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Why Anti-Semitism?
Reviewed by Paul Grubach copyright 2007 Editor’s note: The following article was originally published in the April 1995 issue of the now defunct Instauration, pp. 12-14. This well-written, highly instructive but somewhat flawed revisionist study of Jewish political, cultural and economic clout in the U.S., Europe, Russia and the Middle East should be read and reread by Instaurationists. Breaking ranks with politically correct historiography, Professor Benjamin Ginsberg, a prominent Jewish political science professor, feeds his readers a mass of solid documentation on Jewry’s enormous historical importance from the 11th through the 20th century. Wherever Jews have settled, Ginsberg writes, their literacy, commercial skills and alienation from Gentile societies have made them useful to kings, princes, sultans, prime ministers, commissars and presidents. Ambitious rulers have given them all sorts of protection and opportunities in exchange for their services as administrators, financiers and diplomats. In past centuries Jews have played important roles in building absolutist, liberal and Communist social orders and in reforming or overthrowing regimes in which they have been unable to obtain their goals. In this "embrace of the state," they have risen to positions of great wealth and power, although it is precisely this relationship between Jews and the state that has often proved fatal to them, as they became touchstones of opposition to what they helped to establish. Fatal Embrace substantiates much of what so-called anti-Semites have been saying for decades. If a non-Jew had written a similar book in the 1970s and 80s, he would have been denounced as a "Jew hater." Ginsberg elucidates: "At least until recently, another mark of Jewish influence was the virtual disappearance of anti-Semitic rhetoric from mainstream public discourse in the United States. As a general rule, what can and cannot be said in public reflects the distribution of political power in society; as Jews gained political power, politicians who indulged in anti-Semitic tactics were labeled extremists and exiled to the margins of American politics [p.2]." The author tells us that Jews as a group are an alien presence in Gentile societies: "Certainly, everywhere that Jews have lived, their social or economic marginality—their position, ‘outside society,’ as Hannah Arendt put it—sooner or later exposed Jews to suspicion, hostility, and discrimination [p.7]." Further on he adds: "…at least in part by their own choosing, American Jews continue to maintain a significant and visible measure of communal identity and distinctiveness in religious, cultural, and political matters…Though Jews have learned to look, talk, and dress like other Americans, they are not fully assimilated either in their own minds or in the eyes of their neighbors [pp. 7-8]." Concerning the power of Jewish finance in European societies, Ginsberg points out that by the mid-19th century the entire European state system was dependent upon the international financial network dominated by a family of Jewish bankers, the Rothschilds (p.18). In the present-day U.S. this pattern of economic predominance has continued. Only 2% of the nation’s population is Jewish, yet close to half its billionaires are Jews (p.1). Jewish influence in the contemporary American mass media and academia is equally pronounced. Jews abound in the top echelons of the major television networks and film studios: "[Jews own] the nation’s largest newspaper chain and most influential single newspaper, the New York Times. In the late 1960s, Jews already constituted 20% of the faculty of elite universities and 40% of the professors of elite law schools; today these percentages doubtless are higher [p.1]." In the past, it was "racist and anti-Semitic" to say that Jewish communism oppressed Russian non-Jews. Professor Ginsberg is candid enough to break new ground by writing: "In [Communist] Russia, Jews commanded powerful instruments of terror and repression [p.57]." Later on he implies that alienation from Russian society was the psychosocial factor which caused Jews to be such cruel despots: "Jewish liberalism is sometimes ascribed to the inherently humanistic character of Jewish values and traditions. However, this explanation seems a bit fanciful since…in some political settings Jews have managed to overcome their humanistic scruples enough to organize and operate rather ruthless agencies of coercion and terror [p.140]." Demonstrating an admirable candor that would be almost unthinkable if it came from a non-Jew writing for any number of mainstream publications, Professor Ginsberg points out how Jews in the media used their influence to stir up anti-German sentiment in the warm-up days of WWII: "Jewish filmmakers, columnists, and radio personalities were only too happy to cooperate with the [Roosevelt] administration’s anti-Nazi and pro-British interventionism. During the late 1930s, for example, when Roosevelt was engaged in bitter struggles with isolationist, pro-German and anti-British forces in the public and Congress, Hollywood cooperated with the White House by producing films depicting the evils of the Nazi regime, presenting Nazi Germany as a threat to the United States, and suggesting that a pro-German fifth column was at work inside the United States to undermine the nation’s will to resist the Nazis [pp.111-12]." Fatal Embrace substantiates the Historical Revisionist theory that the three groups which pushed hardest for war with Nazi Germany were the Roosevelt administration, members of the WASP establishment and the Jewish community: "Much as it disdained association with Jews, the Eastern Protestant establishment was, on the basis of education, economic interest, and often family connections, strongly Anglophilic and found in the Jewish community virtually the only reliable American allies for the British cause. Indeed, Jews and upper-class, Northeastern Protestants were the two groups in American society that most vehemently opposed Germany and supported England at a time when large segments of the American public…were against any form of American intervention in European affairs [pp.108-109]." Unlike many hysterical mainstream publications about the opponents of American involvement in WWII, Fatal Embrace is sensible enough to note the difference between American Nazis who wanted a totalitarian right-wing government in the U.S. and American patriots, who rejected Nazism, but simply wanted to keep the U.S. out of a self-destructive war (pp. 112-15): "Isolationist Senator Hiram Johnson of California wrote to his son that the struggle between isolationists and interventionists found ‘all the Jews on one side, wildly enthusiastic for the President, and willing to fight to the last American, both Germany and Italy.’ On the other side were those who ‘are thinking in terms of our country and that alone.’ ‘This,’ he went on to say, ‘is the basis of the struggle here, and I don’t know but what somebody ought to say it openly, but everybody is afraid of offending the Jews [p.114]." In contemporary America, an individual risks being labeled a "conspiracy nut" if he claims that Jewish groups secretly conspire to deprive their enemies of access to the mass media. Ginsberg easily discredits this canard: "[T]he American Jewish Committee developed a strategy called ‘dynamic silence’ to combat the activities of [anti-Semitic, anti-war] Gerald K. Smith. Working together, officials of the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the ADL would approach the publishers of major newspapers and owners of radio stations in cities where Smith had scheduled appearances to ask that Smith be given no coverage whatsoever, If newspapers and radio stations failed to cooperate on a voluntary basis, Jewish organizations were usually able to secure their compliance by threatening boycotts by Jewish advertisers. This strategy of dynamic silence was extremely effective in suppressing Smith and other right-wing anti-Semites [p.124]." In regard to the spotted history of the black-Jewish alliance in the United States, Ginsberg drops a lot of big names: "Jews played a prominent role in the leadership of most, if not all, of the major [black] civil rights organizations…Stanley Levison, a Jewish attorney, was Dr. Martin Luther King’s chief advisor. Kivie Kaplan, a retired Jewish businessman from Boston, served as president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and was, as well, one of Dr. King’s major fund-raisers and financial contributors. Marvin Rich, another Jewish attorney, was the chief fund-raiser and key speech writer for James Farmer, head of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Rich was later succeeded by the yet another Jewish attorney, Alan Gartner. Attorney Jack Greenberg headed the NAACP Legal Defense Fund after former Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall, was named to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals by President Lyndon Johnson [pp. 145-146]." The author continues this theme: "More than half the white lawyers who made their services available to civil rights demonstrators in the South were Jews. Between half and three-quarters of the contributors to [black] civil rights organizations…were Jews. More than half the white freedom riders were Jews. Almost two-thirds of the whites who went South during the Freedom Summer of 1964 were Jews…[p.146]." In Communist Party circles Jews saw to it that blacks played second fiddle: "Through the 1960s, blacks were a subordinate group on the Left especially within the Communist Party which was dominated by Jewish intellectuals. Harold Cruse, a black Communist, described the situation…Jewish Communists, said Cruse, felt compelled to ensure their complete political and ideological power over their Negro allies. To this end, according to Cruse, Jewish Communists sought to dominate the field of ‘Negro studies’ and made certain that Jews always held the top Communist Party posts in the black community [p.177]." One of the flaws of Fatal Embrace is how the book explains Jewish involvement in black affairs, which it glibly ascribes to a junction of morality and Jewish self-interest. Here Ginsberg is plainly wrong. The enhancement of Jewish political power was the main driving force behind Jewish involvement in the black civil rights movement. "Morality" had little or nothing to do with this. If morality dictated that American Jews help blacks free themselves from oppression, then that same morality dictates that they should help Palestinians free themselves from oppression by the Israelis. Quite the opposite is the case. "Liberal" American Jewry is the major supporter of Israel, a state founded upon racial and religious discrimination against Arabs. Israel is a state where first-class citizenship is for Jews; second-class citizenship is for non-Jews.1 Further corroboration for the false claims of Jewish morality comes from research by black American historian, Anthony Martin. During the slavery era in America Jews were heavily involved in every aspect of the African slave trade. Martin expounds: "Jewish abolitionists were few and far between, and the exceptional Jews who opposed slavery were sometimes subjected to the opprobrium of their co-religionists. There is no Jewish counterpart in the United States to the organized Christian abolitionism of the Quakers, Methodists, Baptists and others."2 In one part of Fatal Embrace the author "gets real" and reveals a major reason why Jews were involved in black affairs: "During the 1960s, Jews joined with other liberal Democrats and with blacks in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. Through this alliance, Jews were able to weaken their conservative Southern adversaries as well as their Northern white working-class rivals within the Democratic Party, and to virtually destroy the traditional party machines upon which these forces depended for their power [p. 225]." The truth finally emerges! Jews used the black civil rights movement as a weapon to advance their interests at the expense of their white Gentile adversaries. Although one of the most notable characteristics of Jews in American politics is their strong adherence to liberalism (pp. 152-55, 165), it should by no means be assumed that all Jews are liberals. In recent times they have played a decisive role in conservative Republicanism and neo-conservatism (p. 231). Running true to form, Ginsberg reveals what lies behind the conservative mask: "A number of Jews ascertained for themselves that Israeli security required a strong commitment to internationalism and defense. Among the most prominent Jewish spokesman for this position was Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine. Podhoretz had been a liberal and strong opponent of the Vietnam War. But by the early 1970s he came to realize that ‘continued American support for Israel depended upon continued American involvement in international affairs—from which it followed that an American withdrawal into [isolationism] represented a direct threat to the security of Israel.’ This was one major reason that Podhoretz broke with liberals…[p.204]." Exposing the hidden anti-Gentile feelings of these "conservative patriots," Ginsberg makes an astonishing admission: "…the [Jewish] neocons are soft on social issues. Few neoconservatives attach much moral significance to the issues of abortion or school prayer and pragmatically advocate doing little to concretely advance these causes in order to avoid alienating middle-class suburban voters. Indeed, many neocons are fond of saying privately that social issues are merely useful bait with which to attract the votes of the riffraff [read: fundamentalist white Christians] [p. 231]." Get the picture? The welfare of Israel is at the heart of Jewish neo-conservatism and the pro-school prayer and anti-abortion planks are simply bait with which to attract the stupid goyim! At the very beginning of his book, Ginsberg writes: "I have long been convinced that one of the reasons that so many Jews pursue careers in the social sciences is their conscious or unconscious concern with the great question of Jewish history. That question is, of course, Why is it that during so many different times, and in so many different places, Jews have achieved enormous status, wealth, and power only to be cast down, driven out—or worse [p.ix]?" In simple terms, "Why Anti-Semitism?" is a question Ginsberg fails to answer satisfactorily because he did not consider the ultimate implications of this research. He openly admits Jews amass tremendous power in a state, and then use that state to advance their own selfish interests to the detriment of the host culture. What Ginsberg fails to see—or refuses to consider—is that the destructive, anti-Gentile characteristics of Jewry are a major cause of anti-Semitism. In this regard, many anti-Jewish reactions are normal, self-preserving responses on the part of non-Jews to the collective behavior of large groupings of Jews. In their sojourn in America, Zionist Jews are again setting the stage for the aftermath of another "fatal embrace." The pro-Zionist government was and is detrimental to the interests of the American Majority at large. Is it any wonder that "anti-Semitic" movements should arise to challenge pro-Zionist policies? What Ginsberg labels as "anti-Semitism" is actually in many cases a healthy concern for the welfare of America, plus a critical attitude towards the Jewish power elite which props up a government harmful to Majority interests. Perhaps it is an intense Jewish ethnocentrism which blinds Professor Ginsberg from seeing the legitimacy of many "anti-Semitic" movements. All things considered, Fatal Embrace is a step in the right direction. It strips away Jewry’s aura of saintliness and shows readers the ulterior reality which lies behind the propaganda façade. As long as Jewish and Gentile politicians and intellectuals refuse to see the destructive aspects of Jewry and the legitimate side of "anti-Semitic" complaints, there will never be an open and honest discussion concerning the undeniable problems which burden Jewish-Gentile relations. Nor will these problems ever be resolved in a manner which is rational, humane, and acceptable to both Jews and Gentiles. Footnotes
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