Traveling with Hate from One Century to the Next

This afternoon I read an article on Slate titled "The Persistence of Hate," by Ray Fisman. The author describes a study done by Nico Voigtländer of UCLA and Joachim Voth of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain. The two academics set out to answer this question by looking at the roots of anti-semitism in Germany: "How persistent are cultural traits?" By comparing historical records, the authors discovered a correlation between the treatment of Jews in certain locales during the Black Plague with anti-semitism in the same locales in Nazi Germany:

When the Black Death arrived in Europe in 1348-50, it was often blamed on Jews poisoning wells. Many towns and cities (but not all) murdered their Jewish populations. Almost six hundred years later, after defeat in World War I, Germany saw a country-wide rise in anti-Semitism. This led to a wave of persecution, even before the Nazi Party seized power in 1933. We demonstrate that localities with a medieval history of pogroms showed markedly higher levels of anti-Semitism in the interwar period. Attacks on Jews were six times more likely in the 1920s in towns and cities where Jews had been burned in 1348-50; the Nazi Party’s share of the vote in 1928 – when it had a strong anti-Semitic focus – was 1.5 times higher than elsewhere.

The authors conclude that hatred was transmitted over centuries, toward a group of people who basically disappeared from Germany in the 1500s (after all the burning and torturing) and who did not return in numbers until the 1700s. You can evaluate the authors' methodology yourself at the following link and download the published paper: Persecution Perpetuated: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitic Violence in Nazi Germany," Nico Voigtländer and Joachim Voth, Social Science Research Network: Tomorrow's Research Today, May 27, 2011.

I have scanned the article but have not read it thoroughly, but the findings do not seem out of the realm of possibility to me. Hatred is transmitted from one generation to another, even when the receiving generation has had no personal contact with the persons against whom the hatred is directed.

Just hours after I read the discussion of the study on Slate, my son returned from the tutoring center where he is working part-time this summer. "Guess what question a fourth-grader asked me today," he said to me. "He asked me which side I was on in the Civil War."

A regular student at the tutoring center, this child evidently often tries to engage the tutors with off-the-wall questions not related to the subject in which he is being tutored. He had asked the same question of the woman who was tutoring him, and, not liking her answer--"on the side of the North"--he turned for vindication to my son, who was tutoring other students. When my son said that he was glad that the Union had won, the fourth grader asked him why. "Because slavery is evil," my son replied, trying to keep his answer short and to the point before getting the student back on track.

"But the Civil War wasn't about slavery; it was about state's rights," the kid replied. "Abraham Lincoln made it about slavery to stick it to the South." Then he added that he hated Abraham Lincoln and that it was a good thing that John Wilkes Booth shot him. And he asked my son why he didn't live in the North since he wasn't "for" the South--still fighting the Civil War in his little head.

Later, as my son and I were describing to my husband these two interlinking experiences--my reading the article on Slate and my son's experience with the young student--we discussed a myriad of responses, some a little smart-alecky:

• "You're right: it was about state's rights--about the rights of states to establish or to maintain slavery as an institution."
  
• "Which side was I on? I wasn't alive during that war. Surely I don't look that old."

But it really wasn't a funny story. Hate never is. .......

Update: This must be hate-Abraham-Lincoln week. I just read Andrew Leonard's post on Salon: "Was Abraham Lincoln a Jewish Pawn of the Rothschilds?" Only in this story, hatred of Abraham Lincoln is directly connected to hatred of Jews. It seems that there are conspiracists who believe that Abraham Lincoln started the Civil War because the Rothschilds thought it would be good for banking. It's true that after the Civil War--and in order to help pay for that horrible war--Lincoln reformed the banking system, establishing a national currency--and thus stabilizing banking. As Leonard points out, a similar narrative is being tossed around today toward another president who initiated major banking reform. Is there no exit from these stupid conspiracy cycles and hate transfusions?