Nordau

Of course, maybe in your analogy someone like Nordau is like the doctors endorsing Camels in the 40s …

Matthew Yglesias » The Strange Case of Woodrow Wilson 2009

Reading early Zionists such as Nordau, Borochov and Gordon provides us with some very contemptuous references to Jewish character and identity that would make Nazi ideology look mildly liberal.

Palestine Blogs aggregator 2010

Nordau believed that intellectual degeneration paralleled or surpassed physical degeneration—and that it carried its own stigmata.

Bloodlust Russell Jacoby 2011

Nordau believed that “degeneration,” a nervous disorder that beset the modern age, especially enfeebled Jews.

Bloodlust Russell Jacoby 2011

Not until Nordau encountered Herzl did Jews figure into his broadside.

Bloodlust Russell Jacoby 2011

Nordau all but copyrighted the term degeneration, the title of his best-selling book.43 Degeneration for Nordau designated irrational and romantic ideas in culture, a decay of reason.

Bloodlust Russell Jacoby 2011

Baldwin argues that Nordau never fit together the pieces of his thinking—his rationalistic liberalism and his Volkish Zionism.

Bloodlust Russell Jacoby 2011

The long-noted irony is that turn-of-the-century exponents of Zionism like Nordau and Herzl were thoroughly assimilated Jews.

Bloodlust Russell Jacoby 2011

Nordau took it from Bénédict Morel, a French psychiatrist, who was alarmed at what he considered accelerating cretinism and insanity.

Bloodlust Russell Jacoby 2011

“I have never known or felt that I am a Jew,” confessed Nordau.39 He and Herzl wanted to be accepted as good Western European citizens.

Bloodlust Russell Jacoby 2011