Antisemitism
Adams's attitude towards Jews has been described as one of loathing. John Hay, remarking on Adams's antisemitism, said that when Adams "saw Vesuvius reddening... searched for a Jew stoking the fire."
His letters were "peppered with a variety of antisemitic remarks", according to historian Robert Michael. Adams wrote: "I detest, and everything connected with them, and I live only and solely with the hope of seeing their demise, with all their accursed Judaism. I want to see all the lenders at interest taken out and executed."
In his American Historians and European Immigrants, author Edward Saveth quotes Adams as follows:
"We are in the hands of the Jews", Adams lamented. "They can do what they please with our values." He advised against investment except in the form of gold locked in a safe deposit box. "There you have no risk but the burglar. In any other form you have the burglar, the Jew, the Czar, the socialist, and, above all, the total irremediable, radical rottenness of our whole social, industrial, financial and political system."
Read more about this topic: Henry Adams
Famous quotes containing the word antisemitism:
“Worst of all, there is no sign of any relaxation of antisemitism. Logically it has nothing to do with Fascism. But the human race is imitative rather than logical; and as Fascism spreads antisemitism spreads.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)