Forschungsbereich: Cleavages in Politik und Gesellschaft

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Nationalism and Antisemitism: A Study on Their Relations, Continuities and Discontinuities

  Marie-Curie-Project, 7th EU Framework Program
  Dr.inKarin Stögner (Nationalism Studies Program, Central European University, Budapest)
   


The aim of this project is to shed light on the connections and mediations between antisemitism and nationalism, whereby a central question concerns what Habermas calls the postnational constellation. Besides an in-depth theoretical study on the concept of nationalism and its intertwining with antisemitism before the background of supranational constructs like the EU, two case studies will be carried out which frame the short 20th century.

The years before the First World War are the first angle of an analysis of the development of nationalism and antisemitism. Thereby, central consideration will be paid to German youth movement and how antisemitic and nationalist elements amalgamate to an antimodernist reaction to modernism. An abbreviated and often antisemitic capitalism critique as well as mythical, quasi-religious back-to-nature-ideology - both major characteristics of this movement - are directed against notions of cosmopolitical, modern, urban life which are all associated with "Jewishness".

A second case study will be devoted to the discourses of anti-globalisation movement at the end of 20th and the beginning of 21st century. Its criticism of modern economics sometimes shows a common combination of (unconscious and mostly involuntary) nationalism with leftist anti-Americanism and so called anti-Zionism; a combination which is particularly susceptible to apply traditional antisemitic stereotypes. Although the Anti-Globalisation Movement is internationally oriented, many of its texts frequently express an exigency of a particular community spirit as opposed to individualism and cosmopolitism alike. Nationalist biases are thereby likely to be re-actualised and re-shaped to a new modern rebellion against modernity. Obviously, there is still a need to interpret the complex structures of modern world in simplifying terms, for which nationalism as well as antisemitism provide precast instruments also in what may be called a postnational constellation.