Bronner, Stephen Eric. A Rumor about the Jews: Antisemitism, Conspiracy,
and the Protocols of Zion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. (1st
ed., 2000)
Publisher description:
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0614/2003048673-d.html
Table of contents:
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0614/2003048673-t.html
H-Net review: Linda Maizels. "Review of Stephen Eric Bronner, A Rumor about
the Jews: Antisemitism, Conspiracy, and the Protocols of Zion," H-Judaic,
H-Net Reviews, March, 2004. URL:
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=141461079742078.
I will review this important book when I've finished reading it. I've now
gone through chapter 2, in which selections of the infamous anti-semitic
forgery are reproduced. It is immediately evident that this tract could
only be a product of an illiberal society attempting to stifle the
democratic tendencies of modernization--hence the slurs not only against
the Jews, but in association with condemnation of all anti-clerical,
anti-aristocratic, anti-hierarchical, democratic and liberal
tendencies. Not surprising, as it is a czarist forgery. Some of this
content would not pass in liberal democracies, but quite a bit of it is
still live within the fascist currents of societies like ours, not to
mention others.
I hope to say more beyond what is said in the H-Net review
cited. Sophisticated models of how religious ideology interacts with
sociological factors need to be popularized, especially in the
philosophically challenged Anglo-American sphere (including, alas, the
otherwise salutary secular humanist movement). That is, we need a more
philosophically and sociologically sophisticated defense of liberal and
secular values than the philosophical mediocrities who dominate such
discourse--Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Daniel Dennett,
etc.--are giving us. We also need a counterweight to the fascistic
conception of the "clash of civilizations" not only bequeathed to us by
right-wrong ideologues but adopted by scared liberals like Harris who is
part of the current foaming at the mouth over Islam. We have to know how
to condemn religious superstition unequivocally without predicating
everything that happens in society as a product of "belief" in the
abstract, or for that matter, on sociologically illiterate metaphorical
extensions of neo-Darwinism (memetics, etc.).
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