Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism is a term used to describe prejudice and contempt against Jews and Judaism. It covers a whole spectrum of negative conceptions, from traditional stereotypes to racial hatred. Anti-Jewish sentiments also exist in countries with no Jewish population and among people who have never met a Jew. Until the 19th century, anti-Semitism had mainly existed as cultural and religious phenomena. The persecution of Jews was usually limited to restrictions on social and economic mobility. Toward the end of the 19th century the traditional concept of anti-Judaism was supplemented with the belief that Jews belonged to an entirely different “race.” Thus Jews came to be perceived as an alien element in an ethnically homogeneous society, threatening the very foundations of the nation state.
In the late 19th century biological racism merged with anti-Semitism. The prejudices against Jews could now be presented with references to a supposedly scientific theory. Many had earlier believed that the Jews could be accepted as fellow citizens if they were willing to assimilate and convert to Christianity. The new theories, on the other hand, claimed that Jews had innate traits that made them a “foreign race” incapable of integration. Racial theorists saw the “Jew” as being opposed to the “Aryan” or the “German,” and simultaneously as the most dangerous of all “races”.