The Emergence of Anti-Semitism

Discrimination against and hatred for Jews has been going on for ages. Anti-Semitism, though, is a fairly recent phenomenon. The word was first used in 1879 by a German anti-Semite. But with the rise of nationalism in Europe also came a more systematized racism. Nations were grouped by ethnicity. Anti-Semitism is not simply hatred of the Jews as a religious group, but a biologized, racialized, and secularized discrimination that stated that Jewish blood was inferior to pure European blood. Jews were seen, not as a religious group, but as an ethnic one.
Romanticism of the past suggested that European countries should go back to a time when Jews did not have citizenship rights (received in the 18th century as they scattered through all of Europe and began cultural assimiliation).
In a Marxist analysis, anti-Semitism becomes a class issue. As a capitalist, a great way for the bourgeoisie to deflect hatred from the oppressed proletariat is to point at a specific group (here, the Jews) as a scapegoat.