgen er geen kans. Zo ook ideeen om verkrachters en verkrachte vrouwen in éen kamertje te stoppen om er samen uit te komen. Maar zodra het gaat over zware criminaliteit door overheden, ofwel over grootschalige en langdurige schendingen van het Internationale Recht door Israel, dan is voor de Volkskrant ineens alles een ‘kwestie van visie’, en krijgen talloze extremisten een kans. Die krant ligt inzake Israel voortdurend op ramkoers met die fundamentele pijler van de westerse beschaving, en stevent daarmee onvermijdelijk af op het predicaat “Fout in de Oorlog”. Ik lees die krant al 35 jaar, en weet zeker dat de gemiddelde Volkskrantlezer nooit meer zal begrijpen, dat die vrede er nooit komt door de ontstellende Europese normloosheid in de zaak, waar de Volkskrant zelf een onderdeel van is.

  Uit zelfbescherming lees ik dat niet meer, maar zie af en toe nog een glimp van dat niveau. Neem de ban van Mihai Martoiu Ticu op het Volkskrantblog. Dat is een filosoof-mensenrechtenactivist met een specialisatie Israel. Die wordt daar voortdurend bestookt door allerlei extremisten van de Israellobby. Dat wordt daar toegelaten, want er heerst nou eenmaal vrijheid van meningsuiting, nietwaar? Maar niet voor Mihai. Die krijgt daar wel vaker een ban. Waarom deze keer?

  Hij schreef een intigrerend stukje, helemaal passend bij de huidige vraag, in hoeverre uitlatingen van gezagsdragers over groeperingen kunnen leiden tot groot onrecht tegen die groeperingen? Hij beschreef uitlatingen van bekende Franse denkers uit de historie over Joden, en vroeg zich gezien de titel af, of die niet medeverantwoordelijk voor de Holocaust geweest zijn? Ik denk het niet, maar de vraag is zeer legitiem. En sowieso is de vraag erg interessant, of deze denkers Antisemitisch dachten, of dat Joodse groeperingen in die tijd daadwerkelijk een probleem vormden? Mogelijk is het allebei waar, maar dat doet er niet toe. Ticu’s artikel kan Joods-vriendelijk genoemd worden, omdat het weer eens het licht doet schijnen op mogelijk antisemitisme uit vervlogen eeuwen.

  Bij de Volkskrant krijg je daar een ban voor! Mihai moest maar eens naar Auschwitz gaan, voor hij dergelijke dingen schreef, aldus de Volkskrant. En terwijl die Israel-extremisten voortdurend hun gang kunnen gaan op dat Volkskrantblog, ligt Mihai er weer eens twee weken uit.

  Hoe komt de Volkskrant daarbij? Na enig nadenken lijkt het antwoord vrij simpel. De Joden hebben zoveel geleden, dat je niet meer moet praten over voorafgaand wangedrag door Joden. Zo is de vraag of Duitse Joden misschien zelf hebben bijgedaragen aan de opkomst van het fascistische antisemitisme absoluut taboe. Ik wil het antwoord ook niet weten, maar interessant is het zeker, voor wie wil begrijpen wat er destijds precies gebeurd is? Maar bij de Volkskrant blijkt het nu ook verboden om te laten zien, dat bekende Franse denkers mogelijk Antisemiet waren. Die zeggen onaangename dingen over Joden, en dat mag niet. Typisch Volkskrant. (Dat is eenzelfde soort Havo-niveau als bij Wilders.) Vandaar ook, dat de malversaties van Amsterdamse Joden i.v.m. Israel en antisemitisme nooit belicht worden, en dat die ongestoord hun gang kunnen blijven gaan, mede dankzij die krant.

  Toch heeft Mihai Martoiu Ticu in feite succes, op dezelfde manier als Gretta Duisenberg. Weliswaar delfde die het onderspit, maar ze slaagde er op die manier wel in om aan te tonen, waar de Israellobby zat, en wat de misselijkmakende methoden daarvan waren. Mihai slaagt er bij deze weer in om een tipje van de sluier achter de schermen van de Volkskrant-Opinie op te lichten.

  Nou gaat het in dit geval enkel over een moderator, en een enkele beslissing. Maar je kunt op die manier al een compleet dossier aanleggen over de redacteuren, de journalisten, en de opiniepagina’s. Het zou een dissertatie waard zijn: een grote optelsom van “foutjes bedankt”, allemaal in het voordeel van Israel, waarmee het zicht ontnomen wordt op wat daar werkelijk aan de hand is.

  Ticu, en al die andere mensenrechtenactivisten, die kritisch ten opzichte van Israel staan, maken in feite maar éen ding duidelijk: De westerse politiek (en de meeste media) staat in het geval Israel aan de verkeerde kant van de regels, die het westen ooit ontwierp als reactie op de praktijken van Hitler. De Volkskrant doet er alles aan om dat te verbergen, en verdeelt de opinievormers het liefst in kampen, alsof het om een supporterskwestie gaat. Volkskrant, het gaat hier over grootschalige misdaad, en over de aanpak daarvan. Kranten die dat niet duidelijk maken, kunnen gerust als collaborerende media aangemerkt worden.

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