TY - JOUR

T1 - The antisemitism of producers: Hitler and the ‘rhetoric of bourgeois revolution’

AU - Stoetzler, Marcel

PY - 2023/12/15

Y1 - 2023/12/15

N2 - The article suggests that Nazi antisemitism inherited one of its key elements, the idea of the nation as a community of producers, from the tradition of modern bourgeois ideology as inaugurated in the period of the French Revolution, and that this element of continuity, the familiarity and ordinariness of one of its key ideas, can help explain its attractiveness to large constituencies across many political and social divides. This article first provides a detailed interpretation of the January 1939 Reichstag speech in which Adolf Hitler first publicly enunciated the genocide of European Jewry, focusing on one of its rhetorical highpoints, the phrase ‘Productive members of all nations, recognize your common foe!’. In a second step, the article contextualizes this speech in other writings by Hitler, including Mein Kampf, as well as selected sources of nineteenth-century antisemitism. In a third step, it relates it to the ‘rhetoric of bourgeois revolution’, which is how William Sewell referred to the strategic use of political ideas in Abbé Sieyes’ famous 1789 pamphlet, ‘What is the Third Estate?’.

AB - The article suggests that Nazi antisemitism inherited one of its key elements, the idea of the nation as a community of producers, from the tradition of modern bourgeois ideology as inaugurated in the period of the French Revolution, and that this element of continuity, the familiarity and ordinariness of one of its key ideas, can help explain its attractiveness to large constituencies across many political and social divides. This article first provides a detailed interpretation of the January 1939 Reichstag speech in which Adolf Hitler first publicly enunciated the genocide of European Jewry, focusing on one of its rhetorical highpoints, the phrase ‘Productive members of all nations, recognize your common foe!’. In a second step, the article contextualizes this speech in other writings by Hitler, including Mein Kampf, as well as selected sources of nineteenth-century antisemitism. In a third step, it relates it to the ‘rhetoric of bourgeois revolution’, which is how William Sewell referred to the strategic use of political ideas in Abbé Sieyes’ famous 1789 pamphlet, ‘What is the Third Estate?’.

M3 - Article

JO - Critical Historical Studies

JF - Critical Historical Studies

SN - 2326-4462

ER -