anti semitic disease paul johnson

8/8/2019 Anti Semitic Disease Paul Johnson

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The intensification of anti-Semitism in theArab world over the last years and its reap-pearance in parts of Europe have occasioned anumber of thoughtful reflections on the natureand consequences of this phenomenon, but alsosome misleading analyses based on doubtful

premises. It is widely assumed, for example, thatanti-Semitism is a form of racism or ethnic xeno-phobia. This is a legacy of the post-World War IIperiod, when revelations about the horrifyingscope of Hitlers f inal solution caused widespreadrevulsion against all manifestations of group ha-tred. Since then, racism, in whatever guise it ap-pears, has been identified as the evil to be fought.

But if anti-Semitism is a variety of racism, it is amost peculiar variety, with many unique character-istics. In my view as a historian, it is so peculiarthat it deserves to be placed in a quite different cat-

egory. I would call it an intellectual disease, a dis-ease of the mind, extremely infectious and mas-sively destructive. It is a disease to which bothhuman individuals and entire human societies areprone.

Geneticists and experts in related fields may ob-ject that my observation is not scientifically valid.My rejoinder is simple: how can one make scientif-ic judgments in this area? Scientists cannot even

agree on how to define race itself, or whether thecategory exists in any meaningful sense. The im-mense advances in genetics over the last half-cen-tury, far from simplifying the problem, have madeit appear more complex and mysterious.* All thatscientists appear able to do is to present the evi-

dence, often conflicting, of studies they have un-dertaken. And this, essentially, is what a historiandoes as well. He shows how human beings have be-haved, over long periods and in many differentplaces, when confronted with the apparent fact ofmarked racial differences.

The historical evidence suggests that racism, invarying degrees, is ubiquitous in human societies,so much so that it might even be termed naturaland inevitable (though not irremediable: its behav-ioral consequences can be mitigated by education,political arrangements, and intermarriage). It often

takes the form of national hostility, especially whentwo countries are placed by geography in posturesof antagonism. Such has been the case with Franceand England, Poland and Russia, and Germanyand Denmark, to give only three obvious examples.

The degree of this hostility can increase or di-minish as a result of historical change. Thus, the

The Anti-Semitic Disease Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson is the author ofModern Times,A Histo-ry of Christianity, andA History of the Jews, amongmany other books.

* This is vividly brought home in one recent study,Race: The Real-ity of Human Differences, by Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele (West-view, 320 pp., $27.50). The book was dismissively reviewed in the(London) Times Literary Supplement(February 25, 2005) by JerryCoyne, a professor in the department of ecology and evolution atthe University of Chicago.


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Scots and the French were natural allies and on very friendly terms when they had a commonenemy in the English; but after the union of Scot-land with England, the Scots absorbed the broad

anti-Gallicism of the British nation. Similarly, thecreation of the European Union has diminishedcross-border nationalist hatred in some cases (es-pecially between France and Germany) while in-creasing it in a few others (Germany and Den-mark).

By contrast, anti-Semitism is very ancient, hasnever been associated with frontiers, and, althoughit has had its ups and downs, seems impervious tochange. The Jews (or Hebrews) were strangersand sojourners, as the book of Genesis puts it,from very early times, and certainly by the end ofthe 2nd millennium B.C.E. Long before the greatdiaspora that followed the conflicts of Judea withRome, they had settled in many parts of the

Mediterranean area and Middle East while main-taining their separate religion and social identity;the first recorded instances of anti-Semitism datefrom the 3rd century B.C.E., in Alexandria. Subse-quent historical shifts have not ended anti-Semi-tism but merely superimposed additional archaeo-logical layers, as it were. To the anti-Semitism ofantiquity was added the Christian layer and then,from the time of the Enlightenment on, the secu-larist layer, which culminated in Soviet anti-Semi-

tism and the Nazi atrocities of the first half of the20th century. Now we have the Arab-Muslim layer,dating roughly from the 1920s but becoming moreintense with each decade since.

What strikes the historian surveying anti-Semitism worldwide over more than twomillennia is its fundamental irrationality. It seemsto make no sense, any more than malaria ormeningitis makes sense. In the whole of history, itis hard to point to a single occasion when a waveof anti-Semitism was provoked by a real Jewishthreat (as opposed to an imaginary one). In Japan,

anti-Semitism was and remains common eventhough there has never been a Jewish communitythere of any size.

Asked to explain why they hate Jews, anti-Sem-ites contradict themselves. Jews are always show-ing off; they are hermetic and secretive. They willnot assimilate; they assimilate only too well. Theyare too religious; they are too materialistic, and athreat to religion. They are uncultured; they havetoo much culture. They avoid manual work; they

work too hard. They are miserly; they are ostenta-tious spenders. They are inveterate capitalists;

they are born Communists. And so on. In all itsmyriad manifestations, the language of anti-Semi-tism through the ages is a dictionary of non-se-quiturs and antonyms, a thesaurus of illogic and

inconsistency.Like many physical diseases, anti-Semitism ishighly infectious, and can become endemic in cer-tain localities and societies. Though a disease of themind, it is by no means confined to weak, feeble,or commonplace intellects; as history sadly records,its carriers have included men and women of oth-erwise powerful and subtle thoughts. Like all men-tal diseases, it is damaging to reason, and some-times fatal.

Irrational thinking is common enough in each ofus; when anti-Semitism is added in, irrationalthinking becomes not only instinctual but systemic.

An experienced anti-Semite constantly looks forevidence to confirm his ide fixe, and invariablyfinds itjust as a Marxist, looking for proof,constantly uncovers events that confirm his diag-nosis of how the world works. (Not surprisingly,anti-Semitic theory as evolved by the youngHegelians played a major role in the evolution of

Marxs methods of analysis.)Anti-Semitism is self-inflicted, which means

that, by an act of will and reason, the infection canbe repelled. But this is not easy to do, especially insocieties where anti-Semitism has become com-

mon or the norm. What is in any case clear is thatanti-Semitism, besides being self-inflicted, is alsoself-destructive, and of societies and governmentsas much as of individuals.

An important instance of this historical law is theexpulsion of the Jews (along with the Moors) fromSpain in the 1490s, and the subsequent witchhuntof New Christians, or converted Jews, by the In-quisitiona process that took place at precisely themoment when Spains penetration of the New

World had opened up unprecedented opportunitiesfor economic expansion. The effect of official anti-Semitism was to deprive Spain (and its colonies) of

a class already notable for the astute handling of f i-nance. As a consequence, the project of enlargingthe New Worlds silver mines and importing hugeamounts of silver into Spain, far from leading to ra-tional investment in a proto-industrial revolutionor to the creation of modern financial services, hada profoundly deleterious impact, plunging the hith-erto vigorous Spanish economy into inflation andlong-term decline, and the government into re-peated bankruptcy.

The beneficiaries of Spanish anti-Semitism, inthe near term, were the northern (Protestant) areas

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of the Netherlands, where an influx of Jewishrefugees settling in Amsterdam and Rotterdam ledto the accelerated development of the mercantileand financial sectors and the establishment for a

time of Dutch global economic supremacy. In thelonger term, the beneficiaries were England andthe United States of America. England ceased topractice institutional anti-Semitism in the mid-17th century, when Jews, who had been expelledfrom the country in 1290, were permitted to re-settle there (and practice their religion) without theneed for special privileges. This pattern was re-peated in the English colonies in America, so thatthe new republic became, ab initio, an area whereanti-Semitism never had any force in law.

By the end of the 18th century, the worlds f irstindustrial revolution was an accomplished fact inBritain, and by the end of the 19th century theUnited States had emerged as the worlds leadingindustrial and financial power, which it remains tothis day. Theorists of comparative economic effi-ciency, like Max Weber and R.H. Tawney, used topoint to the role of Protestantism (especiallyCalvinist salvation panic) in the development ofAnglo-Saxon industrial supremacy. The trendnow is to stress the role of immigration, with Jewsplaying a significant role.

In the evolution of modern Europe in the 19th

and 20th centuries, anti-Semitism once againproved self-destructive. The occupation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany after the Franco-Prussian

war of 1870 led to a significant exodus of local Jewsto Paris and the rapid growth of anti-Semitism ina country already long harboring the disease. Oneconsequence was the Dreyfus affairthe Dreyfus-es were an Alsatian familywhich convulsedFrance for the better part of two decades.

The ensuing cultural civil war weakened Francein a number of ways, not least militarily, and in theearly years of the 20th century helped to persuadethe Germans that France would prove an easy tar-

get, as indeed it was in 1914. A longer-term effectof the Dreyfus affair was felt in the French collapseand capitulation to the Nazis in 1940, as well as inthe character of the subsequent Vichy regime.

Another outstanding case was Czarist Russia.Under Catherine II, the early elements in what wasto become a complex system of anti-Semitic laws

were introduced in the late 18th century after thepartition of Poland, which gave Russia a large Jew-ish minority for the first time. Thereafter, prohibi-tions and restrictions were constantly enlarged andmade more stringent, and were reinforced by offi-

cial encouragement of popular pogroms. The re-sult was a large-scale migration of Jews to the

West, particularly to Britain and the UnitedStatesagain to the economic and cultural benefit

of the Anglo-Saxon powers. Russia was corre-spondingly weakened, not only by the loss of talentbut also by the immense increase in administrativecorruption produced by the system of restrictions.

The country was damaged in another way, too.The legal enforcement of Russian anti-Semitismbecame a model for the subsequent Soviet systemof internal control, which can be understood as anextension to the population as a whole of laws thatonce oppressed Jews only. The aftereffects, includ-ing rampant corruption, are still to be felt at all lev-els of Russian society today.

But the most notable victim of anti-Semitismwas Germany under Hitler. Among historians, it isstill considered morally essential to demonizeHitler and to condemn unreservedly everything heand the Nazis did. But there are compelling rea-sons, quite apart from the interests of objectivescholarship, why this should end. Hitler was not ademon but a human being, just as were Attila andBarbarossa, Luther and Wallenstein, Frederick theGreat and Bismarck.

Though from a humble background and poorlyeducated, Hitler possessed a fierce intelligence, astrong artistic imagination, and great powers of ar-

ticulation. His career as a soldier in World War Itestified to his courage, and everything he causedto happen afterward showed a strength of will rareat any time. To this he added formidable organiza-tional powers, the capacity to inspire loyalty, strate-gic clarity balanced by tactical flexibility, and ora-tory of a high order, spiced with a valuable talentfor making people laugh. His creation, virtuallyfrom scratch, of a nationwide mass political partythat he drove forward to electoral victory in what

was then perhaps the best-educated country in theworld, all in little over a decade, has few parallelsin the history of politics.

All this bears witness to Hitlers abilities. As forhis criminal defects and deformations, we arerightly aware of them: his inveterate thuggishnessand brutality, his narrow chauvinism, his seeming-ly unappeasable lust for conquest and domination.

And, above all, his anti-Semitism, which, while ex-acting its toll in millions of innocent human lives,in the end proved fatal to his own world-conquer-ing ambitions.

It is not clear from the record exactly how, why,and when Hitler became a strident anti-Semite.

What is clear is that by the early 1920s, he was al-

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ready a violent hater of Jews. As time went on, hisanti-Semitism grew until it took entire possessionof his intellect and became the dominant factor inall his strategies and decisions.

It is often assumed that Hitlers anti-Semitismhelped pave his way to office. I have never seen anyconvincing attempt to prove this with detailed, sta-tistical arguments. In Austria and parts of southernGermany, anti-Semitism was indeed widespread.But in central and northern Germany, Jews were

well assimilated and performed obvious services;there, anti-Semitism had to be incited. My own be-lief, considering Germany as a whole, is thatHitlers anti-Semitism, along with the street-brawl-ing to which it led, was rather an obstacle to elec-toral victory. It repelled more voters than it at-tracted, and diverted attention from the four poli-cies that undoubtedly put him in a position to winlarge numbers of votes: his absolute opposition tothe terms of the Versailles treaty; his radical call foran end to the Weimar economic system, which hadpromoted hyperinflation and so stripped the mid-dle class of its savings; his equally radical proposalsfor ending mass unemployment; and, not least, his

vehement hostility to Communism, which mostGermans hated and feared.

If Hitler achieved power not because of but de-spite his anti-Semitism, once he was in power hisunrelenting obsession with the Jews corroded his

judgment at every turn. His increasingly violentpersecution of Jews also alienated other nationswhose publics might otherwise have been won overto at least some of his aggressive demands in foreignpolicy. So central was anti-Semitism to his view ofthe world that the repugnance of others merelyconfirmed, for him, the existence of the very Jew-ish conspiracy against which he had warned formany years. It was this same conspiracy, he threat-ened, that would be to blame for any war that mightbreak out, and this war would in turn provide bothoccasion and justification for implementing hisfinal solution to the Jewish problem.

Anti-Semitism thus led Hitler to fight a needlesswar against Britain and France and then, militarydominance having been effectively achieved inmainland Europe, to extend the war in such a waythat he could not possibly win it. He invaded theSoviet Union, his formerly compliant and quies-cent ally, thereby giving Germany a war on twofrontsprecisely the configuration he once arguedhad been fatal to Germanys chances in World WarI. Then, when Japan attacked the United States inDecember 1941, he made the totally irrational de-cision to declare war on America. Both these acts

of madness bore the marks of a collapse of judg-ment brought on by the intellectual disease of anti-Semitism, the first of them pursued in order to ex-tend the final solution eastward and the second

out of the lunatic notion that the rulers of theUnited States were themselves a key component ofthe Jewish world conspiracy. At the beginning of1941 Hitler had been in a position of enormousglobal power; at the end of it, his countrys eventu-al defeat and his own annihilation were certain.

As an example of the self-destructive force ofanti-Semitism, the case of Hitler and NaziGermany is paralleled only by what has happenedto the Arabs over the course of the last century.

The year 1917 saw both the issuance in Londonof the Balfour Declaration, authorizing the cre-ation of a Jewish national home in Palestine, andthe wartime British occupation of Jerusalem, fol-lowed thereafter by an international mandate togovern the country. In the Balfour Declaration theBritish pledged to use their best endeavors tofurther the national-home project, but withoutprejudice to the rights of the existing inhabitants.

At this stage, many Zionists themselves did notnecessarily envisage a sovereign Jewish stateemerging in Palestine. Thus, Chaim Weizmann,the prime mover behind the Declaration, imaginedthat Jewish immigrants, whose ranks included a

growing number of scientific and agricultural ex-perts as well as many entrepreneurs, would play akey role in enabling the Arabs of the Middle Eastto make the most effective use of their newly de-

veloping oil wealth.Had Jewish-Arab cooperation been possible

from the start, and had money from oil been cre-atively invested in education, technology, industry,and social services, the Middle East would now beby far the richest portion of the earths surface.

This has been one of historys greatest lost oppor-tunities, comparable, on a much greater scale, toSpains mismanagement of its silver wealth in the

16th century. Anti-Semitism, helped by an inge-nious forgery, was the key to the disaster.

In the 1890s, the Czarist secret police, anxiousto prove the reality of the Jewish threat to Rus-sia, had asked its agent in Paris (then, with Vienna,the world center of anti-Semitism) to provide cor-roborating materials. He took a pamphlet writtenby Maurice Joly in 1864 that accused Napoleon IIIof ambitions to dominate the world; re-wrote it,substituting the Jews for Napoleon and dressing upthe tale with traditional anti-Semitic details; and ti-tled it The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It resurfaced

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in Russia after the 1917 coup by the Bolsheviks,who were widely believed by their White Russianopponents to be Jewish-led, and thence made its

way to the Middle East. When Weizmann arrived

in Jerusalem in 1918, he was handed a typewrittencopy by the British commander, General Sir Wyn-dham Deedes, who said: You had better read allthis with care. It is going to cause you a great dealof trouble in the future.

In 1921, after a full investigation, the LondonTimespublished a series of articles exposing theorigins of the tract and demonstrating beyond allpossible doubt that it was a complete invention.But by then the damage that Deedes had warnedabout was done. Among those who read, and be-lieved, the forgery was Adolf Hitler. Another was

Muhammad Amin al-Husseini, head of the biggestlandowning family in Palestine. Al-Husseini was al-ready tinged with hatred of Jews, but theProtocolsgave him a purpose in life: to expel all Jews fromPalestine forever. He had innocent blue eyes and aquiet, almost cringing manner, but was a dedicatedkiller who devoted his entire life to race-murder. In1920 he was sentenced by the British to ten yearshard labor for provoking bloody anti-Jewish riots.But in the following year, in a reversal of policy for

which I have never found a satisfactory explana-tion, the British appointed a supreme Muslim reli-gious council in Palestine and in effect made al-

Husseini its director.The mufti, as he was called, thereafter createdArab anti-Semitism in its modern form. He ap-pointed a terrorist leader, Emile Ghori, to kill Jew-ish settlers whenever possible, and also any Arabs

who worked with Jews. The latter made up by farthe greater number of the muftis victims. This pat-tern of murdering Arab moderates has continuedever since, and not just among Palestinians; we seeit in Iraq today.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, the muftirapidly established links with the Nazi regime andlater toured occupied Europe under its auspices.

He naturally gravitated to Heinrich Himmler, theofficial in charge of the Nazi genocide, who sharedhis extreme and violent anti-Semitism; a photoshows the two men smiling sweetly at each other.From the Nazis the mufti learned much aboutmass murder and terrorism. But he also drew fromthe history of Islamic extremism: it was he whofirst recruited Wahhabi fanatics from Saudi Arabiaand transformed them into killers of Jewsanoth-er tradition that continues to this day.

Over the last half-century, anti-Semitism hasbeen the essential ideology of the Arab world; its

practical objective has been the destruction of Is-rael and the extermination of its inhabitants. Andthis huge and baneful force, this disease of themind, has once again had its customary conse-

quence. Just as Hitler ended his life a suicide, hav-ing failed in his mission of destroying the Jewishpeople, so 100 million or more Arabs, marchingunder the banner of anti-Semitism, have totallyfailed, despite four full-scale wars and waves of ter-rorism and intifadaswithout number, to extinguishtiny Israel.

In the meantime, by allowing their diseased ob-session to dominate all their aspirations, the Arabshave wasted trillions in oil royalties on weapons of

war and propagandaand, at the margin, on os-tentatious luxuries for a tiny minority. In theirflight from reason, they have failed to modernizeor civilize their societies, to introduce democracy,or to consolidate the rule of law. Despite all theiradvantages, they are now being overtaken decisive-ly by the Indians and the Chinese, who have fewnatural resources but are inspired by reason, nothatred.

Yet still the Arabs feed off the ravages of the dis-ease, imbibing and spreading its poison. Even asthey keep alive theProtocolsitself, now published intens of millions of copies in major Arab capitals,they have embellished its lurid fantasies with theirown, homegrown mythologies of Jewish wicked-

ness. Recently theProtocolswas made into a 41-part TV series, filmed in Cairo and disseminatedthroughout the Muslim world. Turkey, once a bas-tion of moderation, with a thriving economy, isnow a theater of anti-Semitism, where hatred of Is-rael breeds varieties of Islamic extremism. At atime when at long last there is real hope of democ-racy taking root in the Arab and Muslim world, theparalysis continues and indeed is spreading.

In Europe, too, anti-Semitism has returned afterbeing supposedly banished forever in the late1940s. Fueled by large and growing Muslim mi-

norities, whose mosques and websites propagatehatred of Jews, it has also been nourished by in-digenous elements, both intellectual and political.It has even penetrated mainstream parties anxiousto garner Muslim votesNew Labor in Britainbeing a disturbing example.

No less worrying, to my mind, is a related Euro-pean phenomenonnamely, anti-Americanism. Isay related because anti-Semitism and anti-

Americanism have proceeded hand in hand intodays Europe just as they once did in Hitlersmind (as the unpublished second half ofMein

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Kampfdecisively shows). Like hatred of Jews, ha-tred of Americans can similarly be described as aform of racism or xenophobia, especially in itsmore vulgar manifestations. But among academics

and intellectuals, where it is increasingly prevalent,it has more of the hallmarks of a mental disease,becoming more virulent, widespread, and in-tractable ever since the United States began toshoulder the duties of the war against internation-al terrorism.

After all, to hate Americans is against reason.For centuries, and never more so than at present,the U.S. has harbored the poor and persecutedfrom the entire world, who have found freedomand prospered on its soil. America continues to re-ceive more immigrants than any other country; itsmost recent arrivals, including the Cubans, the Ko-

reans, the Vietnamese, and the Lebanese, have be-come some of the richest groups in the country andare enthusiastic supporters of its democratic norms.Indeed, since American society is now a vibrant mi-crocosm of the human race, I would say that tohate Americans is to hate humanity as a whole.

That anti-Americanism shares many structuralcharacteristics with anti-Semitism is plain enough.In France, as we read in a new study, intellectualsmuster as many contradictory reasons for attackingthe U.S. as for attacking Jews.* Americans are ex-cessively religious; they are excessively materialis-

tic. They are vulgar money-grubbers; they are vul-gar spenders. They hate culture; they are pushy inpromoting their own culture. They are aggressiveand reckless; they are cowardly. They are stupid;they are exceptionally cunning. They are unedu-cated; they subordinate everything in life to thegoal of sending their children to universities. Theybuild soulless megalopolises; they are rural imbe-ciles. As with anti-Semitism, this litany of contra-dictory complaints is fleshed out with demonic car-icatures of particular individuals like George W.Bush. Just as 14th-century Christians once held the

Jews responsible for the Black Death, Americans

are blamed for all the ills of todays world, startingwith (real or imaginary) global warming. Particu-larly among French intellectuals, such demoniza-tion has become almost a culture, a way of life, in

itself.Especially disturbing is the spread of the cult inGermany. There, in the 1920s, anti-Semitism wasa feature of the social demoralization produced bydefeat in World War I. Germany is now becomingdemoralized again, for a variety of reasons: ap-pallingly high unemployment; falling living stan-dards relative to the U.S., Britain, and other ad-

vanced nations; declining population figures, giv-ing rise to anxiety about the future of the work-force and the security of the pension system; andthe inability of the countrys leaders to address anyof these problems.

In the post-World War II period, ironically,Germany prospered mightily by looking to theU.S. for entrepreneurial inspiration as well as po-litical and military leadership. For the past quarter-century, it has fallen increasingly under the spell ofFrance and the French fantasy of a European su-perstate that will rival America. Precisely duringthis period of French hegemony, Germany has en-tered upon an accelerating economic decline, al-ready relative and soon to be absolute.

For Germany now to turn on America as thesource of its woes makes no sense at all. But then acountry in the grip of a disease of the mind cannotbe expected to behave rationally. Despite all its ef-forts, Germany, it seems to me, has not learned theessential lesson of its Nazi past, namely, to flee theplague of unreason. Looking at Europe as a whole,and at the continuing malaise of the Middle East, Isuspect we are approaching a new crisis in thepathology of nations. Once again, America is theonly physician with the power and skill to provide acure, and one can only pray the hour is not too latefor the patient to be revived.

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* The American Enemy: the History of French Anti-Americanism byPhillipe Roger, University of Chicago Press, 536 pp., $35.00.

anti semitic disease paul johnson

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