The Dutch socialist leader Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis was more strongly attracted to anti-Jewish ideas than is often thought. He also used anti-Semitism as a political weapon. That is the opinion of historian and biographer of Domela Nieuwenhuis Jan Willem Stutje in the open access magazine BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review.
We usually associate anti-Semitism as a political weapon with the National Socialism of the NSDAP, the political party of Adolf Hitler. But it was also common in the early labor movement in the Netherlands. Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, one of the founders of socialism in the Netherlands and leader of the Social Democratic Union (SDB), was an active anti-Semite in the political arena. According to Stutje, this may explain why the SDB did not gain a following among Jewish-Amsterdam diamond workers, the 'elite' of the proletariat.
Stutje, in his own words, received a wave of criticism when, in his Domela Nieuwenhuis biography (Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis :a romantic revolutionary. Atlas/Contact, Amsterdam, 2012) addressed his anti-Semitism as a political instrument. Anti-Semitism within the labor movement has often been dismissed as incidental by (left-wing) historians. It would come from outside as "German contagion," and anti-Jewish insults, according to these historians, were certainly not used as a political weapon by socialists like Domela. But according to Stutje, Domela did indeed use anti-Semitism as a political weapon. According to him, the general anti-Semitism within the early Dutch labor movement is a phenomenon that has been under-researched.
'Pale scholastic tronies'
At the end of the nineteenth century, when Domela Nieuwenhuis was politically active and calling the Dutch workers to revolution and anarchy, anti-Semitism was a common phenomenon in Europe. Jews were often seen as 'different' in a negative way, but that did not usually stand in the way of daily contact with Jews. In the wealthy Amsterdam environment, from which Domela also came, mild anti-Semitism was not seen as indecent. The idea that "the Jew was an enemy of the human species, who should be returned to Asia, or exterminated" was also circulating in left-wing intellectual circles. Domela also came into contact with it.
He regarded Jewish bankers as incarnations of 'capital'. By doing so, he implied that as Jews they were involved in exploitation, colonialism and war. He regularly stated that the Jews belonged to an ethnic group that "was in the blood of usury". The magazine Right for all – which Domela had co-founded – was the mouthpiece for his anti-Semitism. The Jew is said to be 'eminently 'clever and pliable', cast out through 'the front door', he snuck back in through 'the back door'. Domela's newspaper also coined the word 'money yoderij', denoting Jewish unreliability and haggling with capital, depicting stock traders as 'those Jews with their pale shovel-like faces'.
Domela's anti-Semitic mood making made the SDB a 'party without Jews', while enough Jews belonged to the Amsterdam proletariat. Domela continued his anti-Semitism from 1890, when the anti-Semitic tone hardened throughout Europe, especially against his major political competitor, the Frisian socialist Pieter Jelles Troelstra. Troelstra was right opposite Domela in the battle of directions within the SDB. He wanted to achieve a socialist revolution through parliamentary means, rather than through Domela's ideal of a violent revolution of the popular masses. With his more civilized form of socialism, Troelstra managed to find a following among the Jewish proletariat. According to Stutje, Domela primarily wanted to defend the SDB and the revolution, and that was more than worth the accusation of anti-Semitism.
Troelstra eventually founded the Social Democratic Workers Party (SDAP, predecessor of the PvdA) in 1894. He officially split from the SDB. Once this split was established, Domela toned down his anti-Semitism. But he never completely let go of his anti-Semitic views.