Alphonse Toussenel

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Alphonse Toussenel (born March 17, 1803 in Montreuil-Bellay , † April 30, 1885 in Paris ), also written Alphonse de Toussenel , was a French socialist and anti-Semitic writer and journalist.

Life

Toussenel was a supporter of the early socialist Charles Fourier . After the February Revolution of 1848 he was a member of Louis Blanc's "Commission du Travail". He later became editor-in-chief of La Paix magazine .

plant

Toussenel is considered the founder of modern anti-Semitism ; it marks the transition from old religious anti-Semitism to modern racial anti-Semitism.

One of his best-known works is the book The Jews, Kings of the Era: A History of Financial Feudalism , published in 1846. It is considered a "key work of left anti-Semitism". Right in the introduction he accuses the Jews of being unproductive parasites that live on the substance and work of others. Toussenel is particularly critical of the financial conditions under which James de Rothschild, as a representative of the Rothschild family , was able to acquire the railway line from Paris to Belgium. Toussenel combines his criticism with an argument against the Judaism of the Rothschild family. He claims, among other things, that France was sold to the Jews with this transaction and that the French railways are directly or indirectly under the control of "Baron Rothschild, the king of finance, a Jew made baron by a very Christian king" . The anti-capitalist Toussenel attacked the Jews and especially the Rotschilds but not only pars pro toto for all capitalist exploiters and profiteers. Rather, he also applies the word Jew to “drifters of all kinds”, to foreigners, cosmopolitans , Protestants and Saint-Simonists .

Shortly after Toussenel's death, a new edition appeared in 1886, with which the editors wanted to build on the success of the anti-Semitic bestseller La France Juive by Édouard Drumont . Toussenel's frequently translated work was one of the first to warn of a planned “Jewish world domination ”: the once oppressed but now privileged minority would subjugate the Christian world and threaten to take revenge on the earlier persecutors. The idea was later propagated through the Protocols of the Elders of Zion .

In 1849 he published an appeal to the Paris workers, in which he called on them to free themselves from "Jewish despotism". The Jews are accused of worshiping Satan , who is equated with the angry God of the Old Testament . Toussenel dichotomously contrasts the loving God of the Gospels with him.

In addition, Toussenel emerged as the author of animal books in which he let the animals appear as a mirror of human passions.

Works

  • Les Juifs, rois de l'époque: histoire de la féodalité financière (1846)
  • L'Esprit des bêtes. Vénerie française et zoologie passionnelle (1847)
  • Travail et fainéantise, program democratique (1849)

literature

Web links

Commons : Alphonse Toussenel  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Jean-Yves Camus : Toussenel, Alphonse . In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Vol. 2: People . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-44159-2 , p. 836 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
  2. ↑ Christian Ebhardt: Politics of Interest and Corruption: Personal Networks and Debates on Corruption Using the Example of the Railway Industry in Great Britain and France (1830-1870). Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, p. 123.
  3. ↑ Quoted from Niall Ferguson (2002): The history of the Rothschilds. Prophets of money. From the English 2 volumes. DVA, Munich / Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-421-05354-5 , p. 34
personal data
SURNAME Toussenel, Alphonse
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Toussenel, Alphonse de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer, utopian and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH March 17, 1803
PLACE OF BIRTH Montreuil-Bellay
DATE OF DEATH April 30, 1885
Place of death Paris