"Is Antisemitism Racism?"
Depends on who you ask, I suppose.
And if you ask me, yes, it is.
I think to make them
equal to each other, then you have diminished the particularly insidious nature of anti-semitism.
Racism is a spectrum from "I think they are not quite human, sort of monkey-like", through to "they're human, but I'd rather they didn't live next to me or date my daughter" through to "they should be compelled to go back to their home countries".
It is quite rare, I think, for modern-day racists to be at the 'they're sub-human' end of the spectrum. Most people's discomfort with people not of their own race is squarely in the 'I don't think them inferior, but I don't want them round me' space.
Anti-semitism has a history that goes back millenia; one form of it is based on the idea that they killed Christ; at one time it routinely consisted of the idea that they went around abducting and killing Christian children to be able to drink their blood. From the middle ages onwards, it became associated with the idea that the Jew was monetarily greedy, a financial parasite. In modern times, it consists of the idea that individual Hungarian Jews can crash the pound or the New York Stock Exchange at will and profit to the tune of billions whilst doing so. And from the amalgam of all that came the idea that they are here, and look like us, but can never really be like us -and, by the way, they are revolting parasites that killed the Son of God and are a clear and present danger to everyone else.
There is no antisemitism that doesn't
involve or rely on racism. But it's a serious mistake to equate them. Racism leads to inequality, and dehumanisation, and riots. It generally does not -has not- lead to gas chambers, and before that pogroms and massacres the length and breadth of a continent.
It is to compare my cat and the blue whale and declare them both mammals. It's not wrong, but it's kind of missing the point.
Racism is based on the idea that there are different human races: the 'white race', the 'black race', the 'yellow race', the 'red race'. People of the same race are assumed to share certain characteristics. Hitler and the Nazis also believed that people could be divided into races. And they believed that the races were in competition with each other. According to the Nazis, the Jews were a weak, dangerous, and inferior race that did not belong in Germany.
That's
a quote from the Anne Frank Museum website: it's good to cite your sources if you're going to quote them.
Their argument is overly-simplistic. Hitler didn't think badly of the Jews because they were a separate race. He despised them as a pestilence, that undermined the strength of a country insidiously and all-pervasively. Yes, in 1933ish, the idea was that the Jews shouldn't belong in Germany. But it wasn't because they were weak or inferior, but because they were a strong, deadly, insidious, fiendishly clever at ingratiating themselves, parasitical threat to the country. They had, after all, stabbed Germany in the back and made it lose the first world war, hadn't they!?
So, yes, Jews are not a "race", but even so, some people still believe in the concept.
If it is the basis for their hatred of Jews, it is undoubtedly racist.
Well, no, not really. Historically, as I said, the hatred has been based on the fact they killed Christ and charged interest when Christians couldn't and went around murdering young children so as to drink their blood. It helps if they have big noses and curlicue hair under big black felt hats, so you can spot them easily enough. But they generally don't have black, yellow or red skin... and by the time we get to 1935 and the passing of the Nuremberg laws, it doesn't matter how white your skin is and whether you were baptised at birth or not: if you had a couple of Jewish grandparents in your family tree, you were to be excluded from society (though not yet to be exterminated).
And splitting hairs over degrees of racism is counterproductive.
Well, it has degenerated into that, so I agree with you. But the fundamental issue is not one of degree; it's of different causes and the various potential different 'cures'. Racism can be fixed, perhaps, by multiculturalism, intermarriage, school bussing (well, they might tackle some of the symptoms, at least). People generally get embarrassed about being identified as racist. Few antisemites are or were ever embarrassed about being so identified, and the cure for antisemitism is to eliminate the Jew (by expulsion, the occasional pogrom & massacre at a pinch, perhaps). Until we get to about 1941 when "eliminate" takes on a whole different complexion.
I think antisemitism and racism share an underlying sociopathy: the ability to think of others as less desirable than yourself. But that's where the similarities end (and therefore 'degrees' don't come into it).
So, yes, both Wagner and Hitler were racists.
I'd have difficulty making that case for Hitler. He thought highly of Indians, for example (for they were the original Aryans); likewise, he had no problem with regarding the Japanese as honarary Aryans. I think he didn't much like blacks. And he certainly came to regard the Slavs as sub-human (maybe the clue was in their collective name?!). So, I guess he
might well have been racist, but not in any obvious, coherent or reasoned fashion. As for Wagner: I have no idea: I'm simply not familiar with his views on race.
But both Wagner and Hitler were virulent antisemites.
Hitler found himself in a position of power to bring his racism to a horrific conclusion.
Again, I don't agree. He gained power and brought his antisemitism into effect. Different beast entirely.
The hypothetical here is whether Wagner, had he been in a position of power as Hitler was, would have committed a similar genocide. And, of course, we cannot know if that is true.
Indeed. And for that reason, I don't think it helpful to speculate on that really. The
known fact is he was a declared antisemite who composed music for a living. The other known fact is that Hitler was a declared antisemite who ran a government for a living. Unless we are to assume that there are different degrees of antisemitism, I think it's enough to say 'Wagner was a declared antisemite'. Time and a change of circumstance would have meant the same psycopathy would therefore probably have had broadly the same outcome.
What we do know is that Wagner hated Jews because they were Jews, sounded jewish, acted jewish, and even "thought jewishly", and looked down on them as being a racially inferior group of people.
The splitting of hairs on degrees of racism is pointless, like comparing Olympic divers that dive from different heights as being a relevant point. One isn't MORE of a "diver" because men jump from a 27-metre-high (89 ft) platform while women jump from a 20-metre-high (66 ft) platform.
I didn't find any reference to the word 'race' in his essay on Jewishness in Music, I've got to say. I've done a search through the PDF multiple times for it: it's not there. I may have missed it, which is fine if so and I'd be happy to have it pointed out to me.
Anyway. My point is not degrees of racism. It's that he was an antisemite. And antisemitism, throughout history, has required the removal of Jews from a society -and if they won't go quietly, a bit of force has always been employed to make it happen.
There's a good discussion to be had on whether it's possible to have degrees of antisemitism -but the fundamental flaw in what you've written, it seems to me, is to not realise the profound difference there is between the nastiest racism and the nicest antisemitism. They are birds of entirely different feathers, though both rely on the ability to view others as "different from me".