REFLECTIONS ON THE JEWISH QUESTION
469
pictures the antisemite as a man who is afraid of the human estate,
as a sadist with a "pure heart" who justifies infamies in a good cause,
a coward and malcontent, a would-be murderer, who glorifies his
mediocrity, and legitimizes his right to belong to the world by assim–
ilating himself "to the permanence and impenetrability of stone."
Brilliant as all this is, it is overdrawn.
It
is too narrow. It does
not recognize distinctions and degrees in an appropriate way.
This
is the psychology of the active antisemite who has either harmed Jews
by act or libelous word or is aware that under favorable circumstances
he would be happy to do it. But what of the much more numerous
group who are aware that they have no use for Jews, who desire nei–
ther to buy from, nor sell nor rent to Jews, to hire them or compete
with them, who at most can only be taxed with participation in a cold
pogrom, and yet are free of the vicious traits detailed above? Sartre
lets them off lightly. They are really not antisemites but mindless
nonentities who unconsciously serve as the medium through which
the active antisemites exercise power. Sartre falters at the point. His
eloquence, as well as his insight, stops short. For there are so many
of them. To account for
their
moral culpability, comparatively minor
as it may be, he would have to face the question he evades all the time
(except in a few hasty lines): Why are the Jews, of all possible pre–
texts, of all possible scapegoats, selected as the sacrificial objects of
Western culture?
Before considering this question, let us note that in its fullness
Sart~e's
psychological analysis applies only to the professional anti.
semite, to those who in a sense make a political and social career of
antisemitism. But there is a significant group of antisemites to whom
it does not apply.
It is true that in any competitive situation, where inner security
or assured social status is lacking,
mediocrity
generates fear of personal
failure and hatred of the successful competitor. Where Jew and Gen–
tile are involved, the greater the fear, the more likely it is that the
non-mediocre Jew will become the object of embittered hatred by the
mediocre Gentile. The latter solidarizes himself with all the Gentiles
in a contrived defense of their common interests against the insidious
"plot" of the Jew, all the more insidious for being invisible, in order
that probing concern about his own failure of achievement be averted
from him. Mediocrity, a hopeless, fuming, nervous mediocrity, parti-
