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"Manifesto to the Governments and Peoples of the Christian Nations Threatened by Judaism": The First Anti-Jewish Congress in Dresden (September 11-12, 1882)

In the following manifesto of the First Anti-Jewish Congress, held in the Saxon capital shortly after the first wave of German antisemitism peaked, participants wove virtually all the threads of the “Jewish question” into the fabric – the fabrication – of a monumental struggle against international “Jewish parasitism.” Claiming that all Christian nations had no choice but to recognize the Jew as biologically alien, it called for a reversal of Jewish emancipation and for the expansion of an antisemitic “movement of self-protection.” The meeting's delegates constitute a virtual Who’s Who of German, Austrian, and Hungarian antisemites at the time. That these figures were still vying with each other for leadership of the movement is suggested by the addendum co-authored by two Bavarian aristocrats. But the delegates were in agreement that previous government initiatives in defense of the “Christian state” had been ineffective. The tone of this document is very different from the preceding description of the “Reichshall Meeting”; yet for purposes of agitation, it was its perfect complement, purporting to document the international “Jewish conspiracy” with historical “facts” rather than with inflammatory phrases. As such, it is typical of other contemporary manifestos, pamphlets, and pseudo-scientific tracts that also claimed to offer empirical evidence of the Jews’ so-called “lust for world domination.”

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To the Governments and Peoples of Christian Nations Threatened by Judaism!

In the course of the past centuries, the culture, civilization, prosperity, and future of the European Christian peoples were threatened, in turn, by Arabs, Tartars, and Turks – peoples of a foreign race and religion whose attacks and onslaughts were successfully fought back by the weapons of European Christians at the time. Likewise, in our times, another foreign race threatens the culture, civilization, prosperity, and future of the European Christian peoples – a foreign race that is no less dangerous. Nay, in terms of its means and objectives, it is probably even more dangerous than those aggressive national elements. This foreign race is the Jewish race.

The proper instinct of the European Christian peoples has kept this natural, sworn archenemy in check until very recently. It is an archenemy against whom restrictive legislative regulations have only proven to be half measures and inadequate weapons for protecting Christian people.

Since the beginning of the current century, however, this situation has changed quite radically, on a step-by-step basis, in some European countries.

The victorious ideals of the French Revolution – liberty, equality, and fraternity – have torn down the barriers against the Jewish race that had been erected for the protection of the Christian peoples.

The principle of liberty was also applied to a race whose first and foremost thoughts and energies are everywhere aimed at putting other nations in the moral and material shackles of slaves by all kinds of cunning behavior. According to the Jews’ religious and national traditions, all of these peoples were created merely to serve them.

The principle of equality was also applied to a race that does not wish to be equal with us, that considers itself a people privileged by God and [regards] the rest of mankind as lower beings, impure animals.

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