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The Antisemitic German Social Party, Bochum Program (June 11, 1889)

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opportunity to express clearly the dissatisfaction or the desires of broad strata of the population. With respect to class-based electoral systems, even a secret ballot would be regarded as an improvement. In order to safeguard a free voting process, which all too often is circumvented by political party leaders through unscrupulous activities and tricks that are difficult to punish under the criminal code, we call for the introduction of officially supplied ballot envelopes. We consider the granting of modest per diem payments to members of the Reichstag a necessary supplement to electoral freedom.

6. Besides freedom of election, we regard freedom of word, of print, and of assembly to be necessary prerequisites for the sound development of social relations. Adherence to such liberties, however, does not exclude preparedness to help eliminate, by means of legislation, any endeavors in the press and in public life aimed at poisoning people's minds and endangering the state.

7. The Antisemitic German Social Party puts the Jewish question at the forefront of its efforts. It views the Jewish question not only as an issue of race and religion, but also as a problem with international, national, social-political, and moral-religious dimensions. – Even in a state ordered according to German-Social principles, Jewry, whose history of several thousand years proves the impossibility of its assimilation into other nations, would be a thorn in our side and would gnaw at and degenerate our people by way of its evil inclinations and influences; it would completely undermine our laws. Consequently, the Antisemitic German Social Party sees it as its duty to use legal means to combat the anti-national and seditious influence of international Jewry in all spheres of public, social, and economic life, to educate the German people about the Jewish question, and to urge the government to conclude international agreements aimed particularly against the highly dangerous accumulation of Jewish capital.

In order to shed light on the question of whether the religious doctrines to which Jews adhere contain any precepts dangerous to the state, the state should install an academic investigative authority as soon as possible to translate the Talmud and the religious, ritual, and moral regulations set down in rabbinical literature. A new social order on the basis of occupational classes should enable these classes to resist any morally unfit elements, particularly to keep themselves free of any penetration by Jewry through the use of tribunals and the independent right to determine admission.

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