THE JEWISH CENTURY by
YURI SLEZKINE
(Princeton U. Press,
2004) Winner of the National Jewish Book
Award
Of the Jewish Book
Council.
Rev. by Hugh Murray
In the 21st
century West, the greatest crime may have become “racism,” and the method to
detect it in the workplace is through the use of statistics to discover the
percentage of under-represented Blacks, Hispanics, or women; followed by the
demand for “remedies” to fix the “problem,” – which is the over-representation
of white males. Still, there are clearly
certain anomalies. And these anomalies
are related to The Jewish Century. In the US, “diversity is our strength” has
become a mantra of liberals, and to achieve this, affirmative action (AA) on
behalf of the under-represented groups is justified, even required. In the UK, AA is called “positive
discrimination,” and elsewhere the policy may have other names, but in each
case the aims are the same – increase the percentages of the under-represented
groups until their percentage of the workplace approximates their percentages
of the general population. As Slezkine
phrases it: “Affirmative action always implies negative (relative to strict
meritocracy) action toward those not targeted for preferential treatment.”(p.
336-37)
The US
Supreme Court of 9 members is 67% Roman Catholic, and 33% Jewish. The majority of Americans are Protestant, yet
they have not a single Justice on the highest court in the land. And there is hardly a peep in the media about
this grossly under-represented group.
Roman Catholics on the high court are about double their percentage of
the general population. Jews on the
Court are about 15 times over-represented (they are about 2.5% of the American
population.) Not a word from the media about
this vast over-representation by a tiny minority OR the totally un-represented
majority of Americans!
During the
Presidency of Bill Clinton, the media were pleased and Clinton proud when he
announced that his Cabinet would look like America. It would be as diverse as America, and seemingly,
it was. While a superficial glance confirmed
the hype, for white men were only slightly over-represented in the Cabinet,
closer inspection revealed that white male gentiles were actually under-represented,
while Jews composed 24% of the Cabinet.
Are Jews 24% of the general American population? The academedia complex almost never discusses
the enormous over-representation of Jews in the American elites, economic,
political, cultural; and especially in academia and the media. Instead, the media, and more recently
government (through education departments) has stressed the evils of “white
male privilege”; how white men are oppressively over-represented. But often white male gentiles are
under-representation, while Jews are vastly over-represented. The media will have stories weekly about the
latest findings in some job category, some bank loans, some answers to job
applicants, all stories targeting “white male privilege.” Some colleges now award credits to students
who attend special seminars and conferences on the alleged problems of white
male privilege and over-representation.
Yet, while Jews are tremendously over-represented, far more so
percentage-wise than white men, no one dares speak of Jewish privilege. Indeed, the very silence of the media on this
topic is yet another symptom of Jewish privilege. Further, I would suggest that the creation of
the bogeyman of “white male privilege” was a tactic by those who are truly
privileged to divert attention from themselves and their real privileges.
How did
this situation arise?
Slezkine
provides a hint when he writes: “…Jewish prominence in the American political
elite began perceptibly in the 1970s, during the ascendance of nonprofit
organizations, political foundations, regulatory agencies, new information
technologies and public-interest law firms.”(370) I would suggest Jewish influence preceded the
1970s, but Slezkine’s statistics are persuasive – “The Jews are the wealthiest
of all religious groups in the United States(367)…and the highest
representation among the richest individual Americans (about 40% of the
wealthiest forty…in 1982)(p. 368)…According to studies conducted in the 1970s
and 80s, Jews made up between one fourth and one third of the media elite…(p.
369) Jews are strongly over-represented
in both houses of Congress (three to four times their percentage of the general
population…Jews provide between one-fourth and one-half of all Democratic Party
campaign funds, and…in 27 out of 36 senatorial races of 1986 ‘at least one of
the candidates (and often both) had a Jewish campaign manager or finance
chairman.’”(369)
How did
they use this power? “Young Jewish
students were vastly over-represented in the student Left and the civil rights movement
of the 1960s.(348)…two-thirds of the white Freedom Riders who went South in
1961…; one third to one half of the ‘Mississippi Summer’ volunteers of 1964 (348)
(and two of the three murdered martyred…”(349)
Jewish interest in race and civil rights and had been on-going for
decades, so no one would have been surprised when the leadership of a
governmental regulatory agency on civil rights might be headed by a Jew.
In 1964,
after much debate in Congress, most Republicans and a majority of Democrats joined
to curtail the filibuster conducted by a large segment of the Democratic Party,
which opposed all civil rights legislation.
The proposed new law was in the long tradition of anti-discriminatory
rhetoric and principles developed over decades of agitation. The ideal was simply abbreviated, to treat
people without regard to race, color, or creed.
This ideal had been espoused for so long that some of the words had
changed their meaning over time. In
1900, “race” usually meant what we might call ethnos today, the German race,
the Hungarian race, the French race; while “color” then was more like what we
call race today. Creed then and now
would refer to beliefs, usually religious beliefs. The objective of anti-bias legislation was to
end discrimination against individuals based on race, color, or creed. Nevertheless, when such legislation was
introduced into the State Legislature of New York in the 1940s, opponents
claimed that the result of passage would be “Hitlerian” quotas. (See Anthony
Chen’s, “The Hitlerian Rule of Quotas,” J.
of American History, March 2006, and our correspondence about it, JAH, December 2006) Opponents of the law were defeated when Republican
Gov. Thomas Dewey enthusiastically endorsed the measure; New York thus became
the first state to enact such an anti-discrimination law.
In the
early 1960s with sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and growing protests, there was also a
rising demand for national civil rights legislation. In his
speech on the subject of 28 February 1963, Pres. John Kennedy declared that our
Constitution was color blind. In accord
with this spirit, during the 1963 March on Washington, Martin Luther King
dreamt of the day when his children would be judged by the content of their character
and not by the color of their skin.
After the assassination of Kennedy in
Dallas, the Congress took up the civil rights issue in earnest in 1964. In the debate, Democratic opponents alleged
that the proposed national bill would result in quotas and with Negroes being
hired instead of better qualified whites.
To assure Americans that such would not be the case, Republicans and
Democrats worked to frame the legislation to clarify that there would be
neither quotas nor anti-white discrimination.
For example, several amendments were included so that firms could
continue to use testing to ascertain the best qualified candidates for a
position, even if certain groups did poorly on the examinations. Merit, not quotas, was to be the essential criterion
in hiring and promotion. Part of the new
law explicitly forbade the use of quotas in hiring. Liberal Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minn. announced
he would eat his hat if, because of this proposed law, a Negro would be hired
over a better qualified white. Humphrey
also stated: “…there is nothing in it
[the bill] that will give power to the Commission [the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission, EEOC] or to any court to require hiring, firing, or
promotion of employees in order to meet a racial ‘quota’ or to achieve a racial
balance…In fact, the very opposite is true….Title VII is designed to encourage
hiring on the basis of ability and qualifications, not race or religion.”(Hugh
Graham Davis, The Civil Rights Era,
p. 150) With passage of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, merit and qualifications,
would be the major reason for being hired or promoted. There was to be no more discrimination in
employment based on race, color, creed, and an amendment added sex to the list
of qualities against which discrimination was now forbidden.
To
investigate and enforce the new law, the EEOC was created, and manned by people
who supported civil rights. However,
quickly it became clear that many Blacks failed the employment examinations,
and were not competing well with whites even when there was no
discrimination. Leftist and Black racial
groups were dissatisfied with the outcome of the legislation. They were not receiving the jobs that they
assumed would follow passage of the law.
The non-violent protests of the early 1960s were followed by the riots
of the later 60s.
I emphasize, in the debate in
Congress about the proposed law, no senator who favored
the civil rights bill spoke up for quotas, "positive integration,"
racial balance or preferences for minorities above whites. Quite the contrary.
So, how then did a law which promised to end
discrimination by outlawing discrimination against any individual, a law that
promised preferences for no group, which agreed to retain testing to reject
unqualified applicants - how was this law subverted into its opposite? Here the role of Alfred Blumrosen is crucial. Blumrosen was among the zealots working for
the EEOC who did not want the agency to function in accord with its legal
mandate.
Alfred Blumrosen was instrumental in this and other shifts. He was
a professor at Rutgers University who became the EEOC's liaison chief for
federal, state and local agencies, and he admitted that his
"creative" reading of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was "contrary to the plain meaning." (Graham,
195, emphasis mine) But why worry? By
1965 when the Bank of America instituted quota hiring under a euphemism,
"the standard refrain of the EEO bureaucracies, [was that] affirmative
action [AA] had nothing to do with racial quotas. That was illegal."
Unfortunately, that deceptive refrain is still heard today.
The goal of Sonia Pressman, another ideologue in the EEOC, was
"to document large disparities in employment patterns, [so] that
discriminatory intent might legally be inferred." The EEOC sought to
impose quotas while not calling them such because quotas were clearly illegal.
The agency sought to break the law.
Blumrosen and Pressman pushed the EEOC to defy the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 by imposing quotas, demanding racial balance in the workplace and
giving preferences to Blacks over whites. Essential to the Blumrosen campaign
was the collection of statistics to show "disparate impact," how minorities
were underutilized, employed in a smaller proportion in various occupations to
their numbers in the general population.
Blumrosen was set upon "selectively enforcing" the civil
rights act by using disparate impact theory and proportional representation
only when it affected others. (More accurately, Blumrosen was "selectively
malenforcing" the civil rights law, imposing quotas for underrepresented Blacks,
using quotas to curb whites; for women, against men; but never for gentiles and
against Jews.)
Of course, had the EEOC sought to restrict Jews as it has restricted
white men, the storm of protest would have cast "disparate impact"
theory into the dustbin of history. Thus, the role of Blumrosen and his allies
in the media, academia etc., was to create a false target - the
"overrepresented," "privileged" and "oppressive"
white male. According to the EEOC, the statistics proved just that. However,
the statistics proved otherwise. The partial statistics used by Blumrosen were
simply the effort to deflect criticism to another group instead of the one most
overrepresented, privileged and oppressive - his own.
By not asking the religious question on the EEOC questionnaires,
the EEOC created a scapegoat of the white male. Once smeared as
"privileged" and "oppressive," the non-privileged,
working-class and poor whites began to pay the price for the "moral"
system of affirmative action by being legally discriminated against and denied
equal opportunity.
The proportional test, the liberals' test of all tests, when
applied to the religious clause of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, shows Jews to
be the most privileged and oppressive of people in America. The favorite
test of liberals reveals white men to be less privileged than the Jews.
Why does not The New York Times, the EEOC, NBC, CBS or ABC report that
statistic? They remain silent on the
issue of Jewish privilege while simultaneously exposing every time white men
are somewhat overrepresented. Why the silence regarding Jews? A glance at the
ownership of the media just might have something to do with this disparity in
exposing "privilege." And if any individual in the media dared to
expose some Jewish privilege, there would be a thunderous assault upon that
individual's "bigotry." However, daily, reporters write of white male
privilege, but almost no one denounces this anti-white bigotry.
Once smeared as privileged, the non-privileged middle-class,
working-class, and poor whites pay for the "moral" system of AA
by being legally discriminated against and denied equal opportunity. But then
the history of America since the 1960s is often the record of wealthy liberals
using the law to curb and oppress blue-collar whites, because the blue-collar
folk are deemed privileged, prejudiced and provincial. Therefore, such blue-collar
whites deserve to be passed over in scholarships, jobs, and promotions; the
blue-collar crowd should be shunted aside, and instead the "pets" of
the elite should be elevated: the children of illegal immigrants, of wealthy
minorities and the daughters of rich liberals. And this is done in the name of
morality, fairness, and justice.
In summary, the great hoax concocted by Blumrosen and his
collaborators in the media, academy, and government is "white male
privilege." Most white men are not privileged. Those who are, often
support AA because it is no loss to them – for their children will not require
a scholarship, an entry-level job, a position as policeman or fireman, or a
promotion. It is the poor and middle-class whites who, denied equal opportunity,
must pay with thinning wallets and shrunken dreams for the "morality of
diversity" imposed by the wealthy, liberal elite.
My point is
this, not merely that personnel is policy (sometimes), but that Jewish
bureaucrats in the EEOC defied the will of the American people and broke the
law they were pledged to enforce, by turning a law against discrimination into
a law requiring proportional representation of groups (one that inevitably
resulted in discrimination against better qualified white male candidates.) Furthermore, they deliberately refused to use
the same measure of enforcement concerning religious discriminatory aspects of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Had they
done so, they would have had to demand no law schools admit Jews until the
number of Jewish lawyers was reduced to 3%, and medical schools must be 97%
gentile until gentiles reached their fair share of that lucrative profession,
and the same proportion in education, films, journalism, etc.
I do not
mean that a few Jews in an agency alone could so radically change the US. Leftwing Justices on the Supreme Court,
collaborators in other governmental agencies, researchers in sociological
departments, and rioters, all converged to aid Blumrosen in his remaking of
America. Important too, though
surprising to many, was liberal Republican President Richard Nixon, who revived
Lyndon B. Johnson’s Philadelphia Plan, a quota plan for hiring in the
construction trades in that city (under the euphemism of goals and timetables,
meaning the company would be granted time to reach the quota). Nixon revived and expanded the goals and
timetables approach and made it “affirmative action,” extending it to all jobs,
making it nation-wide, and expanding the quotas to Hispanics, women, and
others. But it was Blumrosen, Pressman,
and some other Jewish bureaucrats in other agencies that got the ball rolling,
a ball that would change America. Some
Jews like Bakke, in the lawsuit that
bears his name, sued in court because of the anti-white discrimination, but most
Jews were in the camp of the Left, and they supported rights by groups, rather
than individual rights. At late as 2003
when a most important AA case from Michigan went before the US Supreme Court, the
gentile vote was 4-3 against affirmative action. But
Justices Ruth Bader-Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer, the two Jews then on the
court, voted solidly in favor of AA – so the final vote was 5-4 in favor of AA
and the quota system continues to this day because of Jewish support.
IF THERE IS WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE, THERE IS FAR MORE JEWISH PRIVILEGE. IF THERE IS NO JEWISH PRIVILEGE, THEN THERE IS CERTAINLY NO SUCH THING AS WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE!
How does
this relate to Slezkine’s book? Over-representation
of Jews in the upper reaches of the various national elites was the major
question facing Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. Slezkine, like Thomas Sowell, compares Jews
in Europe to other minority trader-business-circus types. Slezkine calls them all Mercurians and
contrasts them with the more agricultural, warrior, physical types, the
Apollonians. Interestingly, he rejects
the Nietzschian model, asserting that the Dionysians were simply drunken
Apollonians. Like Sowell, he sees the
analogy between the Jews in Europe, the Chinese in Southeast Asia, the Indians
in East Africa, and the Parsis in India.
Slezkine also adds the gypsies.
Many have questioned the latter, for while Jews were often outsiders at
the top of the economic ladder, gypsies were at the bottom.
By 1900
some social scientists like Max Weber had concluded that there was a connection
between the Protestant ethic and capitalism.
Yet, others saw a closer connection between capitalism and Judaism. “Most radical Jewish memoirists remembered
…acquisitiveness stripped of the Jewish tradition was distilled capitalism,
i.e., ‘practical, real Judaism.’”(153)
Of course,
there were numerous successful Protestant businessmen. But as Slezkine notes: “A Scottish Protestant
was not just a pork-eating Jew, as Heine would have it; he was a solitary Jew,
a Jew without the people of Israel, the only creature to have been chosen.”(43)
This observation by Slezkine implies
that it may not have been mere aptitude of the individuals that propelled Jews
to such success.
Slezkine
also argues that successful Jews became lonely individuals, too. They had become modern, less religious,
deprived of their tribe, but not allowed to join in the rising nationalisms
swirling round them no matter how much Goethe or Pushkin they could
recite.(74-75) However, even if Jews
could not fully partake in the nationalisms of the French, Czechs, Poles,
flooding the lands in which they resided, this did not mean that they were
alone. Slezkine asserts “Communism was
the principle religion of the young Jewish intellectuals…”(209) Perhaps, children of successful businessmen,
they joined together to remake society.
They may have been somewhat deprived of the comforts of their religious
traditions, which they rejected, but they were meeting, greeting, and joining
others of their tribe (and some gentiles too) in a modern variation of their
ancient faith.
According
to Slezkine, “…Jews created the left-wing intellectual movement in
Germany.”(86) He then presents a list of
Jewish socialists and communists in early 20th century Europe
demonstrating their influence on the movement.(85) Slezkine acknowledges that when Bela Kun’s
Communist regime took power in Hungary after WWI, 20 of the 26 ruling commissars
were Jews. He also mentions that the
Bavarian Soviet Republic of 1919 was led by Jews.(85) He does not mention how a soldier, recently
released from hospital after being gassed at the front, was elected from his
unit as a representative to the Soviet.
That soldier, Adolf Hitler, also marched in a procession honoring one of
the Bavarian Soviet’s Jewish leaders.(See my “Affirmative Action and the Nazis.”) Though the Soviet was Jewish led, clearly its
message appealed to gentiles too.
What was
true in central Europe was true in Russia.
Slezkine discusses Jewish over-representation among the Bolshevik
leadership, with Trotsky head of the Red Army, and numerous Jews in the
leadership. Even Lenin had a Jewish
grandfather (though it was not widely known, and when, after his death, a
relative wanted to publicize this fact, Stalin vehemently suppressed it.) There were Communist leaders who were not
Jews, but often their wives were, or they had in-laws who were.
Jews also
performed an important role in the secret police of the Bolshevik government. “…in the Cheka (sec. police), Bolsheviks of
Jewish origin combined ideological commitment with literacy in way that set
them apart and propelled them upward. In
1918, 65.5% of all Jewish Cheka employees were ‘responsible officials.’ Jews made up 19.1% of all central apparatus
investigators and 50%...of the investigators employed in the department for
combating counterrevolution. In 1923, at
the…creation of the OGPU (the Cheka’s successor), Jews made up 15.5% of
‘leading’ officials and 50% of the top brass…”(177)
The
Bolsheviks had their AA programs to dismiss unreliable former governmental
officials, and the older bureaucrats of Russian or German heritage now had to
pass tests of loyalty. And who would be the
judge? And if they were fired, whom
would the Communists hire to replace them?
Jews effectively manned the new bureaucracy in the Soviet state. After all, Jews were the “true believers” in
Communism,(232) the most dedicated of apostles of the new system.(156)
“Most
members of the new Soviet elite were not Jews, and most Jews were not members
of the new Soviet elite. But there is no
doubt that the Jews had a much higher proportion…than any other ethnic group in
the USSR.”(236) “From the inception of
the Soviet regime, the unique combination of exceptionally high literacy rates
and a remarkable degree of political loyalty… had made Jews the backbone of the
new Soviet bureaucracy.”(224) And what
were some of the reasons for the large over-representation of Jews in the
Soviet elite? One Soviet authority, Yuri
Larin (who was Jewish) presented 3 reasons for their success, one of which I cite
here, “the strong sense of solidarity among them.”(252) Slezkine elaborates on the results over time:
“Indeed, the Soviet secret police…known after 1934 as the NKVD – was among the
most Jewish of Soviet institutions.”(254)
Slezkine adds that Jews were dominant in the Soviet Foreign Service and
in spying for the USSR in Western Europe and in the USA. Jews also headed the Gulag institutions and
camps until November 1938.(255)
Of course,
in the 1920s the Soviet Union was not the only nation in which Jews were doing
well. Indeed, what Jews were more
admired for their enormous success and influence than the Jews of Germany. Jewish Communists in Moscow may have been in
the Soviet elite, but they were still impoverished by German standards. Rounding up kulaks, running concentration
camps, ruffians! How could that compare
to Dr. this, and Prof. that in Germany?
As Germany reorganized following defeat in WWI, the new Weimar
Constitution for the republic was mainly the handiwork of a Jew, Hugo Preuss. Though less than 1% of the population Jewish
success was evident in books, newspapers, Einstein and other scientists, the
new film industry, department stores, banks, furs, and the lucrative
professions.(See my “Affirmative Action and the Nazis for many more examples of
statistical over-representation.”) Slezkine
reports, “In 1908-11, in Germany…, Jews made up 0.95% of the population... and
31% of the richest families (with a “ratio” of economic over-representation” of
33, the highest anywhere, according to W. E. Rubenstein.(50) Someone remarked that if you went to a
play, it was probably written by a Jew, directed by another, reviewed by a 3rd,
in a newspaper edited by a 4th and owned by a 5th. As these general statistics are rather well
known, I shall quote sparingly: “In Prussia, 16% of physicians, 15% of
dentists, and one fourth of all lawyers in 1925 were Jews; and in interwar
Poland, Jews were about 56% of all doctors in private practice, 43.3% of all
private teachers and educators, 33.5% of all lawyers and notaries, and 22% of
all journalists, publishers, and librarians.”(50) Slezkine adds that by 1900 “In large parts
of Eastern Europe, virtually the whole ‘middle class’ was Jewish.”(50) According to Slezkine, the Rothschilds were
the wealthiest family of the 19th century “by a wide margin.”(48)
In Central
Europe there was a growing desire to restrict Jewish over-representation in the
economy and culture of the various new nations after WWI. This was “the Jewish Question.” And it is related to AA. In the 1920s Soviet Jews in the bureaucracy
had used AA to eliminate from government jobs the Orthodox Christians, the old
nobility, the former German-Russian bureaucrats, the “bourgeoisie,” and a
little later physically eliminate the kulaks and other “counter revolutionary
elements through starvation, the Gulag, drowning in the White Sea Canal
project, or through a bullet in the head.
Jews, powerful in the secret police and true believers in the system
were, as Slezkine writes, “Stalin’s willing executioners.”(103)
The
counter-attack occurred with Hitler’s rapid rise in depression-ridden
Germany. Boycotts of Jewish stores,
dismissal of Jews from government posts (teachers, judges, etc.), limits on
their admission to university to their percentage of the population, followed
by ever-increasing segregation, discrimination, isolation, until the final
solution. Other European nations also
partook in these policies.
Slezkine
reveals that the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 would result in Jews losing posts
in the Soviet Foreign Service, but no major change occurred immediately. With the attack on the Soviet Union in summer
1941 by Nazi-led Europe, the role of Jews did change. The Nazis equated Communism and Jews, and
they sought to exterminate one by killing off the other. Jews were treated so differently by the
invader, that the Jews were determined to fight them to the death. After the defeat of Germany, Stalin
established puppet states in Eastern Europe, and whom could he rely on to be
sufficiently determined to root out all traces of Nazism but the Jews. And so in Eastern Europe, the remnant of Jews
often took posts in the new Communists governments, including manning the secret
police and running concentration camps with different inmates. But when Israel defeated to Arabs to create a
new state, a major change occurred.
Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir visited Moscow in the late 1940s and
was hailed by Soviet Jews with intense enthusiasm. Stalin began to fear the loyalties of the
Soviet Jews. There were trials in
Eastern Europe accusing the Jews (and some others) of working for foreign (CIA)
or other groups. In the USSR itself,
some leading Jews simply disappeared, and various Jewish committees cease to
exist. Anti-Semitism was vocalized, and
fear spread. What was happening? Who would disappear next? Why was the Party betraying the Jews? Slezkine includes an illuminating anecdote
from Ester Markish: “After the arrest of [Perets] Markish, our maid, who had
lived in our house for more than fifteen years and had, in effect, becoming a
member of our family, said to me: ‘You are crying now, but you did not mind
when my father was being dekulakized, martyred for no reason at all, and my
whole family thrown out in the street?’”(310-11) Some thought Stalin was even contemplating a
round-up of all the Jews, to be sent to Siberia or worse. Then Stalin died.
Though Jews
continued to be over-represented in the Soviet elite, the leadership of the Soviet
Communist Party (CP) was determined to reduce their influence. AA was used to get more ethnics into
university – Russians, Kazaks, Uzbeks, etc.
Later attempts to increase blue-collar admissions were meant to reduce
the influence of Jews and stimulate loyalty to the Party. Jews became ever more alienated, an
intellectual class distrusting the political leaders, and the distrust was
mutual. Jews were no longer the true
believers. But Slezkine points out, as
the regime aged, no one seemed to believe any more. With pressure from the US, whose government
was pressured by Jewish groups, Jews were allowed to exit the USSR. Then the Soviet Union collapsed. By 1994 only 230,000 Jews remained in the
Russian Federation.(361)
Slezkine’s
book is about immigration – of Jews from the Pale of Settlement in the Russian
Empire to 3 possible ideal areas. Some
left for America. Some, in the turmoil
of WWI, left the shtetl for Moscow or Petersburg, and more joined them with the
Bolshevik victory. A few went to the
deserts of the Middle East. By the
1920s, it seemed those who left for Moscow had made the correct choice, - they
had power, discrimination against them was illegal, and they were the elite
(with a Russian nanny and a dacha) even if they lacked many of the new
commercial items available in America.
But Slezkine ignores another kind of utopia of the era – one to which
large numbers of Jews could not easily immigrate – Germany. The German Jews seemed to have it all. They were the top, the pinnacle of Jewish
culture, modernity and influence in a leading nation (unlike backward Russia). Yet, the 1% of immense influence in Germany
was struck in 1933, and demolished by 1945.
Slezkine
admits the great hopes by Jews in the Soviet experiment were crushed too. Not as murderously as those in Germany, but
crushed never the less. In America,
Jewish influence permeates in films, radio, TV, journalism, and so many areas
of commerce and culture, politics and theory, one cannot overestimate it. Surely, Jewish influence was even
determinative in the EEOC! Was the invention of "white male privilege" an application of a lesson learned from the disastrous German experience?
And what
about Israel, the third locale for migration from the Pale?
The
economic position of Jews in Germany was quite different from that of the
average German. Professionals, business
men, educators, engineers, scientists, literary figures, bankers, department
store moguls, publishers, etc., while many Germans were farmers or factory
workers. Not only were the Jews different,
they were rich, earning about 2.5 RM for every mark earned by a gentile. And with the Great Depression, the gap
between rich and poor, Jew and German seemed to widen. Could Jews “normalize”? Could they become Appollonians like the rest
of society? The Nazis asserted that they
could not and had to be driven from Germany, from Europe, and when they did not
go, they were exterminated.
Soviet
Russia also sought to “normalize” the Jews.
There were discussions of giving them farm land in the Crimea, which had
been forcibly vacated by Tartars who, fighting against the Bolsheviki, had been
removed to Siberia. Opposition to the
Crimean venture was strong, and nothing came of it. However, in 1928 the USSR provided an oblast
(not a full province) to the Jews.
Birobizhan was to be the Soviet Zion.
There Jews would become farmers and day laborers; they would become
Appollonians, like most people.
Birobizhan was in Siberia north of Mongolia, and Slezkine mentions one
family of Jews that resettled there. After one of them froze to death, they
returned to the big cities of Russia.
Soviet Jews remained Mercurians, but many were ensconced in the
bureaucracy or the Cheka. Even today,
after 85 years, most of the population of Birobizhan is not Jewish.
In America,
Jews were successful, like their German cousins, and following WWII, they
witnessed a sharp decline in anti-Semitism.
Ivy League universities, which early in the 20th century only
reluctantly admitted Jewish students, had so changed that by 1990 all of the
presidents of the Ivy League universities were Jewish. The Irish-American sociologist and
politician, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, assessed the public schools of New York
City as having “transformed two generations of Jewish immigrants into the intellectual
elite of the world’s most powerful nation.”(Graham, 310-11) In post-WWII America, Jews were probably as
wealthy and as influential as their cousins had been in Weimar Germany, but in
America, they faced diminishing hostility Indeed, one might
speculate that the creation of “white male privilege” was an attempt to avoid
the murderous consequences of the German experience, in which Jews were an
elite class, but obvious, alone, and hence a target, the 1%. In America, no one speaks of Jewish
privilege, but there are ever more denunciations of white male privilege. Anti-Semitism declines while poor whites
experience ever more discrimination.
In Israel,
Jews would become Appollonians, farmers, kibutzniks, and most importantly,
warriors. In 1933 there was a strange
concurrence of policies between Nazis and Zionists – both wanted the Jews out
of Germany. In the mid-1930s, when the
Nazis made the swastika the flag of the nation, Jews were not allowed to
display it. They could, however, display
a Zionist flag. More important, there
was an agreement between the German govt. and the Zionists so that Jews
departing for Palestine (the name for that land at the time) could take with
them more property, and also get credit to purchase necessary items from the
Reich. While other Jewish and Leftist
organizations boycotted German-made products, the Zionists did not partake in
the boycott. Several thousand Jews left
Germany for Palestine and were able to take considerable sums with them.
Later in
the 1930s the Nazis switched horses in the Middle East. When Arabs began to riot against Jewish
immigrants, the Germans revised their policy.
During WWII the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem rejected British policy which
he deemed pro-Jewish. The Mufti went to
Berlin, met with Hitler, and broadcast from German radio to the Middle
East. His message was simple – kill the
Jews. He even visited a concentration
camp.
Following
WWI, Britain controlled Trans-Jordan (Jordan, Palestine, Israel), but with the
outbreak of WWII, one might wonder if the British could retain it. In nearby Iraq, a pro-Axis coup occurred (led
by a relative of Saddam Hussein). The
British suppressed it, but many Jews were killed by the rebels. Syria had been given to the French, but
suddenly the French under Marshall Petain were collaborating with Germany. And when Gen. Rommel’s Afrika Korps rumbled
past the border of Libya into Egypt, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was
preparing to greet the German conqueror, one could wonder about the future of
Jews in Egypt and Palestine. Rommel was
defeated at El Alamein 11 November 1942.
Vichy France fell later. Jews no longer had to fear a Nazi conquest in
the area, but they still had to fear the Arabs.
In May 1948
Israel declared independence, and was immediately attacked by all its Arab
neighbors. With weapons from various
sources, including eastern European Communist states, the Israelis won and
extended their borders beyond the untenable UN suggested ones. But the existence of Israel has been denied
by some of its neighbors ever since. It
is a state in a constant state of war.
The military, the soldier, the secret service, and the scientists are
all necessary to the continuance of the state.
Slezkine sums up the process: “Israel was the only postwar European
state (‘European’ in both composition and inspiration) to have preserved the
ethos of the great nationalist and socialist revolutions of the interwar
period. Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s
Italy had been defeated and discredited; Franco’s Spain and Salazar’s Portugal
had discarded whatever fascist fervor they had tolerated; Ataturk’s Turkey had
routinized its triumph over both cosmopolitanism and popular religion…and
Stalin’s Soviet Union had begun to represent itself as middle-aged, mature, a
little weary, and perhaps ready for some material comforts and a bit of family
happiness. Only Israel continued to live
in the European 1930s;”(327) Slezkine
notes the irony, for as Jews in Israel became Appollonian, much of the West
became Mercurian.
And this
difference between Israel with its “warrior culture”(327) and the liberal,
multicultural West of today has led to an obvious dichotomy on the part of
Western Jews. In the West, Jews
generally support open borders, large-scale immigration of very different
peoples to the Western nations. But
Israel seeks to deport the “infiltrators.”
And it does so despite nonsensical denunciations from the UN. Jews in the West, going back to Franz Boas
and his school of social science, dismissed the importance of race, and some
later social scientists even deny that race exists. Jared Diamond condemned The Bell Curve’s conclusions of differences among the races in IQ
as “notorious.” He wrote Guns, Germs and
Steel to demonstrate that in human development race was unimportant compared to
geography. Yet, Prof. Diamond was
delighted when DNA might be used to detect who is a Jew and who therefore who should
be allowed into Israel, - and who should not.
If America, of France, or Sweden were to act as does Israel, American
Jews, French Jews, and Swedish Jews, all anchored with the Left, would be
organizing massive protests against their governments. Yet, they support Israel.
If certain
policies are so good for Israel, why are they bad when a Western nation does
the same? Why does the Jewish community
praise one and denounce the other? Is it
hypocrisy? Or, as Kevin McDonald
suggests, is it an attempt by a very smart people to weaken its possible
competitors by turning the West into 3rd World disaster nations, and
transform all American cities into Detroit, Newark, East St. Louis?
Slezkine
has written a most important book, and one that won the National Jewish Book
Award. It is provocative in the best
sense of the word.
Though Slezkine’s
book preceded the election to the American Presidency of Barrack Hussein Obama,
it may be appropriate to discuss Slezkine’s book in view of Obama’s
policies. Slezkine’s book, though much
of it describes the Russian experience, concludes that the Jewish migration to
Moscow and Petersburg was a failure.
Communism betrayed the Jews long before the Soviet system
collapsed. So the two successful Jewish
migrations were to the US and to Israel.
Obama may
have been a Muslim as a child, and he appears to view the West as a colonial
power, exploiting nations who have become impoverished through capitalist
policies. When the “Arab Spring” erupted
in Egypt, Obama praised the movement.
America’s long-time ally, Mubarak was overthrown, and Obama was pleased
that his military government would now be replaced by democracy. True, an attractive, blond, CBS reporter may
have been raped in the Egyptian celebrations for democracy, and Jewish tourists
were quickly exiting the land of pyramids, and Coptic Christians were uneasy,
but Obama was delighted as democracy swept through Egypt. In the elections, the Muslim Brotherhood,
awaiting power since Rommel’s panzers approached, now had their day. In the democratic Egypt under the Muslim
Brotherhood, the Christian minority was persecuted, some murdered, and ancient
churches torched. To show that they were
equal opportunity bigots, the religious leader of the Brotherhood announced
that Jews were descendants of pigs and monkeys and promised to destroy Israel
and the Jews.
When the
Arab Spring spread to neighboring Libya, the American Ambassador and 3 special
agents were murdered. Whom did Hillary
Clinton, American Sec. of State, and Pres. Obama blame for the murder? Not the Muslim extremists. They blamed an Egyptian Christian living in
the US who had made a film mocking Mohammad.
In recent
years Muslim terrorists killed innocents in China, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan,
Indonesia, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Russia, the US, Nigeria. Muslim intolerance and murder has already
wiped the Jews out of most of the Middle East, now they seek to destroy the
ancient Christian communities in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, etc. In Afghanistan, some time ago, the Muslims
destroyed huge statues of Buddha carved from a mountain over a millennium
ago. A Muslim Brotherhood cleric in
Egypt spoke of destroying the pagan pyramids.
Recently, one Muslim sect in the new ISIS realm physically destroyed the
old tomb of Jonah.
And yet
President Obama urges Israel to return to its 1948 borders! Why not have the US return to ours of
1800? One must admire Israel’s
determination NOT to be fooled by the liberals into concluding a suicidal
peace. One hopes that in the future,
Western leaders will ignore the liberal Jewish establishment and do what is
necessary to protect American borders from massive immigration invasion,
American cultural from the multicultural anarchy, and restore order rather than
excusiology in the courts. Israel has a
sane policy. But in the West, Jewish
influence often prevents the developed nations from adopting sane policies,
like the ones followed in Israel.
Slezkine
notes that when Jews were a main bulwark (if not the bulwark) for the Soviet
state, not only were they “Stalin’s willing executioners,” but they “were never
quite sure why they were executing some people and not others.”(103) In Israel, they know. There are those who clearly want to destroy
Israel and kill all the Jews. It is kill
or be killed. Sadly, in American cities
today, people are beginning to confront the same horrible choice.
Slezkine
has written a most important book, and one that won the National Jewish Book
Award. It is provocative in the best
sense of the word.
