IS THERE A CURE FOR ANTI-SEMITISM'
401
Robert Wistrich:
Well, that's a bit simplistic. However, anti-Semites
themselves have often been very conscious of the "providential"
character, from their point of view, of the existence of the Jews. There's
a very striking remark made by the founder of the Action Franryaise,
Charles Maurras, at the time of the Dreyfus Affair. He emphasized how
conveniently, not
to
say miraculously, anti-Semitism permitted the
reconciling of many contradictions within the ideology and policy of
the integral nationalists. I think this is also true of other groups, that
anti-Semitism provides this ideological cement with which you can
bridge so many contradictory doctrines and economic interests.
It
has
nothing really
to
do with empirical Jews or the way that Jews actually
behave, because anti-Semitism always assumes that Jews act in a
monolithic manner; that whatever differences exist among Jews (and
we
know they are serious enough), they are merely the outward mask to
deceive Gentiles. They are unimportant, because at the end of the day,
"The Jew," in his quasi-metaphysical, abstract form, exists as a principle
of evil. So the real Jews are often of secondary importance.
With regard to genetics, I certainly don't believe in that, but there
was at least one interesting theory that attempted to argue something
like this. It was put forward by the early Zionist thinker Leon Pinsker,
who suggested that anti-Semitism was a kind of atavistic, transmitted
hereditary
trait, which he believed existed in the non-Jewish world, in the
same way that a fear of ghosts still exists: I think that was the parallel he
drew in
Auto-emancipation.
Let me also tel1 you an anecdote. About three years ago I inter–
viewed in Moscow a man who was a former head of the Soviet intel–
ligence apparatus in the Western world, and we had a discussion about
the way the KGB viewed anti-Semitism. He felt he could speak freely
because he's no longer part of the apparatus. At one point he surprised
me by quoting Winston Churchill out of the blue, after I had asked him,
"Why do you think that among the Russian people there seems to be
again this revival of anti-Semitism?" He said, "It's very simple. Winston
Churchil1 once explained why the British were not as anti-Semitic as
most European nations, and Churchil1's explanation was that the British
have a superiority complex: they just don't believe anybody is as good as
they are. Therefore, why should they hate the Jews? Whereas we
Russians," he said in a moment of astonishing frankness, "we are con–
vinced deep down that we are inferior to everybody else, and therefore
we have to hate the Jews."
Q~lestion:
The question I have is for Mr. Bellow: Does the nature of
Christianity not imply two thousand years of racism, in that from the
