Okay, like the mod said, let's continue our discussion about Wagner and nazis...

I enjoy Wagner's work. I have a lot of CDs of his music. The thing I don't like is being censored.

I think there are unmistakable references to stereotypical Jew-like characters in his operas.

Hell, I even see the same stereotype used in that Harry Potter movie, where he goes to get money to buy his wand. The British are just as culpable.
I see the previously unreleased demo of the John Lennon song "The New Mary Jane" as using stereotypes of Indian people.
John Lennon wasn't perfect; he had lots of anger and was raised British all the way.

Frank Zappa had a song called "Jewish Princess" for which he got some flak from the anti-defamation league.

The same with Wagner; I see him as "human, all too human," and I can ultimately forgive him and respect & admire his art. But we need to be able to discuss these things.

We all have the potential to be racist; the thing that is important is how we deal with it.

I'm not as heavily invested in Wagner, and do not wish to keep reiterating the same points over and over. The main points that have emerged about Wagner in these exchanges are that there is a commonly-perceived body of negative opinion in print, readily available on google; these negative points are not "provable" factual issues, so demanding "facts" is exposed as just an argumentative strategy; the refusal to see Wagner as offending a "class" of people, as others have done to women, no matter how far in the past this was; the acknowledged fact that Wagner was antisemitic; the refusal to acknowledge that the German culture, as well as others, have an entrenched hatred of Jews; that Wagner had no influence on German society which led to and facilitated the rise of Nazism & the Holocaust; and I could go on.
I forgive Wagner for being human, but I, like others, can not forget his contribution, through his art, to status quo attitudes which have existed in Germanic culture for centuries.

I think the "absolutist" view of antisemitism is flawed, because it can vary according to circumstances and time. During Wagner's time not as many Jews had assimilated, such as Mahler later on. Mahler himself said he couldn't relate to the orthodox Jews he observed (in his letter to Alma). Mahler was so assimilated that his very identity could no longer relate to being Jewish.

Wagner seems more irritated by the failure of Jews to socially assimilate during his time. Figures like Mahler came later. Hitler's antisemitism is more about race, and physical traits, regardless of the exceptions who had assimilated. The more jews intermarried and mingled, the more their "Jewishness" got watered-down, and softened genetically.

I think Schoenberg was totally assimilated, totally German in identity, and desperately wanted to be part of the great Germanic/Wagnerian/Brahmsian tradition, but his lingering Jewish physical traits (balding head, etc) were what was used to reject him socially. So he had to leave, as Mahler did, betrayed by his own country.

Personally, I've decided to consider Wagner seriously, with a recent purchase of the complete Ring, and I want some perspective on his "antisemitism" that is not 'fundamentalist' and absolutist. Another reason I disagree with the absolutist view is because, whether we acknowledge it or not, all humans are racist.

Whether this racism is conscious (acknowledged as a universal human trait) or not can depend on if one is part of the "status quo" or majority who take identity for granted (most white people), and those who are of a minority or identify strongly with certain identity aspects: gender, sexuality, race (blank, Asian, Hispanic), orthodox Jews, white supremacists, and other strongly-defined identity associations.

These other strongly-defined identity associations tend to make these groups more sensitive to the idea of racism, though in most cases they see themselves as victims.
Thus, everybody on both sides needs to acknowledge their own racist nature. All humans are racist; it's how we deal with it that matters. And this means talking openly and flexibly about it, and ourselves.

AbsolutelyBaching said:

Blimey. It's good to know that if they "intermingle and intermarry", this dreadful Jewish trait can be "watered down".

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I didn't say that Jewish traits were dreadful.

But in any event, Wagner didn't write "I do wish the Jews would integrate more", but "No matter how well they integrate, they think Jewish thoughts and cannot imbibe as native the culture in which they find themselves".

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You're saying that Mahler would have disagreed with Wagner on this, since he (Mahler) didn't think Jewishly any longer after having been assimilated for so long. But Wagner would have said, 'you're fooling yourself Gustav. No matter how much you assimilate, you will never be part of this culture'.

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I didn't say that; I simply offered Mahler as an example of a Jew who did not have a Jewish identity. He was totally German, along with Schoenberg.

I'm not sure what you think Wagner meant when he said "No matter how well they integrate, they think Jewish thoughts and cannot imbibe as native the culture in which they find themselves." That sounds like their identity was still identified with being Jewish to me.

OK, bloody hell! A balding head is now a Jewish physical trait?!

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Yes, it's one general trait, probably more common among Eastern European Jews and Czecks.

I don't have a lot to say in regard to that, other than that you're expressing things which are just as disgusting in their stupid levelling of individual traits into "jewish" and "non-jewish" as Wagner perpetrated in the first place.

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Well, it's something other people also see, in some casesn even Jews themselves.

You are now equating antisemitism with racism. Whilst anti-semitism can be regarded as a form of racisim, it's not equivalent to it, and the stating of equivalence is to diminish the peculiarly nasty aspects of anti-semitism.

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I didn't say it was absolutely equivalent, and racism is relevant to my argument.

I don't agree with your premise, and therefore not with your conclusion.

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So you think you're not racist, along with the rest of humanity?