From Prejudice To Destruction

Katz here presents a major reinterpretation of modern anti-Semitism, revising the prevalent thesis that medieval and modern animosities against Jews were fundamentally different.

According to Simon Wiesenthal, nearly half of the crimes associated with the Holocaust were committed by Austrians, who comprised just 8.5 percent of the population of Hitler's Greater German Reich. Bruce Pauley's book explains this phenomenon by providing a history of Austrian anti-Semitism and Jewish responses to it from the Middle Ages to the present, with a particular focus on the period from 1914 to 1938. In contrast to works that view anti-Semitism as an inherent national characteristic, his account identifies many sources and varieties of the anti-Semitic sentiment that pervaded Austrian society on the eve of the Holocaust.

Hate Prejudice and Racism provides a comprehensive overview of the problems created by prejudiced attitudes, racist beliefs, and acts of discrimination, from the casual racial or ethnic joke to the unrestrained violence of a lynch mob. It addresses such topics as the nature of ethnicity, stereotyping, aggression, and hate groups and individuals who promote ethnic and racial hatred. Kleg's discussion of ethnicity and ethnic groups challenges us to reexamine the meaning of a multicultural society. He traces the history of race as a scientific concept and its use as a social concept designed to stigmatize and subordinate members of minority racial and ethnic groups. Chapters on prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination scapegoating provide a foundation for the chapter on hate groups and haters, which includes in-depth descriptions of beliefs and activities of white-supremacist groups and individuals who promote racism and anti-Semitism. Finally, Kleg outlines implications of hate prejudice and racism for educators and all cultural workers, outlining suggestions on how to approach and study this important and controversial topic.

Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked, "I think the good in Austria is particularly difficult to understand. In a certain sense it is more subtle than all the rest, and its truth is never on the side of probability." For forty years official Austria, christened by the Allies as Hitler's first "victim," wagered that the sedulously cultivated visions of cherubic choir boys, Lippizaner horses, and Mozartkugels could seduce the world into ignoring another truth about Austria, that of Wehrmacht soldiers, antisemitic slurs, and cheering crowds on Heldenplatz. The debate surrounding Kurt Waldheim dashed such "improbable" illusions permanently. Richard Mitten seeks to discover the "truth" behind the Waldheim controversy in its historical and political context. Whereas other books have focused on Waldheim's personal biography, Mitten argues that the essential point in the Waldheim affair is not Waldheim himself but the political and cultural climate that made his election possible. Mitten examines Waldheim's 1986 presidential election campaign, which both elicited and profited from profound chauvinistic and antisemitic resentments. The Politics of Antisemitic Prejudice is also the first book in English to study the dynamics of the Waldheim affair in the Austrian and American media. The author demonstrates how mistaken perceptions led both Waldheim's supporters and his critics to press their nearly diametrically opposed convictions with an identical moral vocabulary. Finally, Mitten re-examines the debate over Waldheim's criminality and suggests that the former UN Secretary General has come to stand as the symbol of a more general postwar unwillingness or inability to adequately confront the implications of the Nazi abomination.

"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is among the most infamous documents of antisemitism. A forgery created in Russia by the czarist secret police and quickly translated into a host of languages, it portrayed Judaism as a worldwide conspiracy dedicated to the destruction of Christian civilization. The appearance of the Protocols sparked a number of bloody pogroms and it helped shape the thinking of right-wing movements worldwide from Hitler's Nazis to contemporary antisemitic groups in Russia, the Middle East and the United States. A work of intellectual history, A Rumor About the Jews by Stephen Eric Bronner expresses the connection between antisemitism and the overarching political assault upon the enlightenment legacy, taking the reader on a historical journey that provides a new and penetrating understanding of an insidious ideology and its broader implications.

The twentieth century witnessed a profound shift in both socialism and social reform. In the early 1900s, social reform seemed to offer a veritable religion of redemption, but by the century's end, while socialism remained a vibrant force in European society, a culture of extreme individualism and consumption all but squeezed the welfare state out of existence. Documenting this historic change, After Progress: European Socialism and American Social Reform in the 20th Century is the first truly comprehensive look at the course of social reform and Western politics after Communism, brilliantly explained by a major social thinker of our time. Norman Birnbaum traces in fascinating detail the forces that have shifted social concern over the course of a century, from the devastation of two world wars, to the post-war golden age of economic growth and democracy, to the ever-increasing dominance of the market. He makes sense of the historical trends that have created a climate in which politicians proclaim the arrival of a new historical epoch but rarely offer solutions to social problems that get beyond cost-benefit analyses. Birnbaum goes one step further and proposes a strategy for bringing the market back into balance with the social needs of the people. He advocates a reconsideration of the notion of work, urges that market forces be brought under political control, and stresses the need for education that teaches the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Both a sweeping historical survey and a sharp-edged commentary on current political posturing, After Progress examines the state of social reform past, present and future.