Racism and Anti-Semitism—Part 4

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. “Contemporary empirical realities demonstrate one undeniable fact: anti-Semitism is no longer associated prominently with the Right. Instead, the primary source of the hatred of Jews now emanates from the Left.” The false dichotomy that puts socialism and communism on the left and nazism and fascism on the right has always been wrong. Communism, socialism, fascism, and nazism are all variations of the same collectivist statist political doctrines resulting from the philosophies of Kant and Hegel and formulated by Marx. The modern day version of these ideas which formed the basis of those formulations continue in modern academia and politics as postmodernism, multiculturalism, and the welfare state.

But there is another confusion this Symposium illustrates. While traditional anti-Semitism has always been visibly directed at Jews themselves, today’s “anti-Semitism” is equated with “anti-Israelism.” While many anti-Semites (the Islamists, for example) are also anti-Israel, and there is an undoubted tie between them, they are different things and conflating them makes the true nature of anti-Semitism much more confusing. There is a tendency to cover up the irrationality of the racism of anti-Semitism by treating it as if it were an international political issue, not the philosophical issue it truly is. The anti-Israel issue itself will be made clearer with this understanding.

To understand who it is that hates the Jews and why and why it is growing today and at such an alarming rate, I’ll present some examples of that growing anti-Semitism and where it is found.

Growing Anti-Semitism

The first article in this series on racism and anti-Semitism began with a number of links to reference illustrating the growing anti-Semitism around the world.

Some of these examples emphasize the anti-Israel aspects of anti-Semitism, which is a separate issue to be addressed together with the issue of Zionism, but they all, nevertheless, illustrate the extent to which this irrational hatred is growing.

Anti-Semitism is not universal. There are a great many Christians throughout the world who, because of their religious beliefs, are strongly pro-Judaism. This is partly a matter of belief, and partly a matter of their view toward all men which attempts to reject all prejudice and hatred from their lives. It is true this idea sometimes devolves into a kind of PC multiculturalism, but nevertheless, it excludes anti-Semitism.

In the West, especially in the US and Canada, the majority of the population does not judge people racially or ethnically, and to them, Jews are just other people, and might be viewed, because of their beliefs and practices as peculiar, but are mostly seen as interesting and often rightly admired. But in America and Canada, anti-Semitism is growing, and can be found even in some large Christian organizations, such as the United Church of Canada.

Growing anti-Semitism is a world-wide phenomenon, in political parties, from the Liberal Party of Canada to Australia’s Labor Party; as well as in the general population such as in Russia, Germany, France, and England, or should that be, “Allah�s England?.”

Both Melanie Phillips in her “The war within the west (3)” and Baron Bodissey, in his “The New Kristallnacht,” compare the rising world-wide anti-Semitism to that which existed immediately prior to and during World War II. Bodissey’s article has a list of examples:

• When Jewish students are attacked on an American university campus by protesters screaming “Hitler was right!”; [I’ve added these links—“Hitler should have finished the job,” and �Hitler should have killed all of you�.]
• when the prime minister of Iran says, “…the use of a single atomic bomb has the power to destroy Israel completely, while it will only cause partial damage to the Islamic world”;
  
• when synagogues are burned in Belgium and European Jews are afraid to wear the yarmulke openly;
  
• when The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is made into a television drama in Egypt and sold openly on Wal-Mart’s website; and more.

It is easy, and wrong, to attribute rising anti-Semitism to the age-old hatred of the Jews fostered by Islam. Iran’s recently declared intentions of destroying Israel are the repeated chorus in a Muslim hymn. The antipathy between Israel and Muslims is as old as Isaac and Ishmael, but the modern day anti-Semitism is more than mere ethnic rivalry. Even in Islam, anti-Semitism has taken a new form since it’s alliance with Nazism, as these articles illustrate: Islamic Antisemitism And Its Nazi Roots, The Arab/Muslim Nazi Connection, Islamic terrorism linked to Nazi fascists, Fascism, Islamism, and Anti-Semitism.

Except for the vestiges of Nazism that remain as pieces of garbage left in barrel after it has been emptied, such as the various skin-head and aryan-supremacy organizations, the Nazi variety of anti-Semitism is no more, but the basis for that particular hatred of the Jews remains, and it is that characteristic that identifies who it is that hates the Jews and why. There remains one more aspect of anti-Semitism to examine before that can be fully examined, however, and that is what is called anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism, the subjects of the next article in this series.

—(01/22/06)