"anti-Semitism," yet the Jewish writer Bernard Lazare has shown the falseness of this charge:
This [he writes] is what must separate the impartial historian from anti-Semitism. The anti-Semite says: "The Jew is the preparer, the machinator, the chief engineer of revolutions"; the impartial historian confines himself to studying the part which the Jew, considering his spirit, his character, the nature of his philosophy, and his religion, may have taken in revolutionary processes and movements.<sup></sup>
Lazare himself expresses the opinion, however, that--
The complaint of the anti-Semites seems to be founded: the Jew has the revolutionary spirit; consciously or not he is an agent of revolution. Yet the complaint complicates itself, for anti-Semitism accuses the Jews of being the cause of revolutions. Let us examine what this accusation is worth....<sup></sup>
In the light of our present knowledge it would certainly be absurd to ascribe to the Jews the authorship of the conspiracy of Catiline or of the Gracchi, the rising of Jack Straw and Wat Tyler, Jack Cade's rebellion, the jacqueries of France, or the Peasants' Wars in Germany, although historical research may lead in time to the discovery of certain occult influences--not necessarily Jewish--behind the European insurrections here referred to. Moreover, apart from grievances or other causes of rebellion, the revolutionary spirit has always existed independently of the Jews. In all times and in all countries there have been men born to make trouble as