The Racialization of the Jewish Question

Abstract

This article explores how the Jewish Question went from being a question of whether to give Jews, as a religious minority, citizenship, to a racial theory of a conflict between the Aryan and Semitic races. It explores the origins of Christian anti-Judaism in Europe and describes how it flared up during the Crusades, Inquisition, and Pogroms. It then describes how and explains why the Jewish Question became pseudo-secularized into a pseudo-scientific racial anti-Semitism, which culminated in the Final Solution.