Journalism and Jews Aly

Why the Germans? Why the Jews?: Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust, by Götz Aly. 2014

Scholar Suggests That Jewish-Gentile Competition—Not Jewish Success—Animates Anti-Semitism. Jewish Cynicism, Exhibited in the Press, Offended Even Some Liberals

The author at first repeats the standard trope of anti-Semitism driven by the GOYIM and their seething envy of the many Jewish achievements, and some other reviewers have thus characterized this book. However, a closer analysis of this book shows the opposite.

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Let author Gotz Aly tell it (quote):

In 1914, Jews earned five terms as much on average as Gentiles. In 1928, Jews earned only three times as much—a significant step towards parity. Social scientists at the time observed ‘that the age of the Jew’s leading role in German economy is over.’ YET IRONICALLY, THE SHRINKING GAP BETWEEN JEWISH AND GENTILE PROSPERITY DID NOT ALLEVIATE JEW HATRED. ON THE CONTRARY, Jewish social stagnation and advances made
by Gentiles only increased the tension that was already present. THAT MAY SEEM PARADOXICAL, but the explanation is really quite simple. Envy is usually much stronger between neighboring groups that differ only moderately in material welfare and success than between groups that are more socially differentiated and spatially separated. Proximity is what enables constant comparisons, be it within families, among work colleagues, or in larger social groups. Popular envy-based anti-Semitism was directed primarily not against Jewish bankers, revolutionaries, department store owners, or racial and religious enemies, but rather against neighbors, classmates, colleagues, and fellow club members who were somewhat better off. As philosopher Max Scheler observed early in the twentieth century, ‘it is only the new feeling of equality of the climber that gives social resentment its edge.’

End of direct quote. (Emphasis is added.)

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JEWS AND MEDIA. ATTACKS ON GERMAN HISTORICAL PERSONAGES: A VENDETTA AGAINST CHRISTIANITY

Gotz Aly shows that it was not only the Nazi-inclined Germans that were repulsed by the Jewish journalist attacks on German patriotism. So were some German liberals. For instance, he writes of Margaret Adam, a Hamburg philosopher and women’s rights activist, who thought that Jews, having gotten emancipated, now were ‘getting back’ at Christianity: “As evidence for her claims, Adam cited the mighty Jewish press, which was ‘rife with insults and scorn hurled at the great personages of the German past.’ Adam explained: ‘This press is what causes people to speak repeatedly of “Jewish solidarity” in the worst sense.’ She dismissed the Weimar Republic’s lifting of restrictions on Jews’ occupying high civil service positions, calling it ‘an experiment contrary to history and nature.’” (pp. 161-162).