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What The Reactionary Anti-Semitism Gets Right
Growing up, my South African father used to remind us American kids that “There are only two types of people in the world: Jews and anti-semites.” This used to upset us terribly. It’s patently false, we would think. Our experience shows our society to be tolerant and kind. Where in the United States is friendlier and more welcoming than suburban Atlanta? Of course, the specter of Leo Frank’s lynching always hung like a shadow in the backs of our minds. But that was a long time ago. Surely, that old hatred is dead.
But it’s starting to look like dad was right after all. From Islamists, to progressive Europe, to the dregs of the Alt-Right on Twitter, we Jews are surrounded by a resurgent tide of anti-Semitism.Which leads to the question my progressive neighbor likes to constantly ask: “Why do they hate us?”
When it comes to explaining Jew hatred, the safest course of action is probably to declare it an uncaused historical constant. After all, what can be the reason for a hatred that has spanned millenia, civilizations, classes, religions, and practically every other boundary that divides man from man?
This is not to say, of course, that all men or even all societies hate Jews. Rather, anti-semitism remains latent until there arrives an excuse to hate someone. It could be that your country is impoverished after a disastrous treaty at Versailles, or that you are terrified of counterrevolutionary activity, or that jihad must be waged somewhere.
But what, one wonders, is the underlying structure of the emergent American anti-Semitism that Claire Berlinski wrote about on Friday? Every politically-involved Jew has noticed it by now: the absolute, almost flippant hatred of Jews that so pervades Twitter users with certain red caps in their profile pictures. We have watched Milo Yiannopoulos explain away their behavior as kids trolling. We have read the invitation for Ben Shapiro’s newborn son to join his entire family in the gas chambers. Why?
However, this new anti-Semitism among Republican voters is not as sudden or mysterious as it appears to be. It can be easily understood if we take into account the political climate, the nature of the “Trump Revolution,” and the prevailing conception of tolerance that has supposedly been the Western bulwark against anti-semitism since WWII.
Here’s the first hint: In between the holocaust memes and the talk of shekels on Twitter, there is usually an accusation that runs along the lines of “putting Israel/Zionism before the United States.” Now, accusations of Jews having split allegiances are as old as Jews are; they are even in the Bible. But these claims tie into a central principle of the Trump campaign that has so vivified all these anti-semites: The idea that until now, under the progressive regime, America has always been a secondary concern of our ruling class. For the Left, leftism always comes first, and the country comes second. Trump, however, promises to Make America Great Again.
It happens to be that this claim is true.
Leftism is a universalist philosophy. In pursuit of government-mandated utopia, the needs of any individual nation come second. The Left thinks that the natural state of the human being is one of harmony with others, and that only our societal and cultural failings stand in the way of peace and love between all men. The country is essentially a construct (like gender) that stands between all of us uniting in harmony. This is why President Obama constantly apologizes to the entire world; after all, shouldn’t our shared humanity transcend tribal needs?
All it takes is one savvy businessman to realize just how grating, unnatural, and suicidal universalism is. And then there is the reaction: 2016.
So,this is the first piece of the reactionary anti-semitic puzzle. Trump’s followers are nationalists who want to put to bed the universalist notion of being a human being first — and an American, or a man, or a family member — second. At a deep level, they feel that the differences that divide us are real and can be ignored only at our own peril. But what does all of this have to do with anti-semitism?
The second piece of the puzzle has to do with the way Jews have dealt with the Holocaust. As Daniel Greenfield writes, there were two Jewish responses to the modern Jewish calamity: “Never Again,” and “Teach Tolerance.” The former was nationalist, the latter, universalist. Some Jews after the Holocaust said, “We are not the same as everyone else, and our experience has shown us we cannot trust the world to accept us. We will form our own country, where there will never be a Holocaust.” Other Jews said, “We are human beings like all others, and the only way to prevent another Holocaust is to educate people to be tolerant of other human beings.”
The first group said that the crime of Hitler was Jew hatred and Jew genocide; the second group said that Hitler’s main crime was being a nationalist, of putting German identity before his humanity. While the “never again” group sought peace through strength, the “teach tolerance” crowd asserted that strength and tribalism only further perpetuated the false notion of divisions between people.
Among American Jews, “teach tolerance” prevailed. The Jews became, after the war and long before the civil rights movement, the very first modern beneficiaries of leftist tolerance. We made sure the Holocaust got put in all the school books and that anti-semitism slowly became verboten in American life, not because Jews were different than everyone else and respected, but because we were the same as everyone else. Support of Israel was possible only through cognitive dissonance, viewing the country as a sort of humanitarian project that embodied all the “good” parts of the United States and acted as a de facto extension of US leftism in the middle east.
Not long afterward, African Americans joined us in the fight to make sure everyone else declared us the same as everyone else. Soon after came homosexuals, illegal immigrants, the mentally handicapped, transexuals, etc. You know how this story goes.
Throughout this process, there have always been nationalist or tribal voices. Malcolm X is an obvious one. Rabbi Meir Kahane is another. These men endeavored to bring the American public around to the idea that, in fact, Jews are not African Americans, Whites are not Jews, and that there is more to being a Zionist than believing in democracy. They thought that our tribal and national identities are undeniable fact and must be dealt with as such. But since that upset the fundamental principle of leftism, that we are all human beings first, they were always viewed as radicals by the majority of Americans.
Until, perhaps, now.
On both the Left (Black Lives Matter) and the Right (the “white genocide” crowd) we have seen a sudden uptick in nationalistic, tribal rhetoric. It is almost as if a large swath of America woke up one morning and realized that love is not, in fact, all you need. To whit: many African Americans have been the beneficiaries of leftist “tolerance” for decades, and their culture has been left in ruin and their people impoverished. They decided, quite logically, that their own interests should come before the universal leftist interests. Almost simultaneously, some number of white people realized that, for decades, they have been told they are the oppressor and made to scrape and bow in the name of the same universalist goal (only through reparations will the societal rift be mended), and if the nominal beneficiaries of those efforts reject its benefits, why should they continue to pay in? They, too, begin to play the game of racial tribalism. The actual liberal (if any remain) is aghast at such roadblocks to universalist utopia, but everyone else is so busy suddenly rediscovering their own identity that they haven’t noticed.
Thus, we see the two pieces of the reactionary anti-semitism joined. The Trump movement — or, at least parts of it — has inspired others to abandon universalism in the name of nationalism (so they suddenly see the United States and Israel as separate entities), while there is already a cultural shift away from tolerance to tribalism (so Jews are suddenly unmasked as not being true Germans Americans).
The anti-semites on Twitter are equal-opportunity tribalists. They ask, “Why is the special dispensation for Jews any different than the politically correct forced tolerance of other minorities that have been forced down our throats for years?”
And the answer is, it’s not.
You see, the conservative answer to this anti-semitism should be to encourage it. You’re right, Twitter anti-semites. You have been educated in a false paradigm. People are not, in fact, all the same. The United States should come first. Your cultural identity should be your primary concern, before the financial or emotional needs of other groups’ members. But this does not need to result in racism or anti-semitism. You see, back before the liberal regime and the inception of the universalist lie, there were actually groups of people who were different from one another, yet lived side-by-side in peace. Once upon a time, humanity was focused not on the ridiculous utopian ideal of homogeneity, but the idea of true tolerance, of being able to respect someone different than you without feeling the need to destroy them.
You, Twitter anti-semite, don’t know any of that. You think that with the fall of liberal universalist tolerance, all must revert back to hatred and violence and vying for power. Decades of liberal thought have taught you that it is either universalism or chaos.
It is time to break the spell. It is time to learn how to be both American and human, that you and I can live in one nation, under God, in peace and prosperity.
Published in Culture, Politics
We have all read what you wrote, and it is anti-Semitic bilge. You make these sweeping generalizations about Jews, and when you are called on it you say “I’m not talking about all Jews, just about liberals. And most of them Jews is liberals.” I’m surprised that you didn’t get into “Some of my best friends…,” but you wouldn’t have any Jewish friends, would you?
I want you to know how utterly transparent it is that your justifications and your denials are flat out lies. Almost everyone on this site has some bad stuff to say about liberals, and everyone but you manages to do it without degrading Jews, or any other racial or ethnic group for that matter. Everyone but you! Your denials are not persuasive to anyone here. Please take your anti-Semitic bilge to your favorite “alt-Right” site or your local Klan meeting. I believe I speak for almost everyone who participates on Ricochet when I say that it is not welcome here.
When I was a preteen a bunch of us guys would take to the woods near my house and shoot our BB guns. Birds were off limits but not squirrels and rabbits .We seldom hit any and never killed any. One day a guy saw a cat and started shooting at it. I had dogs and cats and this was not going to go on. His name was Chuck. After telling him I would beat the tar out of him if I ever saw him shoot at a cat again, I tried to figure out why he would shoot at a cat. He said “I hate cats”. I asked him why. He had no real answer other than he never had one and his dad said cats are sneaky. It was like a reflexive reaction. He wasn’t a bad kid and I took him to my house and introduced him to our cats and he was fine. I often wonder if this isn’t true with all prejudices. Someone is different and we don’t know them and have heard some myth about them so we reflexively mistrust and hate them. In case you are wondering about Chuck, he became a plumber like his Dad, married and had five kids and died at the age of 33 of throat cancer. He has been dead almost 40 years. His memory lives on because he taught me a human nature lesson.
I dunno. Long ago I knew someone who blamed most of the world’s ills on Jews and Communists. Any Jew he had actually met was just fine (not sure whether he ever met any out-and-out commies) but that didn’t change this line of speaking. I understand there have been other people like this.
Very nicely done and I agree. Once can be respectful of others without being anti- or pro- while sharing citizenship and patriotism. Where cultural and religious identities clash with leftist ideas, the left uses the power of the state to force adherence to their dogma. However, the left encourages the separation of citizens into cultural, original or racial groups so long as those groups adhere to the overall progressive cause. For this support, they are rewarded. What the left fails to see is the fact that you cannot have it both ways. We can’t all be equal, tolerant and progressing toward state sponsored nirvana while at the same time exploiting every aspect of socioeconomic difference to encourage grievance, division, social justice and retribution. We are, in fact different. And these differences cannot be addressed or repressed by the state. Some of these differences are innate, some are cultural and some are both.
The good news is however, tolerance and respect are not impossible even though we are all different. When the left is wholly driven by social justice there is a flip side. For within the progressive temperament is a vindictive side, for social warriors need to more than just folks to fight for; theirs is a crusade and they need hordes to slay, treasure to garner and lessons to teach.
The American experiment taught the world an important lesson, to wit: success, that is happiness and liberty, are not zero sum commodities. There is not a finite amount of wealth and success in the world, to be divided up among the classes. With liberty, that is rule of law and rights of property, happiness and success can be claimed without limit.
The Left, it appears, were sleeping when those lessons were taught. For them, wealth and liberty are the property of government, borrowed or created, with finite limits, and divided up unfairly among the ruling class by a corrupt free market-government cabal. The war is with the presumed members of that cabal; that is those who succeed, who reap the rewards of commerce. And many prominent Jews headline that list. This is always where antisemitism begins. It’s as old as history.
The reflexive antisemitism among those on the right also reflects some of that age old prejudice. However it also reflects the Jewish counterintuitive embrace of the left. Jews seek haven from the predations of progressive social justice warriors in a kind of mass form of Stockholm Syndrome; a kind of “how can they hate me if I’m one of them” approach to survival. Trump’s anti-Semite followers see this alliance and react accordingly. For them, Jews are a part of the progressive cause and movement.
In fact, if Jews want to see how well this leftward alliance works, they only need to look to Western Europe. Embrace of the Left is no inoculation from prejudice or protection from age-old antisemitism. In fact, it feeds on antisemitism.
Just a bit of history when Jews were happy and respected under the rule of Queen Salome Alexandra, for the 9 years of her reign.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112049/jewish/Queen-Salome-Alexandra.htm
Everything that is not forbidden is mandatory.
Really? From which planet are you sourced?
Are you also not a member of any gender construct?
Respectfully, please reexamine your thinking on this matter.
I cannot like this comment enough times.
What a dispiriting conversation! What a depressing subject. What an appalling contribution from the guy in the beret.
For reasons of background and geography I feel I can speak here with some authority, or at least insight.
I have met plenty of people who hate Jews. Like the (Irish-like me) guy who said to me once that his only problem with Hitler was that he didn’t finish the job! In fact there were two very popular hashtags on Twitter not so long ago, one praising Hitler and one defending him, with specific reference to the Holocaust.
Then there is the appalling situation of European Jews being under physical threat to their safety, spilling over into murder and even mass murder in France and Belgium( eg the ” random shooting of a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris”). Desecration of Jewish graves is commonplace. Jewish schools need very high levels of security. The physical threat seems to come mainly from Muslims but there is an undercurrent of dislike of Jews which pervades almost everywhere in Europe, a great deal of it in my own Catholic religion. Across the board, legitimate criticism of Israel easily morphs into crude anti-Semitism where conspiracy theories and scapegoating abound. Significantly, hatred of Jews is one area upon which the left and the far-right are able to make common ground. It is the only “respectable” form of racism.
I agree that America is exceptional in the safe home it provides to Jews.
I have not understood quite a bit of this thread including what Molto Vivace was trying to say. He seemed to say he disliked people who met a stereotype of liberal Jews. I’m not sure why he said that, but then I did not even get the point of the original post. He also kept saying he does not dislike Jews per se.
Then everybody seemed to make a huge leap as if they understood MV was really just drumming up Jew hatred. Maybe they saw and understood something I did not. Or maybe they leapt to conclusions and wanted to do some unwarranted moral preening. It looked more like that to me, and that is a rather ugly and dishonest tactic. Seen it before.
A lot of anti-Semitism has been churned up by this campaign. There is a lot of ugly stuff up to and including death threats being leveled at Jews who oppose Trump. One thing that doesn’t help in this environment is referring to people that one doesn’t agree with politically as Jewish “soulless liberal hacks.” What does the Jewish part of that description have to do with anything?
I have not seen or heard about this anti-Semitism churned up by this campaign, I guess you mean Trump’s. Maybe I missed it. I hear lots about how racist Trump is, which I suspect is a load of manure, the only evidence being his not denouncing David Duke who supposedly is a nasty racist, I don’t know much about him.
I doubt that MV favors threatening harm to Jews who oppose Trump, so you should not hang that on him (or Trump, for that matter) without some basis. Maybe MV brought up Jews specifically because they were the subject of the thread.
No, I don’t mean Trump’s. I mean the widely reported threats and insults received by pretty much every Jewish commentator who opposed Trump through the primary campaign: Mona Charen, Jonah Goldberg, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, to name a few, all great people. If you haven’t heard about it you might be interested to find out more. It’s eye-opening. I guarantee it will lower your estimation of your fellow man a few pegs.
He most definitely is a nasty racist.
That’s correct, but he didn’t have to characterize Jews as somehow more blameworthy for the sins of liberals than are other liberals. His tone was extremely negative. “Not all Jews are soulless liberal hacks, but too many are.” I quote from memory. This he followed with a list of Jews who “contribute nothing.”
When civilization crumbles, I think I will blame twitter, a medium that some people seem to use as a replacement for urinating on one’s enemies. I guess twitter is better than physical violence and dueling, but that’s not saying much.
It’s no secret that twitter is Donald Trump’s favorite way to communicate and that most journalists are essentially required to have a twitter account, allowing the hated American media to become easy targets for constant insults. Perhaps a lot of those antisemitic attacks are from fake twitter accounts, but not all of them can be.
Every day it seems we are in a race to see what group gets to be the biggest victim.
Not participating.
My world and my interactions with others are largely based on respect. I have a great deal of respect for Jews and much of Jewish culture…but not this version of it.
No, Mr. Kilov…the world doesn’t consist solely of Jews and anti-semites. And Claire Berlinski is a pain in the neck.
The fact that Jews see themselves as another victim group is basically the exact point against which I’m railing, and your reaction to it is basically my explanation for the current surge in anti-Semitism. Thank you for providing a perfect example.
This is correct, but not really relevant to my post, I think. I am grouping tribalism and nationalism, the idea that we actually do have real identities outside our humanity, as a fact that needs to be recognized. In this case, I’m advocating that Jews have Jewish nationalism/tribalism, rather than trying (only) to be the best Germans/Americans/whatever they can be. That the Germans (in whose image German Jewry was largely trying to remake itself) at the time happened to be full of their own nationalist fervor is incidental.
Yes, but the dominant liberal culture has for many years been denigrating the old melting pot idea in favor of multi-culturalism. How do you reconcile that with your thesis?
Well, we need to un-denigrate it. :) It may be worth examining what precisely was always meant by the melting pot. I am actually saying that to expect or demand 100% melting (that is, the discarding of all previous identity in favor of a new American identity) is wrong. Let the Mexican American keep his culture, heritage and views, for example, as long as he can add something to our country and respect its founding principles. Ditto Chinese Americans, Jewish Americans, etc., if they choose. To this effect, maybe we can call America a cholent.
I gather that “melting pot” has not always meant the same thing. But the term became more widely used just before WWI, when there was an intense drive for complete cultural conformity, and hostility to any remaining cultural identities brought from Europe or Asia.
I agree with what you want it to mean, but I’ve encountered more hostility to the cholent model here on Ricochet than anywhere else I’ve been on the Internet over the past 25 years.
My Internet was down, but I read your interesting article and comments on my phone and wanted to share a couple thoughts:
Susan Quinn commented that the US has been the best non-Jewish country for Jews and I think that is true because it is the best country for any faith because we have freedom. Other countries are free, but until the last few years where we have seen erosion to Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion, it is still the safest place for all.
Some commented that he never understood why there has been such a long hatred towards Jews. I’m not Jewish, but I have observed something. We bought a business years ago from a Jewish couple that my husband worked for. The husband died, the wife sold it to us. The first time I looked through her Rolodex, it was almost all Jewish – contractors to doctors, florists, landlord, etc. I found it odd, but forgot about it. As I learned more about Jewish history, it made sense. Jews have been n a state of self-preservation for a long time. With no state, their identity after so much persecution, has been by supporting each other. Their survival depended on success (in whatever endeavor they chose) – many other cultures cannot relate.
I think that is why many are secular – to feel more accepted in a hostile world – am I wrong about that? I think they also fear extremism (in any form) leads to Nazism etc.
Lastly, I wanted to address Molto’s comment that other cultures have nothing to do with him, they are less than dirt under his feet, because at least dirt serves a purpose. You have a lot to learn. If you go through life thinking that all you need to be concerned about is what affects you personally, you will have a difficult life. Respect is a two way street – never one way. Even if you encounter a one-way attitude, rise above it.
I hope you have an opportunity to go back as far as humanly possible into your ancestry – there are many tools out there to do it – If you have ever seen the genealogy show on TV with celebrities, many find out they have Jewish ancestry, African, Asian, and Hispanic, when none was present that they knew of. Maybe that is because these cultures are so old. I expect you’ll find all kinds of dirt that formed you. We’re all a mixed bag.
Thanks Fred https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=melting+pot&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmelting%20pot%3B%2Cc0
One more thing – I think Aaron Miller mentioned that he thought the increase of attacks on Jews was also supernatural – I remember hearing a priest on a talk show about 10 years ago say something like “the devil isn’t worried about the guy who sits in a bar every night and is cheating on his wife – his goal is to take out Jews, take out Christians, take out clergy”. That’s a statement that kind of sticks in your mind – so what groups under the guise of political correctness are encountering the most wrath these days? You have to wonder…
Generally-speaking, I believe that’s the cohort the Left is thinking about when it uses the word “redneck”.
To be fair, Mr. Kilov didn’t make that argument. Mr. Kilov’s father made that argument.
Interesting. Thank you.
Mr. Kilov is my father :)
Yeah, like, literally.