"One
must come to terms with the past. One cannot wholly
escape it. One may reject it, but
the very mode of rejection is
often conditioned by the past itself.
A man is, first, the son of
his father. In almost all tribal societies,
the patronymic is part
of one's name. And the sins of the fathers -- in
the
psychological, if not the legal sense --
are apt to be burdens
on the sons as well."
--
Jacob Neusner, 1972, p. 64
We must inevitably conclude a circle in
these many pages, back where we began: a
reassertion of the ethical legitimacy of investigating collective (“peoplehood”)
responsibility for collective deeds, so clearly, and ominously, epitomized
in the example of the Germans and the growth from them of Aryan fascism.
Primo Levi, a well-known Jewish survivor
of Auschwitz, flying in the face of “political correct” platitudes, confronts
directly the obvious value and logic of critical generalizations:
“It is dangerous, wrong, to speak about
the “Germans,” or any other
people, as of a single undifferentiated
entity, and include all individuals
in one judgment. And yet I don’t think
I would deny that there exists
a spirit of each people (otherwise it would
not be a people) a
Deutschtum, an italianitia, an hispanidad:
they are the sums of
traditions, customs, history, language,
and culture. Whoever does
not feel within himself this spirit, which
is national in the best sense
of the word, not only does not entirely
belong to his own people
but is not part of human civilization.
Therefore, while I consider
insensate the syllogism, ‘All Italians
are passionate; you are Italian;
therefore you are passionate,” I do however
believe it legitimate,
within certain limits, to expect from Italians
taken as a whole, or
from Germans, etc., one specific, collective
behavior rather than
another. There will certainly be individual
exceptions, but a
prudent, probabilistic forecast is in my
opinion possible.” [LEVI, P.,
1988, p.183-184]
What, we may fairly wonder, from the evidence
found in this volume, is the “probabilistic spirit” of the Jewish people?
Levi’s unemotional, reasoned assertion opens the door to an avalanche of troubling
issues about them.
The positive side of the Jewish “contribution
to civilization” (“Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine,” etc.) is not in
this volume. That perspective is represented in its one-sided form everywhere
elsewhere, always: an impenetrable
monolith of saintly Jewish self-celebration in today’s popular culture. This
volume, however, is more akin to a long complaint, an underscoring of Jewish
historical responsibility.
This book insists that, while Jews take
credit for so much good in modern civilization, they must also take their
fair share of blame where it is also reasonably merited. Why is this necessary? Because modern Jewry is not an oppressed
minority. It is, by all measures, a center of economic and social power, and
political control. Virtually all corners of society are effected by Jewish
influence. Yet modern Jewish identity continuously screams its alleged disadvantages,
configuring as a relentlessly Accusing
Finger, constantly demanding -- demanding attention, demanding concession
-- all rooted in the foundation of
the Jewish martyrology tradition. To this day the Jewish community still defames
Arabs, Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, and others, including all
Gentiles as a categorically “guilty” Other for historical crimes against Jewry.
Modern Jewish identity has become a collective aggression, a collective demand,
a collective accusation, a collective
insistence upon continued, never-ending reparation and further power. As the
old saying goes, there are two sides to every story -- but the non-Jewish
side of history (in its interaction with Jews) is afforded absolutely no forum
anywhere in popular culture.
The best defense is an offense, as the Jewish
community today knows well; they are so very skillful at it. This volume asserts
a counter-view to Jewish mythology and aims to balance the scales. The common
notion that anti-Semitism is a “mystifying disease,” or that “prejudice” and
“discrimination” is always and completely irrational, is preposterous. All
people make prejudicial and discriminatory decisions about everything continuously,
based upon their life experience, as part of the process called life. What
human being is not “discriminatory?” We are all human. But why are Jews afforded
so much "prejudicial" slack in their apparent "right"
to defame all others around them with impunity? In the long term, endlessly
one-sided “victim” assaults upon alleged oppressors are not healthy solutions
to interethnic tensions. True resolvement, true health, is a dialogue,
an exchange, and exploration of mutual prejudices (and
the reasons for them), and a willingness to be drawn to sympathy for
the others’ side -- not merely consistent concession to one group’s accusation
and demand.
If today’s Jewry did not constantly wield
-- and exploit -- a distorted history
as evidence of (and claim to) moral supremacy, if Jewry did not function as
an unified entity towards collective self-aggrandizement at the expense of
all others, and if Jews melted as truly equal neighbors into American
(or wherever they lived) society, and
if Israel was merely another country and not an international Jewish nerve
center, there would be no reason to write this volume. Unfortunately, this
book is much, and crucially, merited.
One cannot fairly discuss Gentile racism
without addressing the very powerful Jewish version of the same thing. One
cannot righteously discuss any notion of “anti-Semitism” without equal attention
to Jewish “anti-Gentilism.” One cannot
fully address Jewish identity without
examining its traditional religio-racist tenets. One cannot understand the
worldwide centuries-old animosity towards Jews without understanding the enduring
Jewish animosity towards all others. One cannot understand the Holocaust without
understanding the genocidal basis of Israelite land claims in the Old Testament.
One cannot understand how the Holocaust fits into modern Jewish identity without
an examination of the virtual Jewish need
(rooted in old religious tenets: “punishment by God”) to be victims. One cannot
understand the nature of American consumer society without understanding the
enormous Jewish contribution to its formation and maintenance. (Conversely,
one cannot fully understand the nature of communism without addressing its
Jewish impact in deconstructing Christian social order). One cannot fully
understand the workings of the modern mass media without addressing its Jewish
component. One cannot understand Jewry’s claim to be champions of social justice
without noting its significant obverse:
traditional Jewish “double standard” ethics and the profoundly disproportionate,
and elite, Jewish representation in white collar fraud, international drug
networks, the prostitution trade, the slumlord ethic, and so forth, as well
as Jewry’s rank as the wealthiest ethnic community in America. One cannot
dismiss the many "stereotypes" about Jews and money, without investigating
the evidence that prove cores of truth to these assertions. (How, one wonders,
does a collective commitment to social justice in capitalist society make
a group of people -- so incongruously -- the most affluent?) One cannot understand the
awesome American governmental charity to Israel without understanding the
Jewish role in American government and popular culture. One cannot understand
“democratic” Israel without understanding its profoundly undemocratic fabric
and the ancient “nation apart” principles upon which it has been created.
And one cannot understand today’s notions of American democracy without understanding
“particularist” Zionism’s increasing subversion of it via the dominance of
Jewish political money.
There are plenty of people of Jewish descent
who do not support Israel, who are not wealthy slumlords, who are not racist,
and who exhibit in all spheres the solidest of moral character. But where
are they when the Collective Jewish Body speaks, acts, and oppresses in their
name? If the Jewish community dictates a “community of fate” by bloodline,
surely all those of even partial Jewish heritage have a stake in raising critical
voices against the steamroller that claims them.
In the non-Jewish world, there are those
who have no interest in being led by Jewish messianism, whether religious
or secular. There are those who do not believe that Jewry and disputable “Jewish
values” represent the navel of the world. There are those who are tired of
endless Jewish complaint and demand. And our proposed multicultural society
must ultimately fail if it is so incredibly Jewish-centered and, emulating
the Zionist model, so heatedly Balkanized. A just, and real, multicultural
democracy in the social, political, and economic worlds would represent ethnic
communities in a rough approximation of their population numbers. Let all
peoples have a voice, per the original concepts of the Constitution. That's
fair, at least as fair as humans can aspire. But we do not have that. In far
too many realms, we have Jewish dominance.
Does speaking the truth about Jewish identity,
power and history lead to Jews being led to concentration camps and ovens?
(As so many Jews preposterously proclaim, as a veritable religious conviction
today). Nonsense. World wars (where murder is the norm) lead to people
thrown in ovens. Fanatical ethnocentrism leads to people thrown in ovens.
The suppression of free speech leads to ovens. Military states and institutionalized
racism leads to people locked up in concentration camps. Censorship, intolerance,
and allegiances to sacred racial pedigrees lead to mass murder. How is it
that the mere mention of the unpleasant facts of Jewish history is dictated
to be tantamount to genocide against the Jewish people? True, there was an
Adolf Hitler: his existence is used as a Jewish shield against any criticism. True, Hitler condemned the Jews and sought to exterminate
them (as he did others) as part of a master plan to rule the world. But it
is absurd, even manipulatively sinister, to dismiss the context of the broader
scope of World War, and the struggles and sufferings of all other people,
and equate criticism of Jews with mass murder. For good reason, as we have
amply seen, criticism of Jews throughout history knows the full political
spectrum. Even Hitler’s hated ideological enemy and polar opposite, Karl Marx,
criticized Jews. Even in the works of Theodore Herzl, the secular Zionist
“King of the Jews,” one can find echoes of the same themes. Not mass murder.
But legitimate criticism.
The Jewish community maintains a "head
in the sand" approach to Jewish history and identity, systematically
censoring all the many Jewish-inspired unpleasantries of the past, singularly
gleaning from all of human history only the "Jew as victim" scenario.
Those who dare to break the institutionalized muzzles today to address
Jewish bigotry, past and present, are themselves defamed as bigots. Always
and everywhere, the Jewish community is held to be beyond criticism.
Today "anti-Semitism" is repeatedly and categorically described
throughout the Jewish community as merely a "mystifying disease,"
only attributable to Hitlerian psychological perversions. This is profound
evidence that the collective Jewish community has lost its intellectual, and
moral, compass. It fears even partial blame for the tragedies in its history.
The Jewish community is in denial. Not only is it in denial, it censors at
every opportunity any penetration of this denial. When one studies history
carefully, intent upon finding a rational "cause" for anti-Semitism,
there are, unfortunately, answers to be found. And if there should ever be
a real "cure" for this "disease," the FULL story of history
must be squarely faced. And honestly. That's the beginning of real dialogue.
The Jewish conviction that their historical
suffering transcends all others is religiously based (even the term "Holocaust"
has religious roots) and the "Holocaust is unique" theology can
be dismissed, as we have seen, rather easily, except to the degree that ANY
atrocity is in some ways special to its own context. This Jewish view of itself
(that no other genocide approaches the special Jewish suffering) is also racist:
it is the traditional Chosen People identity (the racial lineage to Abraham
theme) expressed in a secular (although catastrophic) form.
Because of profound Jewish power and presence
-- and enduring intra-Jewish allegiance -- throughout modern popular culture,
the many myths of Jewish identity are an integral part of the daily diet of
modern America. And, increasingly since the Enlightenment, the Jewish struggle
to cope with its collective neurosis (Who is a Jew? What is a Jew? How do
I balance Jewish chauvinism and ethnocentrism against worldwide universalistic
themes?) has been woven like a knot into the very essence of modern western
society.
It is the principle of democracy that it
is in everyone’s best interests to resolve an issue by fully, and freely,
exploring it. In a true democracy, those that are factually and ethically
wrong may be proven as wrong, not repeatedly threatened, shouted down at first
voice and suffocated. The alternative to the free exchange of ideas is censorship,
authoritarianism, totalitarianism. And fascism. Jewry’s self-preserving strategy
through the centuries has always been to stifle free debate, lobby with governing
powers behind the scenes, and to sit on the lid of the
resultant pressure cooker. (Orthodox Jewry, after all, formally forbids
critical exploration of its tenets). Then comes the shock for Gentiles when,
all at once, as if an explosion, the repressed story is somehow suddenly revealed.
This volume argues that in a free society, all
facts, and the full realm of evidence, must
be placed on the table towards open discussion. And, afforded the full range
of information, “the people” (moral, decent, democratic people -- Jews among
them) can decide what it means.
The fact that this simple democratic premise
is such a radical idea in the case of the Jews is the beginning of the healthy
debate. Let us begin with honesty for a change:
Who are the saints of history?
