Abstract
Focusing on many previously untranslated articles in popular national magazines and newspapers, as well as works by prominent racial theorists, this chapter traces how outrage was systematically fomented against Jews in Nazi-era Germany, creating perceived imperatives for drastic discriminatory measures. Rather than locate the core of Nazi antisemitism in historical or psychological factors, this study approaches antisemitism using the theoretical framework of risk communication. The heuristics of risk perception reveal an array of rhetorical tactics that fomented visceral aversion impervious to logical refutation. Portraying Jews as embodying maximal and uncontrollable risk, political, academic, and mass media discourse converged on the theme of Jews as posing unacceptable dangers that required progressively more drastic measures to control. The principles of risk communication, especially the means of inflaming outrage, could furnish useful interpretive frames for analyzing current antisemitism and other types of repressive discourse.
TopConceptual Framework, Scope, And Purpose
Although Nazi antisemitism was not rational, it did offer rationales that propelled otherwise logically and morally responsible people to endorse, enact, or tolerate overt cruelty and brutality. According to social intuitionism, moral decisions may rest on a basis of minimally reflective, affectively charged reactions arising through mental shortcuts that then get rationalized (Haidt, 2001, 2012). Communication plays a central role in generating and perpetuating these heuristic operations. From a communication standpoint, Nazi antisemitic fervor operates as a linguistically engineered manipulation of threat perception. The metaphoric framing of Jewish influence as a public health emergency provided a context for specific rationales that maximized the perceived peril posed by the Judaic pathogen. Close analysis of references to Jews and Judaism focusing on previously untranslated primary sources from Nazi-era political leaders, racial “scientists,” and the popular press (especially the daily Völkischer Beobachter and the weekly Das Schwarze Korps) reveals a convergence in metaphors and imagery across political discourse, purportedly scientific publications, and public journalism that systematically maximized perceptions of Judaism as a collective threat.
The discussion that follows represents the first attempt to apply empirically based research in risk communication—specifically, analyses of how people actually assess risks—to the ways Jews were rhetorically constructed as a risk in antisemitic discourse by researchers, political figures, and in popular tracts directed toward the general public. The study focuses on pre-World War II communication because the exigence of physical warfare introduces another set of risks alongside what was known as the “Jewish question” [Judenfrage]. The application of risk communication literature to antisemitism that Nazi Germany embraced could add depth and precision to discussions of how risk can be construed rhetorically. Instead of merely identifying root metaphors and other literary devices in antisemitic rhetoric, this study explores how specific discursive tactics amplified perceptions of Jews as hazardous.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Intuitive Processing: Interpreting information and rendering decisions based on instinctive feelings and minimal reflection. It involves mental shortcuts (heuristics) that provide simple but often biased or distorted impressions.
Affect Heuristic: Basing interpretations of something on the degree and intensity of positive or negative feelings it generates. A sense of meaning arises from emotional arousal.
Deliberative Processing: Interpreting information and rendering decisions through reasoning and critical thinking.
Representativeness Heuristic: Judging what is normal, expected, or average within a group based on whatever one most frequently encounters instead of what actually constitutes the group. Judgment may proceed from few or atypical examples that presumably characterize the entire group.
Antisemitism: Prejudice directed against people who are Jewish or are of Jewish descent.
Racial Science: The discredited attempt to prove natural hierarchies among different racial groups. It was used by the Nazi regime to justify negative attitudes and actions against Jews and other groups deemed inferior.
Mini-Max Scenario: Determining level of risk associated with an object or event primarily on the magnitude of harm it could inflict while discounting its likelihood of occurrence.