You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

RichardKennaway comments on Open thread, January 25- February 1 - Less Wrong Discussion

8 Post author: NancyLebovitz 25 January 2014 02:52PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (316)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 27 January 2014 08:11:10PM *  4 points [-]

There is a quote commonly mis-attributed to August Bebel and indeed to Marx: "Antisemitismus ist der Sozialismus des dummen Kerls." ("Antisemitism is the socialism of the stupid guy", or perhaps colloquially, "Antisemitism is a dumb-ass version of socialism") That is to say, politically naïve people were attracted to antisemitism because it offered them someone to blame for the problems they faced under capitalism, which — to the quoted speaker's view, anyway — would be better remedied by changing the political-economic structure.

Does that make socialism the anti-semitism of the smart? Or perhaps of the ambitious -- they're attracted to it because it gives them an enemy big enough to justify taking over everything?