Editing Semitic people (section)

==Antisemitism==
{{Main|Antisemitism}}
[[File:Statuten der Antisemiten-Liga.jpg|thumb|150px|1879 statute of the Antisemitic League, the organization which first popularized the term]]
The terms "anti-Semite" or "antisemitism" came by a circuitous route to refer more narrowly to anyone who was hostile or discriminatory towards Jews in particular.<ref>{{cite web |title=Anti-Semitism |publisher=Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition |url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-semitism}}</ref>

[[Anthropologist]]s of the 19th century such as [[Ernest Renan]] readily aligned linguistic groupings with [[ethnicity]] and culture, appealing to anecdote, science and folklore in their efforts to define racial character. [[Moritz Steinschneider]], in his periodical of Jewish letters ''Hamaskir'' (3 (Berlin 1860), 16), discusses an article by [[Heymann Steinthal]]<ref>Reprinted G. Karpeles (ed.), Steinthal H., ''Ueber Juden und Judentum'', Berlin 1918, pp. 91 ff.</ref> criticising Renan's article "New Considerations on the General Character of the Semitic Peoples, In Particular Their Tendency to Monotheism".<ref>Published in the ''Journal Asiatique'', 1859</ref> Renan had acknowledged the importance of the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia, Israel etc. but called the Semitic races inferior to the [[Aryan]] for their [[monotheism]], which he held to arise from their supposed lustful, violent, unscrupulous and selfish racial instincts. Steinthal summed up these predispositions as "Semitism", and so Steinschneider characterised Renan's ideas as "anti-Semitic prejudice".<ref>[[Alex Bein]], ''The Jewish Question: Biography of a World Problem'', Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990, p. 594, {{ISBN|0-8386-3252-1}}&nbsp;– quoting the Hebrew Encyclopaedia ''Ozar Ysrael'', (edited Jehuda Eisenstadt, London 1924, 2: 130ff)</ref>

In 1879, the German journalist [[Wilhelm Marr]] began the politicisation of the term by speaking of a struggle between Jews and Germans in a pamphlet called ''Der Weg zum Siege des Germanenthums über das Judenthum'' ("The Way to Victory of Germanism over Judaism"). He accused the Jews of being liberals, a people without roots who had Judaized Germans beyond salvation. In 1879, Marr's adherents founded the "League for Anti-Semitism",<ref>Moshe Zimmermann, ''Wilhelm Marr: The Patriarch of Anti-Semitism'', Oxford University Press, USA, 1987</ref> which concerned itself entirely with anti-Jewish political action.

Objections to the usage of the term, such as the obsolete nature of the term "Semitic" as a racial term, have been raised since at least the 1930s.<ref name="Sevenster1975">{{cite book|last=Sevenster|first=Jan Nicolaas|title=The Roots of Pagan Anti-Semitism in the Ancient World|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yLE3AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA1|year=1975|publisher=Brill Archive|isbn=978-90-04-04193-6|pages=1–2|quote=It has long been realised that there are objections to the term anti-Semitism and therefore an endeavour has been made to find a word which better interprets the meaning intended. Already in 1936 Bolkestein, for example, wrote an article on Het "antisemietisme" in de oudheid (Anti-Semitism in the ancient world) in which the word was placed between quotation marks and a preference was expressed for the term hatred of the Jews… Nowadays the term anti-Judaism is often preferred. It certainly expresses better than anti-Semitism the fact that it concerns the attitude to the Jews and avoids any suggestion of racial distinction, which was not or hardly, a factor of any significance in ancient times. For this reason Leipoldt preferred to speak of anti-Judaism when writing his Antisemitsmus in der alten Welt (1933). Bonsirven also preferred this word to Anti-Semitism, "mot moderne qui implique une théorie des races".}}</ref><ref name="MZ1987">{{cite book|last=Zimmermann|first=Moshe|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tYW013SjKM4C&pg=PA112|title=Wilhelm Marr: The Patriarch of Anti-Semitism|date=5 March 1987|publisher=Oxford University Press, USA|isbn=978-0-19-536495-8|page=112|quote=The term 'anti-Semitism' was unsuitable from the beginning for the real essence of Jew-hatred, which remained anchored, more or less, in the Christian tradition even when it moved via the natural sciences, into racism. It is doubtful whether the term which was first publicized in an institutional context (the Anti-Semitic League) would have appeared at all if the 'Anti-Chancellor League,' which fought Bismarck's policy, had not been in existence since 1875. The founders of the new Organization adopted the elements of 'anti' and 'league,' and searched for the proper term: Marr exchanged the term 'Jew' for 'Semite' which he already favored. It is possible that the shortened form 'Sem' is used with such frequency and ease by Marr (and in his writings) due to its literary advantage and because it reminded Marr of Sem Biedermann, his Jewish employer from the Vienna period.}}</ref>