Was Karl Marx Jewish? A thread
tl;dr at the end

I often see people claiming that Karl Marx was Jewish and it seems to be a very popular idea people have just accepted as fact. I believe it is actually harmful to support that idea for reasons I will explain in this thread.

First thing first, no. Marx was not Jewish. He had Jewish ancestry yes but his mother wasn't raised Jewish and his father converted to christianity before he was born. Now, there's nothing wrong with trying to reconnect with your judaism after finding out your ancestry but Marx

has not made any efforts to do so. He was in every way a culturally Christian Atheist and actually had his own problems with antisemitism which I will not get to in this thread.

There are many reasons as to why I think saying Marx was Jewish is harmful. First and this is very relevant to the last few days, It is often used to shield leftists and Marx himself from antisemitsm accusations. Now not only that being Jewish does not exempt people from

promoting antisemitism, Marx was not Jewish at all.

The second reason I find that claiming Marx was Jewish is harmful is because it plays into the Judeo-Bolshevism conspiracy theory, I don't think there's much explaining needed to be done here.

The third and final reason I will explain in this thread is that claiming marx was jewish only because he has jewish ancestry, is based on the same idea that leads people to believe that jews control the media or the banks. Which is that anyone with even slight jewish ancestry

is considered Jewish while in reality a lot of these people have little to do with Judaism or Jewish people.

tl;dr: Marx was not Jewish and saying that he was promotes dangerous ideas. Stop.