Saturday, November 28, 2009

The Mind of the Anti-Semite

People who hold the view that Jews are untrustworthy, or are part of some conspiracy to control the world, etc. seems to be based in one or another of two beliefs about Jews. Anti-Semites do not believe merely that Jewish culture is bad, or that Judaism as a religion is the problem, but rather that Jews, as an ethnic group, are constantly scheming against gentiles. This implies either a) that Jews are all organized against gentiles, and their organization is well constructed that not one single Jew has ever spilled the beans about it to a non-Jew, and no person of Jewish blood has ever avoided involvement, or b) that Jews are genetically predisposed to behavior that advances the interests of their own ethnic group at the expense of the interest of non-Jews. This seems to be the majority view among anti-Semites (Kevin b. McDonald for example).

What must one believe about genetics in order to base one's anti-Semitism on this second view? One must believe that it is possible to have a genetically endowed, innate understanding of ethnicity. Now, you could argue that we may be genetically inclined to favor people who look or act more like us than those who do not, but is every Jew so disconnected from the gentiles amongst whom they live that this would justify such a claim that all Jews are an inherent danger to gentiles? And what if a Jewish person were raised by gentiles and unaware of his ethnicity? Would he or she be somehow able to magically determine that his parents and friends are gentiles against whom he must constantly be plotting? This is what the most committed anti-Semites would have to believe in order to justify their prejudice.

The claim that Jews are all plotting against gentiles also becomes unfalsifiable when one dismisses the fact that individual Jews will hold vastly differing political and economic views, many of which are even contradictory, by saying they are all methods of advancing their power and undermining non-Jews. It's amazing that in much of the most significant anti-Semitic literature of the 20th century, both capitalism and communism are condemned as Jewish inventions. One wonders what kind of economic system the anti-Semite recommends if it must involve neither a centrally planned economy, nor the use of capital to establish businesses. They also accuse Jews of profiting unfairly from the businesses they run and finance, but also, whenever an economy is doing poorly, of gaining political advantage from destroying the economies which they were accused of exploiting.

I challenge any anti-Semite to describe something a Jew could do that would not be evidence of their supposed scheming against gentiles. Until they can do that, they have to realize that their prejudice makes absolutely no fucking sense.

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