Medved’s myopia
In a densely constructed column at Townhall.com (via Instapundit), Michael Medved goes to great lengths to explain what, to him, are the three main reasons why “even people of good will” struggle with a kind of latent proto-antisemitism.
This central, primeval charge that arrogant Jews seek global dominance originates from three distinct historical factors:1- The emphasis on the “Chosen People” concept in the Bible
2- The prominence and prosperity of Jews in most nations in which they’ve established significant communities, and
3- The startling successes of the State of Israel in the mere 60 years of its existence.
In a painstaking attempt to disarm these false signposts to Jewish superiority so as help integrate them into society in the minds of his readers, I can’t help but feel that he’s betraying his own private sense of cultural superiority and also an historical myopia. The Jewish people have been one of the most successful ethnic groups in the world’s history, so if there exists any level of passive condescension in his article, any thinking person could easily forgive him for it. The Jews have every right to feel proud of their culture and its achievements. The real mistake of his article, one that is just as invisible to the popular historical construct built by mass media, is that of unnecessary multiplication of hypotheses.
The Jews are not hated for their Jewishness. Nor are they hated for their success per se. While the third thesis is one that seems valid, it is a matter of state and politics, not culture, for Medved knows quite well that Israel is as much Arab as it is Jewish, at least in terms of identity, if the blood of Arab Israeli soldiers dying at Hezballah’s hands is any indication. That is to say, those that hate Jews for Israel’s success do so using Israel as a convenient excuse for their underlying hatred of Jews. So, the context of this is one of culture and ethnicity, specifically that of the Jewish people, and deals with Medved’s first two theses. Why then are the Jews hated so especially, so uniquely in history, if it isn’t their Jewishness?
In an essay by Thomas Sowell, Is Anti-Semitism Generic?, an adaptation of ideas first worked through in 1994’s Race and Culture and later Migrations and Cultures, he describes how the persecution of the Jews throughout history is neither unique, nor is it a function of their identity. In essence, it is a function of their function in the societies to which they belonged. Using the term “middlemen minority” to describe this function, Sowell points out various cultures throughout history, some even existing in the mean streets of America’s urban environments today, that have shared the same persecutions and the same successes of the Jews.
Lethal violence against middleman minorities has been on a scale seldom approached by violence against other kinds of minorities, such as conquered indigenous groups or formerly enslaved people. All the blacks lynched in the entire history of the United States do not add up to as many people as the number of Chinese slaughtered by mobs near Saigon in 1782, or the Jews killed by mobs in Central Europe in 1096 or in Ukraine in 1648, much less the slaughters of Armenians by mobs in the Ottoman Empire during the 1890s or during the First World War. Only the Nazi Holocaust exceeded the slaughter of Armenians and, while the Holocaust was the ultimate catastrophe for Jews, it was also the culmination of a long history of lethal mass violence unleashed against middleman minorities around the world.
His argument is that because of the role played by middlemen minorities, that of facilitator between the producers and consumers, and because achievement in this role is predicated upon certain behavioral traits best encapsulated and nurtured by cohesive (and ultimately exclusionary) familial relationships, cultures that have enjoyed the greatest success in the role of middleman have been the most persecuted.
Consider again the case of the Korean immigrant or Vietnamese refugee who has set up a small business in one of America’s black ghettos. Although this small-scale entrepreneur may have begun with very little money and may never become fluent in English or polished in manner, nevertheless his growing prosperity over the years may become manifest to ghetto residents, and his American-born children are likely to be heading off to colleges, perhaps prestigious colleges, while the children of many of the people in the community around his shop have prospects of low-paid jobs or unemployment, and many face prospects of jail.
It is this raw political framework for scape-goating a minority culture that emboldened Hitler to open Bergen-Belsen to implement his “final solution.”
Add in the factor that this community lives in an atmosphere where “unfair” disparities are resented by those who set the tone in both the general society and in the local ghetto. All the ingredients are there for attitudes and actions which are called “anti-Semitism” when directed against Jews but which are very similar to the attitudes and actions to which other middleman minorities have been subjected in many times and places around the world.
There is no doubt that antisemitism is a very real and highly dangerous social pathology, dangerous obviously for Jews but just as dangerous for America in general. This irrational hatred, sown in rank selfishness and reaped through political manipulation, is bringing forth fruits of injustice and bloodshed in both the Middle East and in our nation. That it is a problem is a fact beyond reproach. That this kind of persecution is a problem unique to Jews is most certainly not.
Why then point this error on Medved’s part out, given that antisemitism is by far the most dominant form of persecution of middlemen minorities, and certainly the most popularly recognized? The purpose is to point out that the problem lies not in the special identity of Jews; if it did, then there would always be some cause, some justification, however slight and tenuous, based on that uniqueness alone, to single out the Jews, whether for persecution or praise. It is only by recognizing that the problem is unjustified egoism, rank, selfish excuse-mongering, that any real reconciliation can begin.
The street thug hates the Korean shop keeper because the thug knows he’s a profligate spendthrift, not because the shop keeper is Korean. The Ottoman Turk hates the Armenian merchant because the Turk is unsuccessful, not because the merchant is Armenian. Conversely, the Jew is successful because he works hard, not because he’s Jewish; if a man is to be praised for his success, do so in the context of hard work, not cultural pride, for in the end it is his hard work, not his culture, that garnered him his laurels.
It is plain and simple jealousy at the root of antisemitism, and until it is exposed and conquered in the hearts of those that harbor it, no amount of rationalization is sufficient to battle the demagogues waiting in the wings to fan the embers of jealousy to a wild fire of genocide.
