THE ANTI-SEMITE
To understand any problem one must study not only its real factors as
they appear to a reasonable man who sees the whole affair steadily; one
must also understand the insanities and distortions the problem has
provoked, for they singularly illustrate its character and force.
It is not enough to consider only the actual in any difficulty to be
solved, it is necessary also to consider the imaginary; because the
legend or illusion is a direct product of the truth and shows how the
truth has acted on other minds.
Thus a caricature brings out what we unconsciously know to be present in
any personality, emphasizes it, and though false in its exaggeration,
forbids us to forget it in the future. Thus any extreme, no matter how
false its lack of proportion, is of the highest value to judgment.
In a practical problem of politics there is another most weighty reason
for examining extreme and distorted opinion: which is, that in politics
we deal not only with real things but with the liking or disliking of
these things by living men: their exaggerated or ill-informed affection
or repulsion. All statesmanship lies in the apprehension of enthusiasm
and indifference.
Now there are in this great political problem presented by the Jewish
race in our midst two extremes. One we have already studied: it is the
extreme folly of falsehood, of pretending that the problem is not there.
That extreme was an almost universal folly in the immediate past,
especially in this country. It is now abandoned by all of our generation
save a few people of an official sort, and these will not long maintain
an attitude outworn and already ridiculous.
But the other extreme remains to be studied. It is, in our society,
quite a recent phenomenon, though it has gained very great strength in
recent years and is increasing alarmingly. It is the extreme of hatred.
It is the extreme manifested by those who have but one motive in their
action towards the Jewish race, and that motive a mere desire for its
elimination. It implies that there is no peace possible between the two
races; no reasoned political solution. It relies upon nothing but
antagonism. It is already very strong, and its adherents believe
themselves to be on the eve of a sort of blundering triumph.
Every one who desires to deal with this grave political matter
practically, that is, to establish a permanent policy, will be much more
concerned with the extreme here examined than with the other extreme,
which ignores the problem altogether. For this new extreme of active
hatred is flourishing; that other, older extreme no longer functions.
The near future will have to deal, in practical politics, not only with
the problem presented by the Jews as an alien power within the State,
but (what will probably prove a more difficult matter) with the hater
of the Jew, who is claiming, and rapidly achieving, power on his side.
The type is as old as the problem; it is two thousand years old. But it
waxes and wanes. Its modern name of "Anti-Semite" is as ridiculous in
derivation as it is ludicrous in form. It is partly of German academic
origin and partly a newspaper name, vulgar as one would expect it to be
from such an origin, and also as falsely pedantic as one would expect,
but the exasperated mood of which it is a label is very real.
I say the word "Anti-Semite" is vulgar and pedantic: that I think will
be universally admitted. It is also nonsensical. The antagonism to the
Jews has nothing to do with any supposed "Semitic" race--which probably
does not exist any more than do many other modern hypothetical
abstractions, and which, anyhow, does not come into the matter. The
Anti-Semite is not a man who hates the modern Arabs or the ancient
Carthaginians. He is a man who hates Jews.
However, we must accept the word because it has become currency, and go
on to the more essential matter of discovering how those to whom it
applies are moved, what the result of their action would be if (or when)
they could act freely; and, most important of all, of what they are a
sign.
The Anti-Semite is a man marked by two main characters. In the first
place he hates the Jews _in themselves_. His motive is not a hatred of
their presence in our society. His motive is not the hatred of
concealment, falsehood, hypocrisy, corruption and all the other
incidental evils of that false position. These things, indeed, irritate
him, but they are not his leading motive. His leading motive is a
hatred of the Jewish people. He is in intense reaction against this
alien thing which he perceives to have acquired so much power in his
society. The way in which it has exercised this power especially
exasperates him. But he will remain a hater of the Jewish nation when
they are despised, insignificant, and neglected, and he will remain a
hater of it even if there be then attached to its position no accidents
of secrecy, falsehood and financial corruption. The type increases
rapidly when Jews have power: it becomes almost universal when they
begin to abuse that power. It dwindles as that power declines. But it is
always the same and is an index of peril.
The Anti-Semite is a man who _wants to get rid of the Jews_. He is
filled with an instinctive feeling in the matter. He detests the Jew as
a Jew, and would detest him wherever he found him. The evidences of such
a state of mind are familiar to us all. The Anti-Semite admires, for
instance, a work of art; on finding its author to be a Jew it becomes
distasteful to him though the work remains exactly what it was before.
The Anti-Semite will confuse the action of any particular Jew with his
general odium for the race. He will hardly admit high talents in his
adversaries, or if he admits them he will always see in their expression
something distorted and unsavoury.
When an accusation is made against a Jew he cannot adopt the judicial
attitude any more than could that other extremist, the humbug who denies
the Jewish problem altogether. Just as that other person, now passing
out of our lives, would not admit a Jew to be guilty under the most
glaring evidence and was particularly unable to admit guilt in a Jew who
might be wealthy; just as he proclaimed the Jews as a whole impeccable,
so does the Anti-Semite approach every Jew with a presumption of his
probable guilt, so does he exaggerate this prejudice when he has to deal
with a wealthy Jew, and so does he consider the whole Jewish race in the
lump as probably guilty of pretty well any charge brought against it.
The contrast was very well seen in the Dreyfus case, when the old type
of extremist was still strong. He would not look at the evidence against
Dreyfus, he would not, if he could help it, mention his race. All he
knew was that Dreyfus was and must in the nature of things be innocent
and that all the diverse men who testified against him were wicked
conspirators. The new type of extremist, then but rising and not yet
master, would not listen to the strong evidence in Dreyfus' favour,
refused to re-examine the case after the chief witness had been found
guilty of forgery, made up his mind that Dreyfus was necessarily guilty
and was convinced that all his supporters were dupes or knaves.
The mere fact that the Jews exist, let alone that they are powerful,
poisons life for such a man. He is led by his lop-sided enthusiasm into
the most ridiculous errors. In this country every name of German origin
at once suggests a Jew to him. Every financial operation, especially if
it be of doubtful morality, must certainly have a Jew behind it;
wherever a number of partners, Jewish and non-Jewish, are engaged in
some bad work (as, for instance, in one of our innumerable Parliamentary
scandals), a Jew must always for this sort of person be the prime mover
and the evil genius of the whole.
As is the case with every other mania, this mania rapidly obscures the
general vision of its victim. His prejudices soon lose proportion
altogether. He comes to see the Jew in everything and everywhere, and to
accept confidently propositions which he would himself see to be
contradictory, could he give a moment's quiet thought to the matter.
Thus I have heard on all sides in the last few years these strange
assertions proceeding from the same source, yet obviously incompatible
one with the other: That modern scepticism was Jewish in its origin;
that modern superstition, our modern necromancy and crystal gazing and
all the rest of it, was Jewish in its origin; that the evils of
democracy are all Jewish in their origin; that the evil of tyrannical
government, in Prussia, for instance, was Jewish in its origin; that the
pagan perversions of bad modern art were Jewish in their origin; that
the puerility of bad church furniture was due to Jewish dealers; that
the Great War was the product of Jewish armament firms; that the
anti-patriotic appeals which weakened the allied armies came from Jewish
sources--and so on. It is indeed true that there is a Jewish quality in
all these diverse and contradictory things where a Jew mixes in them;
just as there is a Scotch, or French, or English quality when a Scot, a
Frenchman, or an Englishman is the agent. But to ascribe the whole
boiling to the Jew, and to make him the conscious origin of all, is a
contradiction in terms.
The Anti-Semite is a man so absorbed in his subject that he at last
loses interest in any matter, unless he can give it some association
with his delusion, for delusion it is.
In a sense, of course, this state of mind is a sort of compliment to the
Jewish nation. If such a preoccupation with them be not amicable it is
at least intense, and those against whom it is directed may well regard
it as a proof of their importance in the world. But that aspect of the
phenomenon is not consoling for the future of either of us--the Jew who
now nervously awaits attack, and we who desire to forestall and prevent
such attack.
The Anti-Semite is very much more numerous and very much more powerful
than might be imagined from the reading of the daily press; for the
press is still, for the most part, under the convention of ignoring the
Jewish problem and under the terror of the financial results which might
follow from a discussion of it. His universal activity is not yet to be
read of in the great newspapers; but in conversation and in the practice
of daily life we hear of it everywhere.
And here I may digress upon a modern feature which applies to all
political problems and therefore to this Jewish problem among others.
The great movements of our time have never _originated_ in the press of
the great cities. They rise and store up their energies in political
cliques, in popular gatherings, and spoken rumours long before they
appear in this main instrument for the spreading of news. That is
because the press of our great cities is controlled by very few men,
whose object is not the discussion of public affairs, still less the
giving of full information to their fellow-citizens, but the piling up
of private fortune. As these men are not, as a rule, educated men, nor
particularly concerned with the fortunes of the State, nor capable of
understanding from the past what the future may be, they will never take
up a great movement until it is forced upon them. On the contrary, they
will waste energy in getting up false excitement upon insignificant
matters where they feel safe, and even in using their instruments for
the advertisement of their own insignificant lives. In all this, the
modern press of our great cities differs very greatly from the press of
a lifetime ago. It was not always owned by educated men, but it was
conducted by highly educated men, who were given a free hand. It
therefore concerned itself with problems of real importance and it
debated upon either side real contrasts of opinion upon those matters.
This modern press of ours does none of these things; but precisely
because it is so reluctant to express real emotion it does, when the
emotion is forced upon it, let it out in a flood. Just as it would not
tell the truth when a thing was growing, so when it reaches an extreme
it will not exercise restraint. On the contrary, if the "stunt" be an
exciting one, it will push it (once it has made up its mind to talk of
it at all) in the most extreme form and to the last pitch of violence.
We have seen that plainly enough in the monstrous expressions of foreign
policy during the last ten years, and we have seen it in the abominable
hounding of individuals to which that same press has lent itself.
Now in the matter of Anti-Semitic feeling we shall have, I think,
exactly the same phenomenon repeated. That feeling is now ubiquitous. It
is spreading with an alarming rapidity, and the increase of its
intensity is even more remarkable than the increase in the numbers of
its adherents. Sooner or later--and fairly soon, I imagine--the press
will give it voice. When it _does_, it will give it voice, we may be
certain, in the most extreme, the most passionate, the most irrational
form; and when that happens, in a field where passion is already so
wild, God help its victims!
The Anti-Semitic passion, largely based though it is on imaginary
things, has adopted one method of action highly practical. It is a
method of action closely in touch with reality, and productive of
formidable results. I mean _its compiling of documents_. It has here
noted, all over Europe and America, with exactitude, and continues to
put upon record, everything which can be said to the detriment of its
victims.
It discovered at its origin, presented as a barrier against it, the
Jewish weapon of secrecy. The folly of the Jews in using such a weapon
was never better shown, for of all defences it is the easiest to break
down. The Anti-Semites countered at once by making every inquiry, by
collecting their information, by finding out and exposing the true names
hidden under the mask of false ones, by detecting and registering the
relationships between men who pretended ignorance one of the other; it
ferreted all through the ramifications of anonymous finance and
invariably caught the Jew who was behind the great industrial insurance
schemes, the Jew who was behind such and such a metal monopoly, the Jew
who was behind such and such a news agency, the Jew who financed such
and such a politician. That formidable library of exposure spreads
daily, and when the opportunity for general publication is given there
will be no answer to it.
It is the greatest mistake in the world to regard the Anti-Semite in the
vast numerical strength he has now attained all over our civilization as
wholly unpractical and therefore negligible, as a man who cannot
construct a formidable plan of action simply because he has lost his
sense of values. While the movement was growing the method of meeting it
was always that of ridicule. It was a false method. The strength of
Anti-Semitism was and is based not only on intensity of feeling, but
also on industry, an industry very accurate in its methods. The
Anti-Semitic pamphlets, newspapers and books, which the great daily
press is so careful to boycott, form by now a mass of information upon
the whole Jewish problem which is already overwhelming and still
mounting up: and all of it hostile to the Jews. You will not find in it,
of course, any material for the Defendant's Brief, but as a _dossier_
for the Prosecution it is astonishing in extent and accuracy and
correlation.
Now it is to be remembered in this connection that the human mind is
influenced by documentation in a special manner. The exact citation of
demonstrable things with chapter and verse convinces as can no other
method, and the Anti-Semite is ready with such citation on a very large
scale indeed, at the first moment when a general publicity, now denied,
shall be granted to it.
* * * * *
Moreover, this reliance of the Jew upon the futility of the Anti-Semitic
propaganda omits one very important feature. The Anti-Semitic group is
built up of men differing greatly in experience, in judgment and policy.
And it is built up of strata differing greatly in the intensity of their
hatred. It includes many a man with administrative experience, many a
man of great business capacity, of acquired fortune, of talent in
affairs. It includes men with a thorough knowledge of European
diplomacy; it includes men (in great numbers) with the literary gift of
expression for persuading their fellows. Not only is this true, but, as
I have said, it includes a large "right wing" which, because they are
more restrained in expression than the rest, will exercise a greater
weight; men who are not at all blinded by their hatred, though hatred
has become their chief motive; men who retain full capacity for
organizing a plan of action and for carrying it out. It is true that
there is a definite line which divides the Anti-Semite from the rest of
those who are attempting to solve the Jewish problem. It is the line
dividing those whose motive is peace from those whose motive is
antagonism. It is the line dividing those whose object is action,
against the Jew, and those whose object is a settlement. But on the
Anti-Semitic side of that line--that is, among those whose determination
is to suppress and eliminate Jewish influence to the extreme of their
power--there are now very many more than the original enthusiasts who
created the movement.
The Jews should further remember that to-day every one outside their own
community is potentially an Anti-Semite. Not every one, perhaps not even
yet a majority, at least in the directing and wealthier classes, is
other than friendly or indifferent to the Jews, but there has grown up
in every one not a Jew something of reaction against the Jewish power.
It requires but an accident to change this from the latent and slight
thing it is in most men to an angry passion. I have noticed that among
the most violent of Anti-Semites are those who had passed some
considerable portion of their early manhood in ignorance of the whole
problem. These come across a Jew unexpectedly in some relation hostile
to them--they lose money through some Jewish financial operation, or
they connect, for the first time, in middle age, several misfortunes of
theirs with a common element of Jewish action, or they find Jews mixed
up in some attack on their country: thenceforward they become and remain
unrepentant Anti-Semites.
The dupe, when he discovers he has been duped, is dangerous, and there
is even a considerable category of those who have suffered nothing, even
by accident, at the hand of the Jew, yet who, when they discover what
the Jewish power is, feel they have been played with, and grow angry at
the trickery.
It has been and will be with Anti-Semitism as with all movements. When
they begin they are ridiculed. As they grow they come to be feared and
boycotted; but of those that are successful it may be justly said that
the moment of success begins when they turn the corner and from a fad
become a fashion.
It is still (doubtfully) the fashion to separate oneself from the
Anti-Semitic movement. You still hear men, when they write or speak upon
the Jewish problem, no matter with what hostility to the Jew, excuse
themselves as a rule at the beginning of their remarks by saying, "I am
no Anti-Semite." For some flavour of the old ridicule still attaches to
the name. But fashions change rapidly and the new fashion which comes in
to support a growing thing, when it does arrive, arrives in a flood.
We can all of us remember the time when the talk of nationalization, the
old State Socialist talk, was the talk of a few faddists who were
everywhere ridiculed and despised. To-day it is the fashion; and the
practice of State control, State support, the universality of State
action, is such that it is those who oppose it who are now the faddists
and the cranks.
We can all of us remember the day when, in the United States, a
prohibitionist was a faddist, and a very unpopular faddist at that. We
have seen fashion catch him up with a vengeance.
We can all of us remember the day when the supporters of women's
suffrage in England were a very small group of faddists indeed: we know
what has happened there!
The forces driving men towards the Anti-Semitic camp are far stronger
than the forces acting upon these old hobbies of women's suffrage, of
prohibition and the rest. They are personal, intimate forces arising
from the strongest racial instincts and the most bitter individual
memories of financial loss, subjection, national dishonour.
For instance, any German to-day to whom you may talk of his great
disaster will answer by telling you that it is due to the Jews: that the
Jews are preying upon the fallen body of the State; that the Jews are
"rats in the Reich." For one man that blames the old military
authorities for the misfortunes following the war, twenty blame the
Jews, though these were the architects of the former German prosperity,
and among them were found a larger proportion of opponents of the war
than in any other section of the Emperor's subjects. That is but one
example; you will find it repeated in one form or another in almost
every other polity of the modern world.
The Anti-Semite has become a strong political figure. It is a great and
dangerous error at this moment to think his policy is futile. It is a
policy of action, and a policy which may proceed from plan to execution
before we know it.
There used to be quoted years ago--and I have myself quoted it with
approval--a famous question put by a close and reasonable observer of
public affairs upon the Continent, to the most prominent of Continental
Anti-Semites in that day. The question was this: "If you had unlimited
power in this matter, what would you do?" The implied answer was that
the Anti-Semite could do nothing. He could not make a law which would
segregate the Jews for they could escape that law by mixing with those
around them. He could not make a law exiling them; for, first, it would
be impossible to define them; secondly, even if that were possible,
those defined would not be received elsewhere. What could he do? The
implication was, I say, that he could do nothing; he was supposed, in
the presence of that question, to admit his futility.
Unfortunately we now know that he _can_ do something. The Anti-Semite
can persecute, he can attack. With a sufficient force behind him he can
destroy. In much of this destruction he would have, in a present state
of feeling and in most countries, the mass of public opinion behind him.
He could begin with a widespread examination of Jewish wealth and its
origins and an equally widespread confiscation. He could use the dread
of such confiscation as a weapon for compelling the divulgence of Jewish
origins where a man desired to conceal them. He could do this not only
in the case of the wealthy men, but, through the terror of wealthy men,
over the whole field of the Jewish community. He could introduce
registration and with it a segregation of the Jews. Inspired as he would
be by no desire for a settlement agreeable to them, but solely for a
settlement agreeable to _himself_, he could aim at that harsh
settlement, and even though he might not reach his goal, it is not
pleasant to envisage what he might do on his way to it.
But even though the Anti-Semite fail to acquire full power, there remain
attached to his great increase in numbers and intensity of feeling the
prime questions, "What is the _meaning_ of the thing? Why has it arisen?
Why is it spreading? What are the forces nourishing it?"
These are the main questions which those who regret the presence of such
a passion in the body politic, which those who are alarmed about it,
which those who, like the Jews themselves, must, if they are to avoid a
catastrophe, defend themselves against it, would do well to answer.
There has not been as yet sufficient time to answer those questions
fully or to appreciate this great reaction in its entirety, but we can
already judge it in part. The Anti-Semitic movement is essentially a
reaction against the abnormal growth in Jewish power, and the new
strength of Anti-Semitism is largely due to the Jews themselves.
When this angry enthusiasm re-arose in its modern form, first in
Germany, then spreading to France, next appearing, and now rapidly
growing, in England, it was novel and confined to small cliques. The
truths which it enunciated were then as unfamiliar as the false values
on which it also reposed. That universal policy of the Jews against
which it is part of my thesis to argue, a policy natural but none the
less erroneous, the policy of _secrecy_, the policy of _hiding_, at once
took advantage of what was absurd in the novelty of Anti-Semitism. The
Jew, in spite of his age-long experience of menace and active
hostility, in spite of his knowledge of what this sort of spirit had
effected in the past, did not come out into the open. He did not act
against the new attack with open indignation, still less with open
argument, as he should have done. He took advantage of its absurdity, at
its beginnings, in the eyes of the general public. He used all his
endeavours to make the word "Anti-Semitic" a label for something
hopelessly ridiculous, a subject for mere laughter, a matter which no
reasonable man should for a moment consider seriously.
For something between a dozen and twenty years this policy was
successful. The method though less and less firmly established as time
went on, has not yet quite failed. None the less that policy was very
ill-advised. It was used not only to ridicule the Anti-Semite, but what
was quite illegitimate, quite irrational (and bound in the long run to
be fatal), it was used to prevent all discussion of the Jewish question,
though that question was increasing every day in practical importance
and clamouring to be decided.
It was the instinctive policy with the mass of the Jewish nation, a
deliberate policy with most of its leaders, not only to use ridicule
against Anti-Semitism but to label as "Anti-Semitic" any discussion of
the Jewish problem at all, or, for that matter, any information even on
the Jewish problem. It was used to prevent, through ridicule, any
statement of any fact with regard to the Jewish race save a few
conventional compliments or a few conventional and harmless jests.
If a man alluded to the presence of a Jewish financial power in any
region--for instance, in India--he was an Anti-Semite. If he interested
himself in the peculiar character of Jewish philosophical discussions,
especially in matters concerning religion, he was an Anti-Semite. If the
emigrations of the Jewish masses from country to country, the vast
modern invasion of the United States, for instance (which has been
organized and controlled like an army on the march), interested him as
an historian, he could not speak of it under pain of being called an
Anti-Semite. If he exposed a financial swindler who happened to be a
Jew, he was an Anti-Semite. If he exposed a group of Parliamentarians
taking money from the Jews, he was an Anti-Semite. If he did no more
than call a Jew a Jew, he was an Anti-Semite. The laughter which the
name used to provoke was most foolishly used to support nothing nobler
or more definitive than this wretched policy of concealment. Anyone with
judgment could have told the Jews, had the Jews cared to consult such an
one, that their pusillanimous policy was bound to fail. It was but a
postponement of the evil day.
You cannot long confuse interest with hatred, the statement of plain and
important truths with mania, the discussion of fundamental questions
with silly enthusiasm, for the same reason that you cannot long confuse
truth with falsehood. Sooner or later people are bound to remark that
the defendant seems curiously anxious to avoid all investigation of his
case. The moment that is generally observed, the defence is on the way
to failure.
I say it was a fatal policy; but it was deliberately undertaken by the
Jews and they are now suffering from its results. As a consequence you
have all over Europe a mass of plain men who so far from being scared
off from discussing the Jewish problem by this false ridicule are more
determined than ever to thrash it out in the open and to get it settled
upon rational and final lines.
That would perhaps be no great harm in itself. It would merely mean that
a false policy had failed, and that proper frank and loyal discussion
would succeed all this hushing up and boycott. Unfortunately the false
policy had other and much worse consequences. It exasperated men who had
already begun to interest themselves in the political discussion and who
would not tolerate undeserved ridicule. It heaped up a world of
determined opposition to the Jews. It is not exactly that the
Anti-Semite has already won or even is as yet certainly on his way to
winning, but he now has his chance of winning. Whereas, some few years
ago, he had the tide against him, he is now, through the fault of the
Jews themselves, at its turn. He now finds himself on an extreme wing,
it is true, but _attached_ to a very large body which is already
strongly biassed against the Jews, dislikes their presence among us, and
is determined to act against them, not only where they still have great
power, but also where that power is visibly declining, and even where
they are in danger.
It must not be forgotten, as we survey this growing menace, that a
policy which reaches no finality is not on that account futile. It must
not be forgotten that in the minds of many men (one might say in the
minds of most men) during periods of excitement, a policy of repression,
though always failing to reach finality, may still be continuous: it may
become a habit and may endure indefinitely in the vast suffering of its
victims. The Jews have seen that happen in many a small nationality
other than their own. They have seen, no doubt, that continued
repression acting in an atmosphere of equally continuous rebellion has
usually in the long run failed, but they must admit that the maintenance
of such repression, with all its accompaniments of moral and physical
torture, confiscation, exile and all the rest, has often been a policy
long drawn out. It has been drawn out in some cases for centuries. It is
not true that, because a policy does not aim at a complete settlement,
therefore it cannot be undertaken and vigorously pursued. It can. Time
and again a hostile force has attempted to eliminate opposition, or even
contrast, and to eliminate it by every instrument, including massacre
itself. Sometimes, very rarely, it has succeeded. Usually it has, in the
long run, failed. But in the great majority of cases it has at any rate
continued long after its failure was apparent. That is the danger which
menaces from the phenomenon I have examined in this chapter. It would be
madness in the Jews to neglect that phenomenon. It is now so strong in
numbers, intensity of conviction, and passion that it menaces their
whole immediate future in our civilization. Its ultimate causes we have
explored. Its immediate cause, the cause of its sudden development and
present startling growth, we have seen to be the Jewish action in
Russia, and to this, which I have already touched upon in my third
chapter, where I sketched the sequence of events leading up to the
present situation, I will next turn, in order to make a more detailed
examination of it. For undoubtedly it is the sudden appearance of Jewish
_Bolshevism_ that has brought things to their present crisis.
BOLSHEVISM