A. C. Cuza

Alexandru C. Cuza (November 8, 1857 – 1947), also known as A. C. Cuza, was a Romanian far-right politician and theorist.

Born in Iaşi, Cuza attended secondary school in his native city and in Dresden, then studied law at the University of Paris, the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin, and the Université Libre de Bruxelles. He took doctorates in political science and economy (1881), as well as law (1882). Upon his return to Romania, Cuza became active in the socialist circle formed around Constantin Mille. He attended meetings of the Junimea literary society, contributing to its magazine Convorbiri Literare. In 1890, he engaged in the political aspect of Junimea, serving briefly as deputy mayor of Iaşi; in 1892, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies (serving until 1895). Cuza moved on to the Conservatives, and was yet again deputy – until a split generated by his virulent Antisemitism. He briefly managed to achieve international prominence, after organizing the Alliance Anti-semitique Universelle ("Universal Antisemitic Alliance") in Bucharest (1895). Romania in Cuza's time was one of the most Francophile nations in the entire world and the Romanian intelligentsia tended to be powerfully influenced by intellectual currents from France. One particular French intellectual fascinated Cuza, namely Comte Arthur de Gobineau whose theories of an ancient Aryan "master race" that created European civilization and of subsequent racial degeneration caused by miscegenation formed the basis of all of Cuza's thinking about race. Cuza's thesis about the Jews as the "plague" upon Romania were based upon Gobineau's theories, but Cuza elaborated by presenting Jews as a biologically different "race" were poisoning Romania by their sheer existence. Cuza created a distinctly new Antisemitism that merged traditional Eastern Orthodox anti-Semitism with modern pseudo-scientific Antisemitism to create a new type of Antisemitism that the Israeli historian Jean Ancel called "Christian racist" Antisemitism. Unlike the völkisch anti-Semitics in Germany-many, but not all of whom were indifferent, if not actively hostile to Christianity, Cuza made a point of stressing the basis of his ideology in the teachings of the Orthodox Church. At the same time, Cuza's insistence that the Jews were a biologically separate "race" meant that he rejected conversion to Orthodoxy as the solution to the "Jewish Question" as he argued that converted Jews were still racially Jews, and led him to advocate the total expulsion of all Jews from Romania as the only solution to the "Jewish Question". In a 1899 essay, Cuza wrote that the Jews were "instinctively" working for Romania's destruction, by which Cuza meant that evil was embedded within the genes of the Jews, and that because of these alleged genetic reasons the Jews would not stop trying to destroy Romania. A recurring theme of Cuza's writings was that the Jews had been collectively working to ruin Christian nations, especially Romania because of what Cuza believed to be a Jewish "genetic code".

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