One of the stanzas in Tom Lehrer’s “National Brotherhood Week” has the following lines:
Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Muslims,
And everybody hates the Jews.
Ah, too true. But periodically someone feels compelled to ask, Why is it that everyone hates the Jews? And many intriguing and ingenious explanations have been offered, some more attractive than others. I confess that I don’t have a new one, just a suggestion on dealing with causal explanations.
There seems to be a compulsion in this as in many other phenomena to look for a single cause, and this is often an unwarranted and premature methodological assumption. It really seems to be so in the case of anti-Semitism. Let’s just take the case of European anti-Semitism for starters. We will see that there are many, many converging causes, rather than just one.
There seems little doubt that one part of this hatred has both its origins and its historical support in the Christian churches, first in the Roman church and later in the Protestant churches (Luther, for example, was an enthusiastic and vigorous anti-Semite). Of course, there are a number of sub-explanations as to why the churches should have gone down this path, but that’s not on the agenda right now.
But Christianity has yielded to secularism in Europe to a surprising extent, and the Churches have backed away from rabid, frothing, fulminating public anti-Semitism. They have managed to replace that honest, explicit up-front in-your-face Jew-hatred with the far more acceptable stealth hatred of moral outrage in the face of Israeli self-defense. The churches tell us over and over again that they “have nothing against the Jews,” it’s the horrible Israeli Nazi-like “oppression” of the poor Palestinian victimized people that they simply cannot stand by and tolerate.
Oddly, they have had no trouble tolerating the extermination of six-million Jews. And they now have no trouble tolerating the human rights abuses in each and every Arab state. They have no trouble tolerating the human rights abuses of the Chinese or of the Indonesians or of the North Koreans, not to mention the Socialists of South America or of Cuba. But that aside, the notable fact is that anti-Semitism is alive and well in Western Europe, even as there are virtually no Jews living there any more at all. Hitler vowed to make Europe Judenrein and he succeeded to a large degree. What this means is that we really must look for more causes than the traditional Christian weekly dose of pulpit venom.
It’s not difficult to find additional causes, especially when the end effects harmonize with the historical Christian cultural inheritance.
First, the assimilated Jews in Poland and in Germany were the objects of envy by the gentile populations, and the reason is simply that by and large they tended to do better. Whatever the socio-economic reasons, where they were allowed to compete, they did better. Many of them entered the professions, many of them succeeded very well in business and finance. Another reason to hate.
Second, where they were an immigrant population, as they were in Austria, coming there from the shtetls of Russia and other points east, they posed the same sort of ghetto problems (absent violent crime) that poor immigrant populations do everywhere. Yet another reason to hate.
Third, the Europeans between the wars suffered the most devastating depression ever witnessed. Politicians took advantage of the already existing, Church supported anti-Semitism to find scapegoats as a distraction. We immediately think of Hitler in this regard, but the strategy was a time-honored one. The cynical Karl Lueger (der schone Karl – “beautiful Karl”), also an Austrian, famous mayor of Vienna at the turn of the century had already used it effectively. Still another reason to hate.
In the post-war more recent history, more reasons still emerge.
The Europeans hate the U.S.A.. There are a number of reasons, but primarily because they are protectorates of the U.S.. The U.S. has proven to be richer, stronger, and more productive on every meaningful measure. The U.S. was further the rescuer of Europe during both the world wars, and was responsible for the economic recoveries of both France and Germany after WW II. No good deed goes unpunished. Given that the Europeans, particularly the French, have such a fragile amour-propre, it should come as no surprise that it has sent an endless barrage of impotent invective towards the new world. The poor French have had nothing to brag about since Napoleon and even he disappointed in the end. In recent years, their only export has been the characteristically empty bloviated rubbish of “post-modernism,” most of which originated with the Czech writer, Friedrich Nietzsche (the Germans claim him, but he himself insisted that he was not German, but descended from Czech aristocracy). Sure, I know, they also have cheese and wine.
And if the Euros hate the U.S., they feel compelled to hate Israel, since the U.S. is Israel’s only supporter. Of course, this is not a difficult job for the Euros, since they already hate Jews – all they have to do now is cloak their anti-Semitism under a veneer of outraged moral sensibility. Hardly a reach for a population trained in sanctimony by a church in which it no longer believes.
If one adds to this the megalomanic machinations of Chirac, close friend and under-the-counter beneficiary of Saddam Hussein, one sees the Euros waging a proxy war against the U.S. by undermining their ally, Israel, in the middle east, while at the same time currying favor with their energy suppliers, the oil rich Arab potentates of the middle east.
Europe has had a kind of festering love-affair with the Arab middle east since the mid nineteenth century, when they thought of them as “Orientals.” The Arab middle east was one of their favorite holiday tourism destinations and “Orientalism” was an extremely popular style in art (my own favorite painter of the genre is Jean-Leon Gerome) and decoration. In particular, they found a “romance” in the “primitivism” of their middle-eastern neighbors. This sensibility is clearly evident in the writings of T.E. Lawrence, “Lawrence of Arabia,” but it can even be found in the U.S. in the 20th C ex-patriate writer Paul Bowles.
But if one adds to this erotic fascination the fact of Arab oil; and if one keeps in mind the endemic Christian anti-Semitism, the Arab hatred of the Jews is just one more excellent reason for contemporary European to (once again) hate the Jews.
Are there more reasons? Of course, there are.
As Europe’s faith in a Christian God became increasingly pro-forma, the appetite for religion found its sustenance in socialism. Socialism is intrinsically both atheistic (in the supernatural sense) and international. Israel, on the other hand, was ab initio a religious state and intensely nationalistic. Two more reasons why the Euros hate the Jews.
The fact that Israel’s founders were by and large themselves socialists and the fact that they actually attempted to create a democratic socialist state would suggest that the Euros should think of them as poster-children for socialism. Not so.
While many Jews were involved in the initial stages of 20th C European socialism, they soon found out that their co-conspirators would soon be only too happy to collude in their murders. Russia, while not Europe, captures the socialist-communist attitude towards Jews: few were more rabid Jew-murderers than Stalin. And, after all, Hitler was a socialist, albeit a national one, and look how friendly he was to the Jews.
And, finally, while Israel began as socialist experiment, it has found, as has every other socialist trial, that socialism simply does not work. The kibbutzes are increasingly disappearing or being converted into for-profit cooperatives. Rather than being the poster-child for socialism, Israel is a poster-child for the failure of socialism.
In brief, there are many, many reasons why the Euros hate the Jews. And to this we could probably add more, for why, say, the British hate the Jews, why South Americans hate the Jews, and so forth. Interestingly, there seems to be very little Asian anti-semitism.
An anti-Semite would say: that’s because they don’t know them yet!
Simplicius,
ReplyDeleteI think this account is both nuanced and accurate. If I could add something - you touched on this, but I wonder if modern European anti-Semitism is something very closely related to traditional Christian anti-Semitism, in that Europeans don't hate Jews for what they ARE, but rather for what they DO. What they used to do wrong was worship a different religion. What they do wrong today is maintain their cultural and nationalistic ties (personified in Israel) and continue to make money.
I think most on the Left would sincerely not consider themselves anti-Semitic. They would see themselves as even being champions of Jews, just the right KIND of Jew - the atheist secular Jews from Marx to Alinsky to Naomi Klein who contribute to the socialist internationalist movement. In other words, the Jews who renounce all elements of Judaism and culture. The reason I think many of them are hostile to Israel is because they are embarrassed that their fellow westerners or "whites" are asserting their culture. They don't see Israel as foreign, they see it as a creature of Britain and America, Anglo in every way, developed in every way. They thus compare Israel to the Nazis, because what they see are white nationalists. After all, since religion is all fiction anyway, and Jews appear white, what they should be doing is rolling over like the rest of the Western world; but they're NOT.
This of course does not explain all of European anti-Semitism. Many hate Jews simply because of their own personal insecurities or pathologies and Jews serve as a good scapegoat. This is course coupled with Jews' and Israel's general economic success, which leads to jealousy. But I do think a big part of anti-Israelism is actually an expression of Western SELF-hatred. And let's face it, nothing undermines the idea of the equality of all cultures than a small country consistent kicking the crap out of its much larger adversaries. It's a huge stain on the movement as such.
As far as the Asians go, what's interesting is that they tend to hold the same racial views about Jews as did the Nazis, but simply draw different conclusions. Jews have all the money, they control the world, therefore...we want to be like them! I think a new book came out a few years ago in China called "The Secret of Jewish Wealth". It's not much different from the Protocols as I understand it, but it's being used as a guide.
A.G.
A.G., very interesting thoughts. I think your take on the American Jewish socialists may be correct. If it is, then the conflict between someone like Chomsky and the Zionists is ironically not unlike the conflict between Red agitators and Brownshirts during 1930s Weimar, an internal brawl between internationalist and nationalist socialists.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, Israel has left the socialism of its founding fathers behind, so it is now a nationalist free enterprise entity. This is perhaps as offensive to a Chomsky as a socialist Israel, but it at least avoids comparing Israel to Nazi Germany as the anti-Semites are wont to do.
Well you have to remember that most people on the Left don't see the Nazis as "socialists who got it wrong", they see Nazism, wrongly, as their complete opposite, conveniently ignoring that they were SOCIALIST. I spoke to a scholar of fascism recently, a man of the left, who sincerely believes that the Nazis and Fascists were pro-business, by virtue of the fact that they were corporatist to some degree. This of course ignores the fact that all corporatist advances in the US have been made mostly by Democratic administrations. Corporatism is nothing more than market socialism - government using business as its instrument to socially engineer.
ReplyDeleteWhat's interesting about the early Labour Zionists was that they were nationalist, but were heavily influenced by particularly Marxist socialism - many saw Israel as a provisional stage - eventually a world socialist society would be established. But as you have said, at least they knew how to fight. The Left used to consider Israel its darling, but abandoned the Jewish state right around the time that the kibbutzim began losing influence and capitalism began to reign.
Notwithstanding that Israel is objectively far less brutal in its methods now than it was during the 50's (though it was never nearly as bad as the Arab states), its embrace of capitalism has allowed the Left to brand it as a "Nazi" state, just as Bush is branded a Nazi. This course requires "denying the obvious", as you say; the obvious being that any "national socialist" elements of Israel are long gone - it is only since they have left that the Left has begun hating it so much.
True believers hate no one more than the apostate, far more than an ordinary unbeliever. This seems to apply to the secular true believer as much as to the religious one.
ReplyDeleteI would offer another reason:
ReplyDeleteAnti-Semitism is crucial to Jewish identity and is even more important as the founding principal upon which the Jewish state was built. It is very much in the interest of the latter to keep anti-Semitism alive and flourishing. Thus the cause of my own anti-Semitism, as defined by my support for the BDS movement. Israel has found it highly expedient to label opposition to its apartheid policies as anti-Semitic. When I stood against South African apartheid I was not an anti-Semite (perhaps I was anti-Boer, but the Boer's were never smart enough to coin such a term). I became a newly minted anti-Semite as soon as I applied the same principals to a nation whose current prime minister says that it is a nation for the Jewish people only.
"The principle is simple enough. When the target population is one of the Left’s preferred victim groups, then all hostility towards that group is psychologized into being a sublimated secret fear and the phobia word is used" - The Immigrant
The Israeli Behemoth's preferred victim group is itself. But rather than allow people like myself to be characterized as anti-Zionists (closer to the truth but still not accurate) it is far more effective, given the stigma attached to the term, to expand the definition of the existing word for Jew-haters. Thus the future of anti-Semitism is bright indeed.
A note of warning: This semantic sleight of hand is not cost free. It devalues a word that has traditionally been used for real Jew haters. I'd suggest Jews everywhere would be well advised to resist this trend. If some day the word loses its value altogether how will we identify real anti-Semites?