This blog is about my bias #4 of seven bias blogs.
The Catholic Church, in the beginning of the Second Millennium, was in control of most of Europe and determined to keep any change from happening. The Church saw clearly that maintaining the feudal structure of land indenture and servitude were necessary for stability. The hierarchy of the times was the church on top, the royalty next, noblemen in the military, the landed gentry below and on the bottom were serfs. Outside of society were the traders who had no land and no fief attachment.
The Church, in its longtime theological and religious hatred of the Jews, the only coherent educated group to oppose the core religious ideas of the European Church, placed the Jews, by Canon Law, outside of society...in the outcast group of traders and forbade Jews from owning land in Europe.
The main thing that has changed since the beginning of the second millennium is that the Church has lost relative power while the class of traders has moved closer to the top. The Jews got protection in Amsterdam from the Protestants who were also hated by the church and who also participated in commerce.
I argue, for all with eyes to see it, that the relationship still exists. Hatred of Jews is a metric that measures the hatred of commerce. The more one, or a group, hate Jews the more they hate commerce and vice versa. Commerce and modernity are now synonymous and the Fundamentalist Islamic world hates both commerce and modernity as well as the Jews.
It has been no surprise that recent anti-Semitism is coming from the Left in Europe. The left has been anti-commerce for a long time. Karl Marx hated commerce (he married the daughter of a Dutch banker relative of mine) and hated Jews even more.
Anti-Semitism is a metric for measuring the level of anti-commerce.