Mein Kampf
necessary, in the party leaders’ view, to put aside as far as possible all dividing tendencies, and in their place to emphasize all the unifying considerations.
By that time Vienna was already so thoroughly impregnated with Czech elements, particularly, that only the greatest tolerance in race questions could hold these elements in a party which was not anti-German from the beginning. If Austria was to be saved, they could not be dispensed with. An attempt was therefore attempted to win especially the very numerous Czech petty artisans in Vienna by a drive against Manchester liberalism, and it was supposed that thus the struggle against Jewry on a religious basis was provided with a slogan which would bridge all the national differences of old Austria.
That an attack on such a basis would cause but slight worry to the Jews is plain on the face of it. At worst, a dash of baptismal water would always save his business and Judaism together.
With a superficial argument such as this they never achieved serious scientific treatment of the whole problem, and so they repelled all too many to whom this sort of anti-Semitism was incomprehensible. Thus the attractive power of the idea was almost exclusively confined to limited intellectual circles, if they did not want to go from there to a real insight through pure emotional experience. On principle the intelligentsia remained hostile. The whole affair took on more and more the appearance of being a mere attempt at a new conversion of the Jews, or even the expression of a certain competitive envy. The struggle thus lost the ear marks of an inner and higher consecration, and seemed to many people (and not the worst sort) immoral and reprehensible. The conviction was lacking that this was a vital question for all of humanity, upon whose solution the fate of all non-Jewish peoples depended.
This half measure destroyed the value of the Christian Socialist Party’s anti-Semitic attitude. It was an apparent anti-Semitism that was almost worse than none; for being lulled in security, people thought they had the enemy by the ears, while in reality they themselves were led around by the nose.
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