Professor Jack Jakobs writes: “Specific contentions or predictions made by the Critical Theorists with regard to antisemitism have proven to be unfounded in the decades since they produced their works. But the explanations provided by the Frankfurt School as to the links between antisemitism and anti-Americanism, their astute analyses of the roles played by mimesis and projection, and their insistence that antisemitism is not the property of a particular nation or race or culture – among other matters – continue to ring true.”
In other words, even though there is precious little evidence in favor of the Frankfurt School’s views on anti-Semitism, we can still find its analysis useful.
More: “My new book is intended to demonstrate that Jewish matters impacted on key members of the Horkheimer circle throughout their lives. It ought to be noted, first of all, that literally all of the members of the Institute active in Frankfurt on a full-time basis in the period which began when Horkheimer became director and which ended when these men fled Germany were of Jewish origin. The full-time members of the Institute in the period immediately preceding the end of the Weimar Republic all arrived at the Institute via Jewish roads and had an elective affinity for others like themselves.”
“By the end of his life, Horkheimer, for one, repeatedly suggested that Critical Theory itself had Jewish roots. He insisted during those years that “caution in dealing with the name of God” and the prohibition against graven images were both direct ancestors of the Frankfurt School’s approach. In sum: the Jewish background of key members of the Frankfurt School impacted either the course of their lives or the contents of their ideas, or both, not only in the Weimar Republic and in the exile period, but also in the post-War decades.”
