Work
Cohn's work as a historian focused on the problem of the roots of that persecutorial fanaticism which became resurgent in modern Europe at a time when industrial progress and the spread of democracy had convinced many that modern civilisation had stepped out forever from the savageries of earlier historical societies. In his The Pursuit of the Millennium, an influential work translated into more than eleven languages, he traced back to the distant past the pattern of chiliastic upheaval which marred the revolutionary movements of the 20th century. Likewise, in Europe's Inner Demons he tracked the historical sources of the mania for scapegoating minorities which, within Christendom, culminated in the Great European witchhunt.
His book Warrant for Genocide is on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the anti-semitic forgery purporting to describe a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. He argued that this conspiracy theory motivated its supporters to seek the massacre of the Jewish people and became a major psychological factor in the Nazi Holocaust.
In "Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith" (1993), he sought to trace the source of millennial religious themes in ancient civilisations. Cohn, with his background in dealing with totalitarian regimes and the sufferings of his relatives during the Holocaust, described all his work as studies on the phenomena that sought:
"to purify the world through the annihilation of some category of human beings imagined as agents of corruption and incarnations of evil".
His work was honoured by his election as a Fellow of the British Academy, for which he was nominated by Isaiah Berlin. His The Pursuit of the Millennium was ranked as one of the 100 most influential books of the 20th century in a survey conducted by the Times Literary Supplement.
Read more about this topic: Norman Cohn
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