I am not sure how I wish to start this. But I want to start writing, so here goes nothing. Class Struggle, it is the root, or at least one of the main roots, of many problems that face the world throughout history and today. One example of class struggle manifesting itself in disguise is racism. In general, there are two things many people do noy like: the poor and being poor. This can be used to easily explain two famous forms of racism.
First: Racism against blacks in America. It’s no secret that slaves do not have much at all in respect to material riches. Another reality is that your more likely to be a wealthy adult if you were born to wealthy parents. The same principle applies to the impoverished. It is hard to make it in this world when you’re born to former slave parents, parents that, to no fault of their own, have nothing. This has a strong ripple effect that still acts as a large hurdle to the African American community to this day. This is part of the reason why racism is so prevalent in the U.S. It is correlation, not causation. It is classism, with a race based coat of paint.
Second: This is also part of why Nazi Germany had such a hatred of Jews. Germany experienced horrific, abject poverty from after World War One all the way to the rise of the National Socialist party. This was due to the overly punitive/harsh treaty of Versailles. To summarize, the allies, mostly the French, decided to kick Germany while they were down at the end of The Great War. Not to get too off topic, but in the defense of the Frogs, Germany did the exact same thing to France nearly fifty years prior.
So, as I said earlier, people hate being people. And in times of desperation, it is all too common for people to want someone, something, or some group to blame; often times choosing a scapegoat. The obvious culprit is France, but this is against the agenda of a certain Austrian man who could not get into art school...
Adolf Hitler believed strongly in the idea of the master race, and that Germans are part of said race. So he could not blame France since the French share so much genetic material with the Germans. Instead, he chose to blame the enforcers of the Treaty of Versailles, the banks.
Now of course anti-semitism in Europe is much older and much, much more complex than I could explain. I am merely giving a vast oversimplification of partly why the bigotry and cruelty towards Jews existed in Germany during WWII. As I stated before, people do not like being poor. Since the banks were seemingly the ones enforcing the Treaty of Versaille, and banking is stereotypically a very Jewish profession, the correlation was drawn. This, compounded with already existing hatred towards the Jews, made them an easy target for Adolf Hitler’s scapegoating.
I hope you enjoyed this essay, that is assuming anyone besides myself reads it. I do acknowledge that much of this paper was oversimplifying very old and complex issues. I just had this thought and wanted to write about. Thank you again for reading.