With this book, Porter offers readers a new explanation for the emergence of xenophobic, authoritarian nationalism in Europe. Focusing on 19th-century Poland, he traces the transformation of revolutionary patriotism into a violent anti-Semitic ideology. Instead of deterministically attributing this charge to the "forces of modernization," Porter argues that the language of hatred and discipline was central to the way "modernity" itself was perceived — or perhaps "imagined" — by fin-de-siecle intellectuals.