Racism and Anti-Semitism
The nature of racism.
- Racism
- Racism and Anti-Semitism—Part 1
- Racism and Anti-Semitism—Part 2
- Racism and Anti-Semitism—Part 3
- Racism and Anti-Semitism—Part 4
- Racism and Anti-Semitism—Part 5
- Racism and Anti-Semitism—Part 6
- Racism and Anti-Semitism—Part 7
Curator’s note: this article was not part of Randall’s original series on racism an anti-semitism, but I think it makes for a good foreward. What has racism got to do with your freedom? If you are truly a free individual, racism is not a problem for you personally, but the world you live in is populated mostly with those who are not free and who are racists—and most of them do not know it.
Anti-Semitism is growing around the world, according to this US State Department report, at such an alarming rate, that many see in it’s growth, similarities to the anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe immediately before the Second World War. The report indicates a slight decrease in anti-Semitism in only one country, Australia, but that is contradicted by some Australians. The report did not include the US, where, according to one Anti-Defamation League report, anti-Semitism is in on the increase, but according to another it is decreasing.
It is impossible to understand Anti-semitism without understanding what it is about the Jews that makes them the target of such irrational hatred and persecution. It is difficult, however, to characterize a people, without implying a kind of racism in the process and to avoid that, it must be made clear the facts about Jews, their history, and relationships to Western civilization are not a characterization of individual Jewish people, and not an evaluation of the Jews as a class.
The previous article described the success of Jews as businessmen. It should be pointed out that in the business world, Jews make up a very small percentage of the world’s successful businessmen, because in the world of 6.4 billion people, Jews make up approximately .23%, or roughly 14.6 million. In terms of the number of Jews who are successful in business, the number is inordinately high; in terms of the number of successful businessmen in the world, the number of them who are Jews is extremely low.
The manifestations of anti-Semitism today are terribly complex. The racism involved is the same old irrationality it has always been—the complexity is entirely in the trappings—that very complexity serves as a smokescreen obscuring the true nature and evil of the irrational hatred behind it. The confusion was clearly demonstrated in the Front Page Magazine’s Symposium: “Anti-Semitism - the New Call of the Left.” From the beginning it confuses facts with terminology.
On May 14, 1948, Palestinian Jews declared their own State of Israel and became “Israelis.” Since that time, the concept of anti-Semitism has become confused with anti-Israelism, which is further confused with anti-Zionism. Zionism Zionism is an ideology and a political movement. As an ideology, it, “… holds that the Jews are a people or nation like any other, and should gather together in a single homeland. … The term “Zionism” was apparently coined in 1891 by the Austrian publicist Nathan Birnbaum, to describe the new ideology, but it was used retroactively to describe earlier efforts and ideas to return the Jews to their homeland for whatever reasons, and it is applied to Evangelical Christians who want people of the Jewish religion to return to Israel in order to hasten the second coming.
I mentioned in an earlier article that in America and the West, there is a minority, not the Jews, that is hated, vilified, and blamed for all the evils of the world. It is business men. I repeat an earlier quote from Ayn Rand: Other Persecuted Minorities “Whenever, in any era, culture, or society, you encounter the phenomenon of prejudice, injustice, persecution, and blind, unreasoning hatred directed at some minority group—look for the gang that has something to gain from that persecution, look for those who have a vested interest in the destruction of these particular sacrificial victims.
Anti-Semitism is just one manifestation of the vicious and hateful form of racism that is also manifest today as hatred of Christians, of businessmen, of the West in general, particularly of the United States. The emphasis has been on anti-Semitism for a reason. Defending Jews? I am defending the Jews. I’m defending their right as people to believe whatever they choose, to live however they choose, wherever they choose, and to defend themselves in whatever way they deem necessary.