IS THERE A CURE FOR ANTI-SEMITISM'
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effect in the United Nations, at least until very recently: a quite
extraordinary and disproportionate amount of time was taken up with
the ritual condemnations of Israel, depicted by its enemies as if it were
the world's leading violator of universal human rights!
So what we see here is something that transcends simplistic social and
economic explanations, although clearly external conditions influence
the direction in which anti-Semites or anti-Semitic ideologies move in a
given period. It is as if there were some kind of fatality in the continuity
and longevity of a tradition that was established in antiquity, developed
through the Christian Middle Ages, but has long since transcended that
particular framework, carrying on vigorously until the present day. The
Jew in this anti-Semitic tradition has assumed an infinite number of
masks, but continues to be seen as the source of all the disasters that be–
fall mankind. This kind of "cosmic" anti-Semitism, it seems to me, is
what needs to concern us most, though perhaps we still lack the analyti–
cal tools to plumb the depths of the collective psychopathology it re–
veals. Curiously enough, psychoanalysis, which has helped us to uncover
some of the keys to understanding the irrational, has thus far not con–
tributed as much as one might have hoped to the elucidation of this
phenomenon.
In conclusion I would say that anti-Semitism is still very much a
presence and has not been superseded by other ethnic conflicts, expres–
sions of racism, or new targets of intolerance, as we are so often being
told. Fortunately, indeed, Jews are not as much in the front line as they
were fifty years ago. But this does not mean that the myth of the Jew as
an archetypal stranger, as the symbol
par excellence
of cosmopolitanism,
mobile internationalism, and occult forms of power has faded or that
Jewish communities - even in the United States - are not immune to
new epidemics of anti-Semitism. All the facile talk about the imminent
demise of anti-Semitism is wishful thinking. Fifty years ago, Jean-Paul
Sartre defined anti-Semitism as reflecting a deep fear of the human con–
dition. This existential reality is still very much with us, and I doubt very
much we can look forward to its disappearance in the twenty-first cen–
tury. Thank you.
Edith Kurzweil:
Thank you very much. Now first, I'd like to give
Norman Podhoretz a chance to respond or comment if he'd like, then
we'll open to questions.
Nonnan Podhoretz:
Well, I agree with not only every word but ev–
ery syllabic of that extremely skillful and illuminating
tour d'horizon.
I
would only add one small point on the question Robert Wistrich raised
