Some of the VERY early settlers in the colonies were....POTUGUESE Jews who had first fled to South America, from Europe, due to the Inquisition and when the Spanish took over great swaths of South America, they fled to the North American colonies to escape the enforced INQUISITION yet again. They were NOT poor and were NOT treated badly here.
Some OF THEIR DESCENDANTS helped to finance and fight in THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION!
I goofed and left out a word in that damned Russian book which Henry Ford, Edison, and Woodrow Wilson and other such vile people LOVED and disseminated. It's actually: THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION. Look it up...it's horrific and what Hitler later used and upped the ante on.
Massive anti-Semitism was really NOT all that widely spread ( outside of the South after the Civil War and the rise of the KKK ) in this nation.
Here's yet another historical tidbit that is not widely known now......
During and after WW I, Hungarian and German shops ( the nations we fought and beat ) and goods, made and/or sold by American citizens ( even those with German last names, whose families had been American Citizens since the colonies became America ) were attacked/closed down/had to rename certain products. What everyone now calls DANISH PASTRY is NOT in any way, shape, manner nor form Danish! It's Hungarian! But Hungarian bakeries were boycotted, anyone else selling these delicious treats were boycotted, so they had a name change...."DANISH PASTRIES" from Delceral ( I am guessing at that spelling...so forgive me; I can speak some Hungarian well, but can't spell anything much in that language ), and the prune kind are LEKVAR! Spelled that word correctly. :-)
If prior to Hitler and WW II, ALL Jews were hated, then Disraeli could NEVER have been in Parliament, NEVER been one of THE best Prime Ministers of the UK!
Even the French had Jews in the military and some of whom were officers! Look up The Dreyfus Affair!
Granted, after during and after the French Revolution, a nutty French priest, who had fed to England, wrote a pamphlet or book claiming that it was the Masons and Jews who caused the French revolution, which is utter and complete nonsense! Louis' brother was a high mucky muck in the Masons and he didn't cause it and he was NOT a Jew.
I can give more facts, but I've delved pretty far into the weeds as it is, so shall stop.
I've always LOVED history, so I know this stuff; however, most of what I posted was also once taught in school...some of it in the 5th grade!
Keep it coming.
I’m retired and love to read, and anything new and interesting I’ll gobble up.
IMHO, it was a mixed bag of nuts, but there was a large degree of Jew hatred in the US prior to WWII. Even Charles Lindbergh, FDR...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis. We would rather just forget that.
Again, my personal analysis for whatever that is worth, there were two big events where the perceptions of Jews in the US specifically changed to their advantage:
1). Darby and the influence he had on many Christian churches (starting ~ 1860s): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nelson_Darby. He redefined the relationship between Christians and Jews.
2). WWII after which the Holocaust and flood of stories, human rights accords, movies, books, poems, museums... put the plight of these people in the forefront of most Americans minds and the idea of any criticism became taboo.
You will find people that like, are neutral or dislike various groups everywhere. In Mexico you can find a lot of folks that dislike “Gringos,” and that varies over time in how many and how fervent this dislike is.
Regards the Jews in history, it is hard to put an exact number on it (not like you had Pew polls). You and I are using specific examples/observations to try to show a trend (inductive reasoning which is inherently inaccurate since I can bombard you with 100 examples, and you can bombard me with 100 examples).
But I would argue that it was more than just the Catholics and few examples you provided. Even the Protestants had no love for the Jews: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies
Different places had varying degrees of animosity towards the Jew over time, but over all, the Christian and European cultures had historically derogatory perceptions of these people.
For example, the reason why so many Jews lived in Germany prior to the Nazis is because it was historically one of the more tolerant, permissive, and accepting nations in Europe and many Jews fled from nearly everywhere. The Germans never had an inquisition and most big cities had a Jewish quarter until the Nazi era (example): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurter_Judengasse. But just because the Germans were not persecuting the Jews like say in Spain, does not mean that they enjoyed positive perceptions by the Germans.
The hatred of Jews became near dogmatic and it wasn’t until more recent and secular times where this changed, especially in the US thanks to some theologians that turned 1,800 years upside down and WWII after which it was taboo to say anything which could be perceived as anti-Semitic.
Which brings us to the modern era, where kids ask why the Jews are looked down upon and are persecuted? This question alone shows a complete ignorance of history.
Did you know, that many of the German ideas regarding inferior people and how to deal with them actually was based on some of our work?
The Germans didn’t do much regards eugenics prior to the Nazis (they were far behind), and when they took power they actually looked towards the US where you had active eugenics programs. Also something we would rather bury in the annals of time.
On one of my trips (I love to travel) I stopped and had to snoop around where much of that was done and what the Nazis actually based some of their program on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_State_Colony_for_Epileptics_and_Feebleminded
Some of the buildings still stand to this day, I was there maybe 6 months ago.