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PARTISAN REVI EW
establish its dimensions. Thus we see that he is solely worried about
amassing anecdotes which reveal the lewdness of the Jew, his cupidity,
his ruses and his betrayals. He washes his hands in filth. One should
reread Drumont's
La France ]uive:
this book "characterized by high
French morality" is a collection of ignoble and obscene stories. Nothing
better reflects the complex nature of the antisemite: since he did not
want to
choose
his own good and, for fear of being different, allowed
everyone else's concept of the good to be imposed upon
him,
his ethics
are never based on the intuition of values or on what Plato calls
Love; it manifests itself only by the strictest taboos, by the severest
and most gratuitous imperatives. But the thing he contemplates con–
stantly, the thing he understands intuitively and has a taste for
is
evil. He can thus minutely examine to the point of obsession the
description of obscene or criminal acts which trouble
him
and which
satisfy his perverse leanings; but since, at the same time, he attributes
them to these infamous Jews whom he treats with disdain he can
seek gratification without compromising himself. In Berlin I knew a
Protestant whose sexual desire took the form of indignation. The sight
of women in bathing suits infuriated him; he welcomed this rage,
spending his time in swimming pools. The antisemite does the same
thing.
One of the components of his hatred is a deep sexual attraction
to Jews. First of
all
it is curiosity fascinated by evil. But above all, I
believe, it is connected with sadism. We understand nothing about
antisemitism if we do not recall that the Jew, the object of such
loathing, is perfectly innocent, I might even say inoffensive. The
antisemite is also careful to tell us about secret Jewish organizations,
of terrifying clandestine free-masonry. But if he meets a Jew face to
face he is most of the time a weak individual who,
ill
prepared for
violence, does not even succeed in defending himself. The antisemite
is not unaware of this individual weakness of the Jew which makes
him the helpless victim of pogroms. In fact, this situation delights
him. Hatred of the Jew is not comparable to the hatred which the
Italians felt for the Austrians in 1830 or to that which the French felt
for the Germans in 1942. In the last two cases it was a question of
oppressors, of hard, cruel and strong men who possessed arms, money,
power and who could do more harm to rebels than the latter could
have dreamt of doing to them. The sadistic
tend~ncy
was not an ele–
ment of this hatred. But since evil for the antisemite is incarnate in
these unarmed and harmless men, he never finds himself in the painful
necessity of being heroic: it is
amusing
to be antisemitic. One can
