Homo judaicus: The Political Theology of US Foreign Policy

Below is a short compilation of excerpts from my book, first published almost two decades ago, and republished by Arktos media in 2017.  In light of the new geopolitical realignments and continuing political tremor in the Mideast it may be worth looking again at some underlying aspects of US foreign policy.

America’s unconditional support of Israel resembles a belated form of White House Christian-inspired medieval neurosis. Fear of being called an anti-Semite prevents American politicians and a great number of American academics from openly criticizing Israel. When some sparse critical voices are heard, they usually leave out the founding myths of the Biblical narrative, and focus, instead, on dry facts relating to the influence of Jewish lobbies in America. In the typical fashion of American “expertise,” American academics who happen to be critical of Israel use one set of arguments while neglecting other scholarly approaches. In their analysis of the holy alliance between postmodern Israel and America, American scholars tend to forget that the Old Testament ties between these two countries had already predestined America to nurture a special and privileged rapport with the state of Israel.

Clearly, America gains little, if any, geopolitical benefit from supporting Israel. Israel is more of a liability than an asset for America. From the geopolitical perspective, Israel is even a nuisance for America, given that as a small country of approximate size of New Jersey it surrounded by a host of hostile cultures, religions, and neighbors, both outside and within its borders. Although America, due to its unique insular position, has been able to avoid troublesome neighbors and their tribal problems, it has willingly accepted on its own soil the issue of the balkanized Middle East. America’s special friend, Israel, acts in a way similar to that of ancient Prussia; it must grow at the expense of its neighbors — or it must perish. [i] But America’s special filial-fatherly links to Israel must also prevent this last from happening.

Metaphysically speaking, Israel is the spiritual origin of the American divine world mission and the incarnation of American ideology itself. Only within the context of a strange filial relationship with Jewishness and Israel can one understand why America is accepting with equanimity its own deliberate decline into a world-wide morass in the early 21st century — especially since America’s foreign policy actions stand in sharp contrast to the originally proclaimed goals of America’s founding fathers.

Unfortunately, the fear of being called an anti-Semite prevents intelligent Americans from openly discussing the explosive issue of American-Israeli entanglement. Unlike previous geopolitical evaluations that had some sound basis in American foreign policy decision-making, the role of Israel and the Jewish lobby in America are the two major elements that formulate overall American foreign policy. The imagery of Israel and “God’s chosen people” represents the framework of America’s commitments, not only toward the Middle East but also regarding other foreign policy issues. In the meantime, “any aspiring policymaker is encouraged to become an overt supporter of Israel, which is why public critics of Israeli policy have become an endangered species in the foreign policy establishment.”[ii]

These words were written in 2005 by two prominent American scholars whose essay was relayed by major media outlets around the USA and Europe, in turn prompting Jewish lobbies in America to cry foul and raise the proverbial specter of “anti-Semitism.”

What John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt write, however, is nothing new to knowledgeable individuals. Similar critical views of Israel were voiced earlier by many American authors, and these views also reflect, both privately and officially, those of many European scholars and politicians. But when such observations are uttered by scholars from respectable academic establishments, they leave a different aftereffect on the entire American political scene. This explains the reason for worry among American Jews and Israelis.

In Yahve we Trust 

American founding myths drew their inspiration from Hebrew thought. The notion of the “City on the Hill” and “God’s own country” was borrowed from the Old Testament and the Jewish people. The Biblical idea of predestination served the early American founding fathers as a launching pad for their own concept of democratic self-righteousness. Of all Christian denominations, Calvinism was the closest to the Jewish religion and, as some authors have noted, the United States owes its very existence to the Jews. “For what we call Americanism,” writes Werner Sombart, “is nothing else than the Jewish spirit distilled.” [iii]

The author, a disciple of Max Weber, was sympathetic to Jews and, therefore, when he describes the overwhelming influence of the Judaic spirit in American life, he cannot be accused of manifesting a bias against Jews. Similar remarks will be found later among legions of European authors, most of whom fell into oblivion or disgrace given their ties to antidemocratic and racialist schools of thought. Sombart further writes that “the United States is filled to the brim with the Jewish spirit.”[iv] Many wide-spread customs in America, such as giving newborn children Judaic names, or administering circumcision to young newborn males, come from Jewish heritage.[v]

Very early on America’s founding fathers, pioneers, and politicians identified themselves as Jews who had come to the new American Canaan from pestilent Europe. In a postmodern Freudian twist, these pilgrims and these new American pioneers were obliged to kill their European fathers in order to facilitate the spreading of American democracy world-wide. “Heaven ha[s] placed our country in this situation to try us; to see whether we would faithfully use the incalculable power in our hands for speeding forward the world’s regeneration.” [vi]

Even American Christian antisemites are subconsciously enamored with the Jewish idea of predestination, which they harbor side by side with their antisemitic sentiments. In fact, American antisemitism can be described as a distorted and hidden form of philo-Semitism which, while not able to materialize itself on its own American chosenness, projects its would-be supremacy through its hatred against Jews. It is not far-fetched to argue, as some authors do, that the American dream is a role model for universal Jewishness, only one which must not be limited to a specific race or tribe in America, as is the case with ethnocentric Jews who are well aware of their ingroup racial feelings. Americanism is designed for all peoples, races and nations on Earth. America is, by definition, an extended form of globalized Israel and not reserved for one specific tribe only. Does that, therefore, mean that our proverbial homo americanus is a universal carbon copy of homo judaicus?

The word “antisemitism,” unlike the words “anticommunism” or “antifascism,” does not reflect political beliefs or critical views of the Jews. This term is exclusively used as a lexical label to depict a person’s grave mental illness. As a perceived medical or judicial illness, antisemitism must never be debated; an antisemitic patient must not be a partner in scholarly duels; his sick views must not be the subject of academic inquiry and counter-inquiry. As an element of medical pathology, antisemitism must only by treated by doctors, preferably by a Jewish psychoanalyst, or legally, by a liberal prosecutor in court.

Accusing American Jews of possessing extraterrestrial powers, or blaming them for their purported conspiracy to subvert Gentile culture, borders on delusion and only reflects the absence of normal dialogue. American antisemitic delusions only provide legitimacy to American Jews in their constant search for a real or surreal antisemitic boogieman around every corner. Without the specter of antisemitism, Jews would likely assimilate quickly and hence disappear. Thus, antisemitism provides Jews with alibis to project themselves as victims of Gentile prejudice. Consequently, it assigns them the cherished role of posing as the sole educational super-ego for Americans and, by proxy, the entire world. In his book on the social role of Jews, a prominent Jewish-French politician and author, Jacques Attali, writes: “As Russian Jews invented socialism, and as Austrian Jews invented psychoanalysis, American Jews in the forefront, participated in the birth of American capitalism and in the Americanization of the entire world.”[vii]

For certain Jewish authors, like Attali, such a remark is easier to put to paper than it would be for a Gentile thinker, who with the same comment would be immediately shouted down as an “anti-Semite.” If a serious American scholar or a politician venture into this forbidden field, his gesture is interpreted as a sign of his being an agent provocateur, or worse, as an indication that he has decided to write his own obituary. Such a schizophrenic climate of self-censorship in America will sooner or later lead to dramatic consequences for both American Jews and Gentiles. The lack of healthy dialogue can last for a century or so, but feigned conviviality between American Gentiles and American Jews cannot last forever, if it continues to take as its basis distorted perceptions of the Other and how this Other should behave. Mendacity carries the germ of civil war.

[i] Jordis von Lohausen, Les Empires et la puissance, (Paris: Le Labyrinthe) p. 266.

[ii] John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby” London Review of Books, Vol. 28 No. 6, March 23, 2006. Also published in an extended version by Harvard University, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” by John

2006. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt; Working Paper Number: RWP06–011; Submitted: 13/03/2006.

[iii] Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism, translated with notes by M. Epstein, (New York: Burt Franklin, 1969; originally published in London 1913), pp. 43–44.

[iv] Ibid., p. 38.

[v] Ibid., p. 249.

[vi]  George B. Cheever, God’s Hand (New York: M.W. Dodd Brick Church Chapel, 1941; London: Wiley & Putnam, 1941); in Carl Bode (ed.), American Life in the 1840s (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1967), 315.

[vii] Jacques Attali, Les Juifs, le monde et l’argent (Paris: Fayard; 2002), p. 419 and passim.