Jewish Writing on Anti-Semitism

Review: “Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power”

September 13, 2026/27 Comments/in Featured Articles, Israel Lobby, Jewish Aggressiveness, Jewish Attitudes on Free Speech, Jewish Ethnocentrism, Jewish Writing on Anti-Semitism/by Kevin MacDonald

Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power
Eli Clifton & Ian Lustick
Simon & Schuster, 2026

A few years ago, Yuri Slezkine, a Jewish UC-Berkeley professor wrote a book titled The Jewish Century, meaning the twentieth century. All the important events had major Jewish involvement from the Bolshevik Revolution, World War II, and we can add the rise of a Jewish elite in the post-World War II West and the consequent counter-cultural revolution, massive non-White immigration, and multiculturalism as a norm in all Western societies.

And now it’s becoming apparent that the same can be said about the twenty-first century. Trump’s catastrophic war in Iran obviously had a very large Israeli component—blackmail or ego-flattery from his advisors (saying things like “we can wrap this up in a week or two, and you’ll be a hero”). As discussed below, Jewish-Americans produced faked intelligence on non-existent weapons of mass destruction to persuade Pres. George W. Bush to pursue his disastrous war in Iraq.

We’re seeing how Israel and the US’s relationship with Israel is becoming a litmus test in numerous American primary elections, both on the left and on the right. We saw that it was a litmus test in Michigan where the pro-Israel candidate received $60 million, including $30 million from AIPAC but still lost—and Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate, has refused direct AIPAC money despite a history of strong support for Israel. (However, he welcomes money from pro-Israel donors but does not want AIPAC to air ads supporting him—the AIPAC brand has become a political liability, at least in Michigan.) It was also a litmus test in Kentucky in Thomas Massie’s primary election where Massie’s opponent was showered with millions and won.

So, we’re entering a completely new phase in American politics in which supporting AIPAC’s position is going to be politically costly in many elections in a manner that never has been the case in U.S. history. Even if politicians recognized clearly that this was bad policy, it was nevertheless good politics, because it kept members of Congress safe and it kept the presidents safe. That is now changing, and it’s a complete gamechanger for America’s domestic politics and also for its foreign policy in the Middle East.

And just in time for documenting the need for this evolving revolution is Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power, by Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick. Clifton and Lustick are clearly not on our side. They are liberals—Clifton is a journalist who has published in places like The Guardian, Huffpo, the Daily Beast, and The Nation. Lustick is Jewish and an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania; he worked in the Carter administration as State Department expert on Israel-Palestine affairs, and he founded and was president of the Association for Israel Studies. Overall, this is a worthy successor to Mearsheimer and Walt’s Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

The Israel Lobby as a Creature of the Mainstream American Jewish Community

That’s not to say there are no shortcomings. They are keen to absolve the American Jewish community of complicity in Israel’s behavior, including the recent genocide in Gaza (and yes, they use the word ‘genocide’ to describe Israel’s destruction of Gaza). They note that support for Israel ranked only ninth out of 11 issues for Jews in the 2024 election, citing a poll by the Jewish Democratic Council of America which describes itself as “the political voice of Jewish Democrats. JDCA advocates for Jewish values and priorities within the Democratic Party and for the Democratic Party within the Jewish community.” It is thus clearly an activist organization at a time when Jewish support for Israel and American wars on behalf of Israel have become controversial. They ignore the poll’s finding in the same sentence that “American Jews feel emotionally attached to Israel (75 percent).”

Moreover, a 2024 survey by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) found that 85 percent of American Jewish adults believe it is important for the U.S. to support Israel in the aftermath of October 7, and 57% of American Jews report feeling more connected to Israel or their Jewish identity after October 7 than before—unsurprising given the general finding that Jewish identity and commitment increase in times of perceived threat. (Similarly, Whites in the United States and in Canada who are given explicit demographic projections of a time when Whites are no longer a majority tend to feel angry and fearful. They are also more likely to identify as Whites and have sympathy for other Whites.[1])

The gap between American Jews and other Americans can be seen by findings that 68 percent of connected American Jews supported the Iran war at the beginning, declining to 62 percent recently—quite different results from general polls of Americans that found around 31 percent support the war while 55 percent oppose it.

Moreover, the Israel Lobby is vast: They note that there are “scores of organizations, institutes, philanthropies, committees, PACs, and foundations that make up the Lobby” (124); “By one count, in October 2025, there were 160 organizations and initiatives devoted to countering the onslaught against Jews and Israel.” (178) And they refer to “a dense network of Israel advocacy organizations using accusations of antisemitism to remove critical discussion of Israel policies from the public domain” (174).

And it’s worth noting that there has been no effective pushback by the Jewish community against the power of the Lobby—groups like the Jewish Voice for Peace and Mondoweiss have virtually no role in the mainstream American Jewish community. Clifton and Lustick make it sound like it’s really a matter of a few super-wealthy Jews who dominate the Lobby. One wonders why they never mention any super-wealthy Jews who oppose the Lobby. And one wonders how many of the 5 million members claimed by AIPAC (18) (which they note is often termed “the 800-pound gorilla” of lobbies and the main pro-Israel lobbying group in the U.S.), are Jews—likely a high percentage. And recall the AJC survey that found 85 percent of American Jewish adults believe it is important for the U.S. to support Israel in the aftermath of October 7.

This shows that the Lobby is a product of the mainstream Jewish community as a collective—although it’s certainly not the case that all American Jews support the Lobby. They portray the Lobby as a “small but highly motivated segments of the community, led by an extremely wealthy group of Jewish donors who publicly acknowledge their prioritization of Israel’s interests, play an outsized role in the American campaign finance and political advocacy ecosystem.” (7) “[T]heir motivations and actions are consistent with a group working in a concerted manner to promote an American foreign policy serving the interests of a foreign power.” (9)

Clifton and Lustick acknowledge that Israeli officials send what they call

signals that guide the behavior and rhetoric of Lobby leaders and thousands of activists, and many within these organizations have loyalties to both Israel and the United States. Some, such as Jonathan Pollard, may even put Israel’s interests above those of the United States. But the argument and evidence presented here are not an indictment of those American citizens whose passionate efforts and dedication to their beliefs have contributed to the Lobby’s success. (39)

But it’s hard to believe that prominent American Jewish activists don’t have direct contact with Israeli officials given what we know about the behavior of many Jewish activists, including credible accusations of spying on behalf of Israel. For example, a 2003 Guardian article noted “The exchange of information continued a long-standing relationship Mr Feith [i.e., Douglas Feith neoconservative Undersecretary for Policy in the George W. Bush administration] and other Washington neo-conservatives had with Israel’s Likud party” (see also below).

The Citizens United and SpeechNow.org Rulings

Clifton and Lustick note that the power of the Lobby has been much enhanced by the 2010 Citizen’s United ruling which has allowed super-wealthy individuals to contribute unlimited money to political campaigns and super PACs. Moreover, the SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission case, also decided in 2010, has allowed non-profits which are not required to list donors to contribute “unlimited dark money.” (133) These decisions have resulted in huge increases in the amounts of money available to the Israel Lobby.

The Israel Lobby Supports the Current Genocidal Government of Israel

Politics in Israel has seen the rise of Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox and ethnic nationalist Israelis to political dominance in Israel while continuing to be supported by the Israel Lobby. This illustrates what I have discussed in a paper titled “Zionism and the Internal Dynamics of Judaism” that appeared in 2003 in The Occidental Quarterly.

At all the turning points [in Jewish history], it is the more ethnocentric elements—one might term them the radicals—who have determined the direction of the Jewish community and eventually won the day. As recounted in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the Jews who returned to Israel after the Babylonian captivity energetically rid the community of those who had intermarried with the racially impure remnant left behind. Later, during the period of Greek dominance, there was a struggle between the pro-Greek assimilationists and the more committed Jews, who came to be known as Maccabeans.

The Maccabeans won. When Zionism first appeared in the late nineteenth century, it was seen as a radical movement, and most Jews worried about being charged with “dual loyalty.” But by 1944, thousands of non-Jewish associations would pass pro-Zionist resolutions as a result of Zionist activism, and both Republican and Democratic platforms included strong pro-Zionist planks, even though the creation of a Jewish state was strongly opposed by the Departments of State and War. But Zionism became incorporated as policy for both Democrats and Republicans in the 1940 election.”[2] Within Israel, there has been a transformation in the direction of the most radical, ethnocentric, and aggressive elements of the population. During the 1920s–1940s, the followers of Vladimir Jabotinsky (the “Revisionists”) were the vanguard of Zionist aggressiveness and strident racial nationalism, but they were a minority within the Zionist movement as a whole. The Labor Party dominated Israeli politics from its inception until Menachem Begin’s Likud Party won in the 1970s. While the Labor Party was democratic-socialist and secular, Likud reflects the views of Vladimir Jabotinsky and is affiliated with the ethnonationalist and religious right.

The continuing trend toward ever greater extremism can be seen in the current government which is the most extreme in Israel’s history and includes people like Itamar Ben-Gvir, Minister of National Security, who recently advocated killing 30–40 Palestinians every day no matter whether they are a threat or not. Another prominent member of the government is Bezelel Smotrich, Minister of Finance. He is a strong supporter of expanding Israeli settlements on the West Bank, opposes a Palestinian state and denies the existence of a Palestinian people.

The radicals are definitely in charge in Israel, so it’s not at all surprising that the Israel Lobby has fallen in line with the radicals in Israel—AIPAC support for Labor governments morphed to support for Likud when the latter gained power. Again, in the end, it’s the radicals who determine the direction of the Jewish community. As noted, 75 percent of American Jews have an emotional attachment to Israel. Opposition to Israel essentially removes one from the mainstream Jewish community.

The Lobby and Free Speech

Beyond the catastrophe of the Iran war, Clifton and Lustick document that “[t]he Lobby’s ascendancy has produced a wave of repression and a constriction of free speech rights of Americans unmatched since the anticommunist hysteria of the McCarthy period.” (10) This is especially true in the Trump administration which has seen repeated attacks on pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses and attempts to deport pro-Palestinian non-citizens.[3]

Clifton and Lustick cite George Washington’s Farewell address where he noted “Sympathy for the favourite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest, in cases where no real common interests exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former in a participation in the quarrels and Wars of the latter.” (11) They note the ecstatic receptions of Netanyahu in 2024 when he addressed Congress (53 standing ovations in 53-minute speech despite some Democrats absenting themselves because of the Gaza genocide) and that from 1973–2013 there were 938 nonappropriation bills and resolutions supporting Israel. For example in 2024 a 412–9 House vote declared that Israel is “neither racist nor an apartheid state” (16)—which any informed person knows is false. “Virtually every other week members of Congress faced an AIPAC litmus test in the form of voting on nonbinding resolutions,” (19) and Thomas Massie claimed that every Republican member has an AIPAC minder; “Everybody but me has an AIPAC person. It’s like your babysitter, your AIPAC babysitter, who’s always talking to you for AIPAC.”

Establishing close ties with each and every Congressperson was a goal at least since 1991 when AIPAC executive director Tom Dine expressed the goal of having a relationship with every member of Congress. Clifton and Lustick provide the famous Netanyahu quote from 2001 with the camera turned off: “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily in the right direction. They won’t get in the way” [in this case, of Israeli control over the West Bank and Gaza]. (20) And of course, the U.S. has not gotten in the way.

The Role of Money in Jewish Activism

In the end, it’s all about the Benjamins, as Ihlan Omar famously said. Congress is infinitely corruptible because of Lobby’s ability to fund candidates who support their positions and run credible opponents against candidates who opposed their positions. Clifton and Lustick claim that pro-Israel contributions account for 10–15 percent of each member’s campaign, but clearly the percentage is much higher if there is danger that an anti-Israel politician could win—again, $60 million against what turned out to be a successful Arab candidate in the recent Michigan Democratic Senate primary and $45 million to defeat two Black representatives, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. This goes back to 1984 when Sen. Charles Percy (R-IL) was defeated because he supported selling AWACSs to Saudi Arabia. Tom Dine AIPAC head from 1980–1993 noted that the power of the lobby comes down to Jewish money. (21)

Jewish power in general is intimately linked to Jewish money. In his 2009 book, Why Are Jews Liberals?, Norman Podhoretz noted that Jewish money is the financial engine of the left—including organizations like the ACLU and the SPLC, and the Democratic Party likely receives at least 50 percent of its money form Jewish donors. On the other side of the aisle, the Republican Jewish Coalition is an important group funding Republican politicians, and the GOP likely receives at least 25 percent of its money form Jewish donors. David Skirbina notes that “This is astonishing, given that there are some 13,000 special interest lobbies in Washington; for one lobby to provide 50% of all funding is simply amazing. But it certainly explains congressional votes that are 70%, 80%, or 90% in favor of Jewish interests.”

Activist groups supported by Jews are typically well funded. For example, neoconservatives have been able to set up compatible think tanks and other groups, like the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) that provide careers for like-minded people whether Jewish or not. (An AIPAC staffer claimed WINEP was created to “disseminate the AIPAC line in a way that would disguise its connections. [37]) The research of Franz Boas and the Frankfurt School was funded by the American Jewish Committee (also listed by Clifton and Lustick as part of the Lobby), and Boas also received financial support from wealthy Jews like Felix Warburg, his brother Max, and Jacob Schiff (The Culture of Critique [CofC], Ch. 2; all references to CofC are to the 2025 Antelope Hill edition). Supporting psychoanalytic therapy became entrenched in the Jewish community by the 1950s (CofC, Ch. 5), and at present Wikipedia lists around 45 psychoanalytic institutes in the U.S. funded in part by community donations. During the 1950s pro-immigration organizations were organized, funded and staffed by Jews, leading to the disastrous 1965 immigration law (CofC, Ch. 8). All of these movements actively attempted to recruit non-Jews to lessen the perception that they were Jewish movements. For example:

An important part of this effort was to recruit then-Senator and future President John F. Kennedy to attach his name to A Nation of Immigrants (1958) and to recruit Senator and future Vice-President and 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey for his Stranger at Our Gate (1954).[4] Kennedy was recruited by former ADL National Director Ben Epstein,[5] the book was published by the ADL which also supplied a historian, Arthur Mann (a doctoral student of Oscar Handlin at Harvard[6]) for the project,[7] and was ghost-written by Myer Feldman who was influential in the Kennedy/Johnson administration.[8]

The Lobby and the Media

Besides money, the Lobby’s power also is boosted by the media, “their ties to certain newspapers and magazines and individuals in the media are substantial and intimidating” in the words of one Congressman (27). Jews as owners and content producers of media is well known—for example all the television networks except Fox are owned by Jews, and Fox is well known to take neocon positions, as on the Iran war. A recent example is David Ellison’s purchase of Skydance Paramount ultimately with the wealth created by his father, Larry Ellison who founded Oracle; the Ellisons also control TikTok which appeals to young people and was a major problem for Jews: “Netanyahu called TikTok ‘the most important purchase going on right now,’ suggesting its control could be “consequential.”

The Ellisons are friends of Trump, and Bari Weiss, a fanatic pro-Israel partisan was placed in charge of CBS, a subsidiary of Skydance Paramount. It can be confidently assumed that CBS will now be purged of anything embarrassing to Israel. The Ellisons are also attempting to purchase Warner Brothers Discovery which, depending on whether they win antitrust suits brought by Democratic Attorneys General of 12 states, would give them control of CNN as well as increase their movie and television capabilities.

Controlling Public Discourse

As Clifton and Lustick note, a major tactic now is not to defend Israel with fact-based talking points (impossible post-Gaza) but to censor speech on Israel, smear enemies by calling them Nazis, make them lose their jobs, etc. “… the Lobby is more accurately understood to be dedicated to establishing, and enforcing strict limits on the range of opinion that can be publicly voiced by American politicians, journalists, and academics on topics pertaining to Israel and Palestine.” (38) Among these topics are “levels of US aid to Israel, fealty to the idea of an American-Israeli ‘special relationship,’ US commitments to Israeli security, the scale of acceptable violence and collateral damage against all Arabs, Israel’s character as a Jewish and as a democratic state, implications for US Law and policy of Israeli nuclear weapons, boycotts as a legitimate expression of political disappointment (if directed at Israel), and the status of Jerusalem as Israel’s ‘eternal and united’ capital city.” (38)

And the lobby has been successful in getting pro-Israel activists into policy positions in various administrations who are then cited as “experts” on Israel in the media: Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, neocon Elliott Abrams, and Samuel Lewis, ambassador to Israel in the Carter and Reagan administrations among them. For example, Indyk began his career working for AIPAC and was a founding executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a premier pro-Israel lobbying organization. He became ambassador to Israel in the Carter and Reagan administrations.

Dennis Ross’s resumé is even more impressive:

Dennis Ross, a senior fellow at WINEP and a frequent New York Times op-ed contributor, was director of Near East and South Asian Affairs for the National Security Council in the Reagan administration, special Middle East envoy in the George H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations, and special assistant to the president for the Central Region (including the Middle East) during the Obama presidency. He continues to be a talking head on NPR and cable news. (37)

Clifton and Lustick reject the argument that Israel benefits the U.S. by arguing that aid to Israel did not become less after the Cold War when Israel was supposedly an asset to the U.S. campaign against the Soviets.

Loyalty?

Despite all this, Clifton and Lustick deny that in general these Jewish activists put Israel’s interests above those of the US (except perhaps for the obvious case of Jonathan Pollard, the notorious spy who sold US secrets to Israel which then sold them to the USSR and was pardoned by Trump). “[T]he argument and evidence presented here are not an indictment of those American citizens whose passionate efforts and dedication to their beliefs have contributed to the Lobby’s success.” (39) The problem lies with “the founding fathers.” “The citizens active in Israel’s Lobby have behaved exactly as the founding fathers expected them to behave: selfishly, strategically, and with a narrow vision of the problems confronted by the overall community.” (39)

Okay, but clearly George Washington and other founding fathers deplored this, with I suppose the implication that we should do all we can to oppose such people. And yes, they are prioritizing their perception of Jewish interests over the interests of the United States, implying that they are more loyal to Israel than the United States. After all, the end result has been that America is “in the grip of a foreign power.”

Regarding loyalty and the Iraq war, Clifton and Lustick note the “cooked intelligence reports prepared by the office of the Vice President and a new Pentagon ‘Office of Special Plans’ created by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.” (64) Clearly these cooked intelligence reports were fashioned to support a war on behalf of Israel. The Office of Special Plans (OSP) may have been under Dick Cheney’s ultimate authority and created by Wolfowitz, but it was under the direct authority of Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith and headed by Abram Shulsky. Wolfowitz, Feith, and Shulsky are all neoconservative Jews closely associated with Richard Perle. David Wurmser, also a protégé of Richard Perle, was a member of the OSP, and Michael Ledeen was a consultant—both were prominent neoconservative Jews. There was also connections to Israeli intelligence:

The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon’s office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam’s Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise.

“None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels,” said one source familiar with the visits [of Israelis to the Pentagon]. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Feith’s authority without having to fill in the usual forms.

The exchange of information continued a long-standing relationship Mr Feith and other Washington neo-conservatives had with Israel’s Likud party.

Clifton and Lustick mention the 1996 “Clean Break” paper authored by American neocons, including Richard Perle, David and Mayrav Wurmser, Douglas Feith, and advocating an intransigent, aggressive Israeli policy and submitted to the Netanyahu government, including “ending the peace process, shelving attempts to solve the Palestinian problem, escalating Israel’s nationalist mission, and ramping up its use of military force throughout the region to ‘manage’ rather than end the Arab-Israeli conflict.” (65) “Clean Break” also recommended that “Saddam would have to be destroyed, and Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran would have to be overthrown or destabilised, for Israel to be truly safe.” We are now witnessing the attempt to produce a regime change in Iran or at least destabilize the regime. Other authors of “Clean Break” included: Robert J. Loewenberg who founded Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (IASPS-Jerusalem) in Jerusalem in 1984 “after making aliyah to Israel from the U.S., where he remains a citizen”; James Colbert was policy director was Policy Director of the Hudson Institute, a neoconservative think tank.

You have to wrap your mind around the fact that a group of American Jews advocated all this but, according to Clifton and Lustick, they are not at all disloyal to America. Indeed, the authors of the report write as Jews and Israelis, not as U.S. citizens: “Our claim to the land—to which we have clung for hope for 2,000 years—is legitimate and noble.”

A major part of my chapter on neocons was simply to document their intense commitment to Israel. For example, Douglas Feith has a strong Jewish identity that motivates his activism. In They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, Jacob Heilbrun writes that Feith “told me in an interview that because of his family history [i.e., decimated by the Holocaust], he understands the true nature of foreign policy, unlike the ‘WASPs’ in the State Department” (p. 12). Feith sees foreign policy from a Jewish, Holocaust-centric perspective that the WASPs can never understand. He was at the center of power during recent American history, but he sees himself as an outsider, his enemies are the evil WASPs whose fathers didn’t allow Jews into their country clubs.

Feith is typical in his hatred for the WASPs who formerly dominated the State Department. They assume an almost legendary role in the demonology of neoconservatism—consigned to the lowest reaches of hell. Their unforgiveable sin was to fail to see the world fundamentally in terms of Jewish interests, beginning with their opposition to recognizing Israel during the Truman administration.

Like many of his cronies, Feith has been credibly accused of spying for Israel, although, not surprisingly, in all cases the charges were dropped. Other neocons accused of spying for Israel discussed in The Culture of Critique include Abram Shulsky, Michael Ledeen, and Richard Perle. Nevertheless, Clifton and Lustick reject the idea that, with the possible exception of the notorious Jonathan Pollard, American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the interests of their own nations, thereby exonerating the neocons and many others.

Clifton and Lustick deplore the now-standard International Holocaust Remembrance Association definition of antisemitism but they don’t mention the following example of supposed anti-Semitism: “Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.”

Other prominent Jews with questionable loyalty include major Republican donor Sheldon Adelson who served in the U.S. military, but his wife is Israeli and was in the IDF, and he wanted his son to be. Clifton and Lustick quote him: “All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli born, Israel is my heart.” (135) “Israel is at the core of everything he does,” Fred Zeidman, a friend of Adelson, confirmed to the [Jerusalem] Post.” (136) Sheldon Adelson has died but his wife Miriam is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Israel and continues to be a prominent donor, including $100 million to Donald Trump for the 2024 election.

In a speech to the Knesset, President Trump (surprisingly) said that he once asked Miriam Adelson whether she is more loyal to the U.S. or Israel.

“She’s got 60 billion in the bank-60 billion! And she loves Israel,” Trump said. “I actually asked her—I’m going to get her in trouble with this—but I actually asked her once, I said: So Miriam, I know you love Israel. What do you love more, the United States or Israel? She refused to answer. That means… [Laughter]

That might mean, I must say—

We love you. Thank you, darling, for being here. That’s a great honor. Great honor. She’s a wonderful woman.”

This was not covered by Clifton and Lustick.

But they mention major Democrat donor Haim Saban ($5–10 million to the Clinton Foundation; $7 million to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign) as criticizing Obama for being insufficiently pro-Israel, but Clifton and Lustick don’t get to the depths of his commitment to Israel. The following is from an interview with Haaretz in 2006; Saban’s comments are in quotes.

“When we approach Israel I always ask the pilots of my plane to let me sit in the chair between them. [W]hen I see the coast coming up my heart starts to go boom, boom, boom.”

[Interviewer:] Is Israel also part of your everyday life here, in Los Angeles?

“[T]hroughout the day, if I see something about Israel on one of the four channels that are always on in my office, on mute, I immediately turn on the sound. And I have Israeli music on my computer, classics and contemporary singers, too.

Haim Saban is a dual American-Israeli citizen, but can there really be any question where his loyalty lies?

Israel as a “Crazy State”—and Diaspora Jews as a Crazy Ethnic Group

In Chapter 3 Clifton and Lustick describe Israel as a “crazy state,” meaning “aggressive pursuit of far-reaching goals harmful to others; radical and intense commitment to achieve those goals; and adoption of a morally superior posture even when grossly contradicting international norms.” (70) Israel has become radicalized, with 4–5 times the percentage of Jews calling themselves rightwing compared to leftwing in a context where rightwing means “overt discrimination against Palestinian citizens, annexation measures that would exclude Palestinians from citizenship, use of extrajudicial punishment against Arabs, and preference for military action over negotiation for advancing Israeli interests in the region,” (72) even if that results in international isolation. All this goes back to David Ben Gurion in the 1950s, described as “leader of the left”: “risk-acceptant, transformational, and ruthless military adventures.” Today, Netanyahu “is the epitome of Israeli craziness.” (76) “Utter contempt for world opinion” (98)

The craziness and grandiosity of Israel can be seen in the Greater Israel project which is well underway with de facto seizure of the West Bank and Gaza, parts of Syria and Lebanon, a presence in Iraq, and a clear desire to expel the Palestinians or simply murder them. There is at least a tacit and increasingly overt subtext that Jews are entitled to all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates, as promised by God in Genesis 15:18 and affirmed as legitimate by U.S. Ambassador Evangelical Christian Mike Huckabee.[9] Clifton and Lustick note that this ambition includes “Jewish rule over virtually the entire fertile crescent” (77), which includes Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, together with northern Kuwait, south-eastern Turkey, and western Iran. Quite an ambition.

These ideas have moved from activists and ideologues “to the center of Israeli politics and policymaking,” mentioning the notorious Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, both ministers in the present government. (77) This includes rebuilding the Temple on the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the resumption of sacrifices, and the evacuation and repopulation of Gaza.” (77)

Jews are also a crazy ethnic group in the U.S. and throughout the West. The Jewish effort to change the demography of the U.S. meets the definition of craziness proposed by Clifton and Lustick—it is definitely transformational, risky, and presented as morally superior. Imagine a group amounting to 2–3 percent of the population acting over at least 70 years from the early twentieth century to radically change the demography of the U.S in their favor, believing that Jews would be safer in a multiethnic, multicultural society at a time, especially after World War II when memories of what happened in Germany, at the time a homogeneously White, Christian society beginning in the 1930s, were fresh in the minds of Jews (CofC, Ch. 8).

The transformation ushered in by the 1965 immigration law obviously compromises White interests, and I suppose it could be said to have been risky. Jews certainly would never have emphasized that they desired to change the ethnic balance of the United States—although the desire to make the U.S. into a multiethnic, multicultural society obviously entails demographic change. Indeed, in the debates over the 1965 law it was explicitly stated that the law would not change the ethnic balance of the United States, which is why all mention of it is suppressed now.

However, the law was presented as morally superior. For example, as one of its biggest proponents, Sen. Jacob Javits (D-NY), proclaimed in the U.S. Senate, “both the dictates of our consciences as well as the precepts of sociologists tell us that immigration, as it exists in the national origins quota system, is wrong and without any basis in reason or fact for we know better than to say that one man is better than another because of the color of his skin” (Cong. Rec., 111, 1965, 24469).

This illustrates what I emphasized in the preface of the revised edition of The Culture of Critique as background traits for Jewish activism: Aggressiveness and psychological intensity. Clearly advocating immigration from all over the world is an aggressive move against the interests of what was then an overwhelmingly White, Christian population. And such an ambition is grandiose given that Jews were a tiny minority of the population attempting to alter U.S. demography in what they perceived to be in their favor.

Clinically, psychological intensity is related to cyclothymia (i.e., alternate periods of elation and depression), bipolar affective disorder (i.e., manic‑depressive psychosis), neurotic symptoms, and somatic complaints (nervousness, feeling uneasy, shortness of breath). Affect intensity is also linked to creativity and the manic phase of bipolar affective disorder which seems to be more common among Jews and a more robust component of manic-depressive illness among Jews.[10] During episodes of mania the person has a grandiose self-image ([“Despite being a small country, we Israelis will conquer the entire fertile crescent with the help of the United States”]), goal-directed activity like obsessively working on a project all night, excessive involvement in pleasurable activity like buying sprees and sexual gratification, and racing thoughts which the manic person thinks are brilliant. The depressive part is just the opposite.

But many people may be high on emotionality but not meet the criteria for psychopathology. It’s easy to see that people moderately high on positive emotionality—hypomanic or normal but close to the manic range—would be high achievers; they would work persistently toward goals, and they would be very self-confident and have high self-esteem. Such people gravitate to leadership positions in whatever organization they are in. And it’s easy to see that they might become gurus, establishing a devoted following, like charismatic rabbis in traditional Jewish communities—Jewish gurus like Freud, Boas, Trotsky, etc. discussed in Culture of Critique.

For example, Albert Lindemann notes that many of Trotsky’s personality traits are stereotypically Jewish:

If one accepts that anti-Semitism was most potently driven by anxiety and fear, as distinguished from contempt, then the extent to which Trotsky became a source of preoccupation for anti-Semites is significant. Here, too, [Paul] Johnson’s words are suggestive: He writes of Trotsky’s “demonic power”[11]—the same term, revealingly, used repeatedly by others in referring to Zinoviev’s oratory or Uritsky’s ruthlessness [Zinoviev and Uritsky were two other prominent early Jewish Bolsheviks]. Trotsky’s boundless self-confidence, his notorious arrogance, and sense of superiority were other traits often associated with Jews. Fantasies there were about Trotsky and other Bolsheviks, but there were also realities around which the fantasies grew.[12]

Israeli Apartheid

Israel has shifted from a de facto apartheid society to “embrace a version of apartheid increasingly reliant on the use of official and legal means rather than administratively concealed or indirect techniques of control to enforce Jewish privileges and the subordination of non-Jews.” (85) Yet calling Israel an apartheid state is considered antisemitism by the IHRA definition accepted by 35 states and many countries, although this is not mentioned by Clifton and Lustick.

However, they do note that after the IHRA definition came out, “The ADL suddenly and vastly increased the amount of antisemitism it reported.” (171) Astonishingly, what’s critical now is whether expressions could have “a negative impact on one or more Jewish individuals.” (173). “What leads to an ADL judgment of ‘expressions’ as antisemitic is if they “could be perceived” as supporting terrorism or attacks on Jews, Israelis or Zionists.” (173) Perception, not reality, is critical.

Clifton and Lustick acknowledge antisemitism still exists and blame “the dark corners of American life” (178), including especially “far-right, Christian, and white nationalist groups who are not the main target of the accusations of antisemitism based on opposition to Israel’s policies.” (179)

Collective Punishment and Dealing with Palestinian Resistance

Collective punishment where entire families or neighborhoods are punished has become the Israeli norm (89). This is a profoundly non-Western practice—completely opposed to Western individualism which punishes the individual who commits the crime, not the family. But Judaism is nothing if not collectivist, so it’s not at all surprising.

Rather than seeing Arab resistance as understandable, “All Palestinian resistance was understood as illegitimate, evidence of intransigence, and often as akin to Nazi antisemitism.” (90) “Mowing the grass” became the new metaphor—grass keeps growing, so you have to cut it once in a while so that there is a period when the grass is at a tolerable length, “all the while knowing the grass will grow back and again require cutting.” (90) Reflecting this policy the ratio of Israeli to Arab deaths went from 1 to 7 up to 1973 but is has been 1 to 44 since 2009 and far higher than that in the Gaza genocide.

Defending Israel: Facts Are Irrelevant

It’s noteworthy that the Lobby no longer tries to defend Israeli actions, opting instead to simply label critics as anti-Semites and use whatever legal means are available against them, based on the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Trump’s 2019 executive order made the IHRA definition of antisemitism part of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Activists are told to “engage the emotions and downplay rationality” (168). ADL has officially declared that “antizionism is antisemitism.” (171) “The enemy is not falsehood that must be corrected by truth, or ideas, to be deflected or spun into incoherence. It is the people themselves who question Israeli policies, criticize Zionism, object to unconditional American aid, or support Palestinian rights; they must be neutralized.” (175) “Insisting antisemitism is present whenever some Jews, Israelis, or supporters of Jews and Israelis say it is, they free themselves to attack and demonize their critics while ignoring the criticism.” (177)

Israel is “abandoning even the pretense of avoiding harm to noncombatants.” Included in the new rules of engagement “was a general authorization to strike high-rise apartment complexes and private homes,” (94) “along with ending or greatly reducing warnings of attacks by phone calls or “roof-knocking.” (95) A retired Major General stated: “Who are the ‘poor’ mothers of Gaza? They are all the mothers, sisters, or wives of Hamas murderers.” (95) Speaker of the Knesset: “There are no innocents there.” (96) Cabinet ministers and leaders “used even more extreme language, often invoking the commandment in the Bible that Jews should remember their archenemy Amelek and their responsibility in every generation, to kill every surviving Amelekite man, woman, and child—‘to blot out the memory of Amelek.’ (96).” A rabbi said when leaving Khan Yunis in Gaza that “we killed them, tens of thousands of Amelekites.” (97)

The self-conception of Zionists increasingly accepted that Jews are a “people that shall dwell alone, and will not be reckoned among the nations” (100)—freeing Israel from any concern about the opinions of non-Jews. “Zionism and the state of Israel are vehicles for an intrinsically peculiar people to pursue its unique mission in an inevitably hostile world, suffering isolation and injustice but with faith in eventual redemption and universal recognition of Jewish specialness.” (100) Again, Netanyahu: “Utter contempt for world opinion” (98)

Seventy-four percent of Israelis believe “world criticism of Israel stems from anti-Semitism.” (101). What the October 7 attack produced was to “bring into full and florid view how intense are the fears of so many Israeli Jews, how radical are their beliefs, and how ready they are to accept savagery as a standard solution to the problems they see themselves as facing.” (101).

Israeli media are totally on board, shielding the public from “graphic images ‘of children being harmed and of women and families becoming refugees.’” (102) Educated Israelis who were less crazy began leaving, making the remaining population more extreme.

American unquestioned support for Israel has helped “radicalize Israeli politics and extremized its leadership.” (103) Moderate Israeli politicians could not get any traction when there was no cost to extreme Israeli policies. Almost all delegates left the Assembly Hall when Netanyahu was going to speak to the UN in 2025. So it’s no surprise that supporting Israel isolates the United States: “[T]he image [of UN delegates leaving] epitomized the reality of an American foreign policy yoked to almost anything Israel governments say or do, even if that means isolating the United States from world opinion, defying US allies, dragging the US into Israel’s wars, and exposing it to charges of flagrant hypocrisy.” (104) From 1995–2017, the U.S. was the sole vote against 14 UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israeli treatment of Palestinians (103), and since the Gaza war the U.S. vetoed eight UNSC resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Conclusion

Now, despite the centuries of Jewish hatred of the West due to perceived persecution beginning in the Roman Empire with the destruction of the Second Temple and extending through the holocaust, the refrain is that an alliance between Jews and the West will save “Judeo-Christian” civilization (210)—this despite the aggressively hostile move by the mainstream Jewish community to alter the demographic balance of Western countries to make them more like the Third World.

Despite Israel’s barbarity and despite the inability of the Lobby to defend Israeli actions, the Lobby is intensifying its efforts, not backing down. The ADL is investing in “arms and technology firms [like Palantir, Lockheed Martin, etc.] whose products have been used to surveil, target, or kill Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.” (217) “Enormous sums of money and the power and funds of the federal government, are being mobilized in unprecedented ways to constrain and limit speech critical of Israel across all venues of public debate.” (219)

But Clifton and Lustick conclude by stating that “The Israel Lobby is scared” (224); ultimately they believe that the Lobby can’t sell Israel due to its policies. They have “overplayed their hand.”

We’ll see, but at this point what’s obvious is that the Lobby is exerting an awesome display of its power. It will never back down or change course, and ever more extreme radicals will obtain power while being supported by the Lobby in the U.S. We can expect: 1.) increasing propaganda (e.g., propaganda aimed at Evangelical Christian churches via geofencing; paying social media influencers 2.) censorship and propaganda via media influence (e.g., via the Jewish-owned television, newspapers, and social media platforms); 3.) attempting to enforce criminal penalties enabled by the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism in combination with the Trump administration’s making anti-Semitism a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

Welcome to yet another Jewish century.

[1] H. Robert Outten, Michael T. Schmitt, and Daniel A. Miller, “Feeling Threatened about the Future: Whites’ Emotional Reactions to Anticipated Ethnic Demographic Changes,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 38 (2011): 14–25.

[2] Bendersky, J. W., The “Jewish Threat”: Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 325.

[3] As another indication of Trump’s fealty to Jewish interests, he opposed the National Endowment for the Humanities, rescinding most of their grants, but he gave the largest grant in its history to the Jewish Civilization Project of Tikvah, a radical pro-Israel group “dedicated to promoting the communal interests and special ‘covenantal’ status one group, the Jews.” (211)

[4] Daniel J. Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America (Princeton University Press, 2002), 205.

[5] Jonathan Greenblatt, Foreword to the reprint of the 2008 edition of A Nation of Immigrants (Harper Perennial, 2018). https://www.amazon.com/Nation-Immigrants-John-F-Kennedy/dp/0061447544

[6] Mae M. Ngai, “Oscar Handlin and Immigration Policy Reform in the 1950s and 1960s,” Journal of American Ethnic History 32, no. 3 (2013): 62–67.

[7] Otis Graham, Unguarded Gates: A History of America’s Immigration Crisis (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 67.

[8] Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 205.

[9] (He recently labeled what he claimed was a “tiny minority”) of “these settlers as a ‘band of terrorists’ engaged in ‘criminal activity.’”)

[10] D. M. Tucker, K. Vanatta, & J. Rothlind, “Arousal and Activation Systems and Primitive Adaptive Controls on Cognitive Priming,” in Psychological and Biological Approaches to Emotion, S. L. Stein, B. Leventhal, & T. Trabasso (eds.) (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1990): 145–166.

[11] Lindemann here refers to Paul Johnson, author of A History of the Jews (Perennial Library, 1988; orig. pub.: 1987).

[12] Albert Lindemann, Esau’s Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews (Cambridge University Press, 1997), 448.

Is it “anti-Semitic” to say there is war on Christmas?

December 24, 2025/77 Comments/in Featured Articles, Jewish Writing on Anti-Semitism/by Kevin MacDonald

Editor’s note: This article was originally posted on December 26, 2019.

Dan Rosenberg, writing in the Canadian Jewish News, claims that it’s “anti-Semitic” to say that there’s a war on Christmas. He also says that “terms such as ‘New York lawyers (and bankers),’ and ‘Hollywood culture’ refer to Jews. When people speak of the ‘secularists’ and ‘internationalists’ who are behind conspiracies like the War on Christmas, they are also referring to Jews.” And I suppose any mentions of globalists, George Soros’s influence, or the Israel Lobby are similarly off limits. In fact, for the likes of Rosenberg (and pretty much every Jew with a high position in the media), any mention that Jews are an elite or have any influence at all (or at least not any influence that is not utterly benign and good for everyone) is horrifying and utterly irrational.

Activists like Rosenberg are not limited by having to deal with actual data and facts. It’s simple. They can claim anything they want because any assertion that Jews have anything to do with changing Christian culture of America is automatically labeled as evil.

So what evidence does Rosenberg come up with?

The idea of the War on Christmas started with one of the founding fathers of American anti-Semitism: automaker Henry Ford. Back in the 1920s, he published a newsweekly called the International Jew. It frequently featured blatantly bigoted accusations such as, “Last Christmas, most people had a hard time finding Christmas cards that indicated in any way that Christmas commemorated someone’s birth.… People sometimes ask why three million Jews can control the affairs of 100 million Americans. In the same way that 10 Jewish students can abolish the mention of Christmas and Easter out of schools containing 3,000 Christian pupils.”

In modern times, Fox News has been airing segments such as Bill O’Reilly’s 2016 “Naughty or Nice” list, which praised businesses that use “Merry Christmas” and condemned others that say “Happy Holidays.”

That’s it. No heavy lifting required. Of course, it ignores Eli Plaut’s academic book A Kosher Christmas which proudly claims, in the words of a reviewer:

Jews have been the vanguard of an effort to “transform Christmastime into a holiday season belonging to all Americans,” without religious exclusivity. The most important Jewish mechanisms of secularization are comedy and parody, for laughter undermines religious awe. Take, for example, Hanukkah Harry from “Saturday Night Live”, who heroically steps in for a bedridden Santa by delivering presents from a cart pulled by donkeys named Moishe, Hershel, and Shlomo. Remarkably, Hanukkah Harry has emerged as a real Santa-alternative for many American Jews. Plaut sees such things not as attempts at assimilation but as an intentional subversion of Christmas traditions. “Through these parodies,” he writes, “Jews could envision not having to be captivated by the allure of ubiquitous Christmas symbols.” And it isn’t just Jews: for Americans in general, Jewish parody helps ensure that Christmas “not be taken too seriously” and that the celebrations of other traditions “be accorded equal respect and opportunity.”

As I note in my comment, “there seem to be two messages here. One is the message of subversion utilizing ridicule among other methods. The other is that Jews are seen as high-mindedly making Christmas ‘into a holiday season belonging to all Americans.’ The end result is that Christmas is not ‘taken too seriously’ and the Christian religious aspect central to the traditional holiday is de-emphasized.”

So is it “blatantly bigoted” to make claims such as that Jews have been instrumental in getting Christianity removed from the public square? Of course not. In Chapter 7 of The Culture of Critique I noted: “One aspect of the Jewish interest in cultural pluralism in the United States has been that Jews have a perceived interest that the United States not be a homogeneous Christian culture. As Ivers (1995, 2) notes,

Jewish civil rights organizations have had an historic role in the postwar development of American church-state law and policy.” In this case the main Jewish effort began only after World War II, although Jews opposed linkages between the state and the Protestant religion much earlier. … The Jewish effort in this case was well funded and was the focus of well-organized, highly dedicated Jewish civil service organizations, including the AJCommittee, the AJCongress, and the ADL. It involved keen legal expertise both in the actual litigation but also in influencing legal opinion via articles in law journals and other forums of intellectual debate, including the popular media. It also involved a highly charismatic and effective leadership, particularly Leo Pfeffer of the AJCongress.

But, since Rosenberg focuses on Henry Ford, let’s take a look at what Ford’s The International Jew (TIJ)had to say (see my review). This was around 1920, well before the post-World War II era when Jewish influence crescendoed. The International Jew had a lot to say about Jewish efforts to eradicate the idea that America ought to be a Christian culture. Rosenberg writes that any mention of “Hollywood culture” is an unacceptable reference to Jews. Ford’s writers were well aware of this:

TIJ notes that to advocate censorship is construed as anti-Semitism: “Reader, beware! if you so much as resent the filth of the mass of the movies, you will fall under the judgment of anti-Semitism” (2/12/1921).

But, after noting that “90% of the production is in the hands of a few large companies, 85% of which “are in the hands of Jews” (2/12/1921), there was enough resentment about the movies that in fact attempts to control Hollywood were created shortly thereafter:

TIJ is careful to note that its concerns with the moral messages in movies are not idiosyncratic but part of a larger kulturkampf between the movie industry and large segments of the American public: “In almost every state there are movie censorship bills pending, with the old ‘wet’ and gambling elements against them, and the awakened part of the decent population in favor of them; always, the Jewish producing firms constituting the silent pressure behind the opposition” (2/12/1921). Indeed, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, headed by Will H. Hays, was created in 1922 in response to movements in over thirty state legislatures to enact strict censorship laws, and the Production Code Administration, headed by Joseph I. Breen, was launched in response to a campaign by the Catholic Legion of Decency (Gabler 1988). TIJ’s reservations about the moral content of movies was indeed widely shared among the American public.

The effectiveness of these organizations in influencing the content of Hollywood culture lasted until the 1960s’ counter-cultural revolution, a social transformation, that as argued in Chapter 3 of The Culture of Critique, was the product of a new Jewish-dominated elite that remains dominant today. Moreover, “the assertions of TIJ are congruent with recent studies indicating that Jews remain in control of the movie industry and that the movies often portray Christians and Christianity negatively and Jews and Judaism positively (e.g., Medved, 1992/1993; MacDonald, 2002a).” For recent examples, see Edmund Connelly’s updated War on Christmas series.

As also noted in the quote above from The Culture of Critique, TIJ was also well aware of Jewish influence in removing Christianity from the public square:

Besides the cultural influences described above, TIJ devotes a great deal of attention to the Jewish political campaigns against public expressions of Christianity and for official recognition of the Jewish religion (e.g., recognizing Jewish holidays). “The St. Louis Charity Fair in 1908 planned to remain open on Friday evening; a great outcry; did the managers of that fair mean to insult the Jews; didn’t they know that the Jewish Sabbath began on Friday night?” (6/04/1921). TIJ presents a history of Jewish activism against public expressions of Christianity based on Kehillah records [see TIJ‘s account of the Kehillah], beginning with an attempt in 1899–1900 to remove the word “Christian” from the Virginia Bill of Rights and culminating in 1919–1920: “In this year the Kehillah was so successful in its New York campaign that it was possible for a Jewish advertiser in New York to say that he wanted Jewish help, but it was not possible for a non-Jewish advertiser to state his non-Jewish preference. This is a sidelight both on Jewish reasonableness and Jewish power” (3/12/1920). “The Jews’ interference with the religion of the others, and the Jews’ determination to wipe out of public life every sign of the predominant Christian character of the United States is the only active form of religious intolerance in the country today” (3/21/1920).

Indeed, the focus of Jewish activism was that the United States was not a Christian civilization but an “unshapen mass of potentiality”:

Based on pronouncements of Jewish organizations and intellectuals, TIJ makes the important point that Jews promote “one of the dangerous doctrines being preached today” that “the United States is not any definite thing as yet, but that it is yet to be made, and it is still the prey of whatever power can seize it and mold it to its liking. It is a favorite Jewish view that the United States is a great unshapen mass of potentiality, of no particular character which is yet to be given its definite form. . . . We are not making Americans; we are permitting foreigners to be educated in the theory that America is a free-for-all, the prize of whatever fantastic foreign political theory may seize it” (3/05/1921). This comment on Jewish attitudes fits well with a great deal of evidence that Jews have consistently opposed the notion that the U.S. has any ethnic overtones or that it is a European or Christian civilization (see MacDonald, 1998/2002, Ch. 7). …

What strikes the reader of TIJ is its portrayal of Jewish intensity and aggressiveness in asserting its interests. Jews were unique as an American immigrant group in their hostility toward American Christian culture and in their energetic efforts to change that culture (see also MacDonald 1998b, 2002b). From the perspective of TIJ, the United States had imported around 3,500,000 mainly Yiddish speaking, intensely Jewish immigrants over the previous 40 years. In that very short period, Jews had had enormous effect on American society.

Fundamentally, TIJ was correct in all of its important assertions. I conclude:

Mainstream scholarship supports the following contentions of TIJ regarding Jewish influence on the U.S. as of the early 1920s:

Jews had achieved a great deal of economic success, even to the point of dominating certain important U.S. industries.
Jewish organizations had launched highly successful campaigns to remove references to Christianity from U.S. public culture and to legitimize Judaism as a religion on a par with Protestantism and Catholicism.
Jewish organizations had been able to impose their ethnic interests on certain key areas of domestic policy. As TIJ noted, Jews were the main force behind maintaining the policy of unrestricted immigration; by 1920, unrestricted immigration policy had continued nearly 20 years after U.S. public opinion had turned against it (see MacDonald 1998b, Ch. 7). Jews had also shown the ability to have a great deal of influence in the executive branch of the U.S. government, as indicated by their influence in the Wilson administration.
Jews had also been able to impose their ethnic interests in the area of foreign policy despite widespread feelings among the political establishment that the policies advocated by the Jewish community were often not in the best interests of the United States. The main examples highlighted by TIJ were the abrogation of the Russian trade agreement in 1911 and post-W.W.I policy toward Eastern Europe where Jewish attitudes were entirely dictated by their perceptions of the interests of foreign Jews rather than the economic or political interests of the U.S. Jews achieved their goals on these issues despite the views of the Taft Administration on the Russian Trade Agreement and the views of a wide range of military and diplomatic figures that the U.S. should support post-W.W.I Poland as a bulwark against Bolshevism and that Jewish complaints against Poland were exaggerated (see Bendersky 2000).
Jews had been a major force behind the success of Bolshevism and its incredibly bloody reign of terror in the Soviet Union and in the abortive Communist revolutions in Hungary by Kun and Germany by Eisner.
Jews were the main component and by far the most energetic component of the radical left in the United States, a movement that advocated a massive political, economic, and cultural transformation of the U.S.
Jews had attained a substantial influence over the U.S. media via a virtual monopoly on the movie production business, domination of the theater and music businesses, their influence in journalism, ownership of some newspapers, and their ability to apply economic pressure on newspapers because of their importance as advertisers. In turn, the ability of Jews to pressure non-Jewish newspapers depended on Jewish ownership of department stores in major cities. Jews used this media influence to advance their domestic and foreign policy agendas, portray Jews and Judaism positively while portraying Christianity negatively, and promote a sexual morality at odds with the traditional culture of the United States.

In turn, these consequences stemmed from critical features of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy

But for an activist like Rosenberg, all that is necessary is to scream “bigoted,” “anti-Semitic,” and the vast majority of people, unaware of the history of Jewish activism, acquiesce. This is unsurprising because the history of Jewish activism and influence can’t even be discussed in polite circles much less be disseminated in the mainstream media or the educational system.

Or they are well aware of the Jewish role in transforming the culture of the United States, but they also aware of the Jewish power to ruin their lives.

In short the present situation is an excellent marker of Jewish power in contemporary America. And yes, Christianity remains in their crosshairs.

Bernard Bachrach’s “Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe”

December 30, 2024/3 Comments/in Anti-Semitism, Featured Articles, Jewish Writing on Anti-Semitism/by Spencer J. Quinn

Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe
Bernard Bachrach
University of Minnesota Press, 1977 (Available online at Archive.org)

2910 Words

The term “lachrymose” should be in the lexicon of all modern dissidents. According the first entry in my 1984 Webster’s II dictionary, it means, “Weeping, or given to weeping: tearful.” This term gained prominence regarding the Jewish Question in the late 1920s when historian Salo Baron coined the “lachrymose theory” of Jewish history, which describes “the eternal self-pity characteristic of Jewish historiography.” Such an approach, as many of us know, amounts to dishonestly politicizing history by exaggerating both the innocence and suffering of Jews as well the power and malevolence of White gentiles. The point, of course, is not to increase our knowledge of days gone by but to cynically promote the ethnic interests of Jews in the here and now.

Bernard Bachrach successfully challenges this mindset in his brief 1977 volume Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe, wherein he demonstrates how the lachrymose approach falls short when held against historical data. In his preface, he writes:

Such treatments of early medieval Jewish policy have generally been presented in conjunction with a view of barbarian Europe that depicts Christian secular rulers as powerful and religiously oriented, the Church as the dominant institution in society with immense influence over the political process, and the Jews as very few in number, powerless, and easily victimized though innocent. This picture of strong monarchs, a powerful church, and an insignificant Jewry, however, does not fit the evidence for early medieval conditions.

Although the work is technically one of history, really it is a reflection on historiography and, if writ large, a repudiation of the infusion of politics into the study of Jewish history. In his notes, Bachrach mentions how Jewish scholars had attacked Baron’s lachrymose theory “for providing ammunition with which the anti-Semites can attack Jews.” Thankfully, Bachrach places himself above such concerns (regardless of his personal sympathies). The result is both useful and interesting since in most cases when kings or Church magnates acted against Jews, they were in fact being reasonable.

Bachrach begins with the Visigoths, who were the post-Roman Germanic rulers of the Iberian Peninsula. Their Jewish-policy baseline sprang from the old Roman law which established that Jews were to be . . .

left alone to practice their religion
given judicial autonomy within their communities
prohibited from holding public office wherein they could inflict punishment on Christians
prohibited from converting non-Jews to Judaism
prohibited from owning Christian slaves

Yet, as Bachrach mentions repeatedly, just because a law was on the books does not mean that it was respected or enforced. King Theodoric the Great, the Ostrogoth who reigned over the Visigoths during the early sixth century, for example, had ignored many of the laws which limited Jewish activity. The Visigothic monarch Reccared I, who reigned a half-century later, has been considered anti-Jewish since he decreed that children of Jewish and Christian parents be baptized. Some modern scholars viewed this as forced conversion. Bachrach, on the other hand, reveals that the Visigothic Jews themselves would not have objected to this given that, according to Jewish law at the time, a Jewish woman married to a non-Jew deserved to be stoned to death and that a child born of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother wasn’t even a Jew. Bachrach exonerates not only Reccared but also the Church leaders for being “concerned about the spiritual and material well-being” of such children. Further, Reccared removed the death penalty for Jews who proselytize and even ignored a missive from Pope Gregory I, which entreated him to punish Jews who were illegally dealing in Christian slaves in Narbonne.

In Visigothic Spain a rough pattern then emerges over the next two centuries:

Jews are given wide freedom by pro-Jewish kings, which they then abuse, typically through bribery, proselytization, dealing in Christian slaves, and forcibly circumcising them.
In response, anti-Jewish kings replace the pro-Jewish ones (often with the support of the Church) and enact laws meant to protect Christians and Christianity from Jews.
Jews do not like this, and subsequently lend their financial and military influence to viable enemies of the crown until the anti-Jewish king is deposed or dead.
Rinse and repeat.

This is a good early medieval example of Jewish aggressiveness against the host society and willingness to exploit non-Jews.

Sisebut in 612 was the first of these supposedly anti-Jewish kings. He reversed many of Reccared’s pro-Jewish policies and attempted to enforce the extant laws about Jews owning and converting Christian slaves. Later in his reign he offered the Jews of Spain an ultimatum, conversion or exile—something that even the anti-Jewish Church officials opposed. This may sound harsh to modern ears, but Bachrach shoots down any interpretations that Sisebut was acting out of greed, fanaticism, or malice. Simply put, the Jews of Spain had opposed Sisebut’s ascension to the throne, and he was understandably trying to hamstring their political influence in response. In any event, his anti-Jewish decrees went largely ignored.

Things then ping-pong between pro- and anti-Jewish monarchs over the following decades. One pro-Jewish king, Chindasuinth was in fact much harder on his fellow Christians than he was on his Jewish subjects. After Chindasuinth’s successor Reccesuinth reinstated Sisebut’s anti-Jewish legislation, Reccesuinth’s successor Wamba had to crush a Jewish revolt in Narbonne. Wamba then banished all Jews from the city. Yet, as with most anti-Jewish actions in Visigothic Spain, it didn’t last.

Wamba, however, was not a religious fanatic, and his appreciation of the power of the Jewish community apparently led him to a rapprochement with them. The Jews of Narbonne were allowed to return to their city where for a long time they continued to be a dominant force. Wamba, in addition, did not enforce the existing anti-Jewish laws, and at the councils which met during his reign the Jewish question was not discussed.

Bachrach also states bluntly that “as late as 694 Jews still owned Christian slaves and carried on business as usual.” This was during the reign of Egica, who also tried to weaken the economic base of the Jews in order to rid his political enemies of their financial strength. He went to so far as to order that all Jews in his kingdom “be stripped of their property and be made slaves.” As in the past, such legislation was an abject failure because most of the leadership in Visigothic Spain was either openly tolerant of Jews or susceptible to their bribes. Still, Bachrach shockingly defends Egica’s decision as rational since the Jews had indeed schemed against him:

Had not refugae sought foreign aid to help rebel causes throughout much of the seventh century? Had not the Jews actively participated in military operations against Wamba? Were not Jews sufficiently disadvantaged as a result of Egica’s politics that would benefit by opposing him actively?

Historian Edward Thompson defines refugae as “men who went to foreign powers with a view to launching attacks on Spain from abroad.” Thus, it can be inferred from Bachrach’s text that many of these traitorous individuals were in fact exiled Jews. This becomes an important point in the early eighth century when, as Egica’s grandson Achila in the north, the upstart Visigothic king Roderic in the south, the Byzantines, and the Arab Muslims were all vying for control of the Iberian Peninsula. In the ensuing chaos the Spanish Jews repaid the Goths for two centuries of prosperity, freedom, and tolerance by allying with the Muslims and seizing a number of cities in Spain—and prospering thereafter.

Although Bachrach does not state this explicitly, it seems that the Visigoths would have benefited greatly had they actually followed through on the anti-Jewish legislation with which scholars of the lachrymose tradition so keenly besmirch them.

In Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe, Bernard Bachrach saves the best for first, with the remainder of his treatise lacking much of the punch and parry found in his chapter on the Visigoths. This is not Bachrach’s fault since the history itself is not quite as compelling vis-à-vis Jews. Basically, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantines, the Merovingians, and the Carolingians were pro-Jewish and rarely wavered from that. These Europeans also ignored the mildly anti-Jewish Roman laws as well as pressure from Church magnates to penalize Jews when proselytizing or abusing the flock. From the sixth to the ninth centuries, the Jews of Western and Southern Europe enjoyed a golden age of tolerance and prosperity.

Indeed, in an earlier work Bachrach suggests that the Jews were so wealthy, powerful, and aggressive that until around the middle of the fifth century the government viewed a strong anti-Jewish policy as not politically viable, even though it was continually being pressured in this direction by the Church.[1] The rather limited anti-Jewish actions of the government during the 150 years following the Edict of Toleration of 313 are interpreted “as attempts to protect Christians from a vigorous, powerful, and often aggressive Jewish gens” (408). The Jews themselves were perceived by the emperors, the government, and the Church fathers as “an aggressive, well-organized, wealthy, and powerful minority” (p. 408). Particularly revealing are the suggestion that the solvency of the municipalities depended on Jews paying their taxes and the fear that offending the Jews could set off widespread and costly revolts, such as the one led by Patricius in 351.

Of the early-sixth-century Ostrogothic monarch Theodoric, Bachrach writes:

It seems, however, that Theodoric pursued a clearly defined pro-Jewish policy that called for the recognition and enforcement of their privilegia. At the same time he managed to ignore old imperial legislation the restricted the activities of Jews. Those who harmed Jews were effectively and severely punished; alleged or potential Jewish wrongdoing was investigated, admonished, and even threatened with “royal displeasure”; but at no time is there evidence of punishments having been meted out or of anti-Jewish laws having been enforced.

Bachrach points out that the Jews of Italy at the time provided many educated men for public service as well an even greater number of armed fighting men loyal to the crown. So why wouldn’t Theodoric want to pursue pro-Jewish policies? In the late sixth century, Pope Gregory I also had a hand in protecting Jewish interests, especially when he made allowances for Jewish slave traders who may have “accidentally” found themselves owning Christian slaves. Despite Gregory’s professed “horror and loathing” of Jews, he continually relied upon the relatively lenient Theodosian Code rather than the stricter Justinian Code when dealing with Jewish matters.

Compared to such a standard, the medieval leaders whom the lachrymose school considers anti-Jewish really weren’t. For example, the Byzantine emperor Justinian did confiscate synagogues in North Africa in 535, but this was in response to North African Jews having supported the Vandals in their war against the Byzantine Empire. Another historical hiccup can be found in how Byzantine emperor Heraclitus decreed in 632 that Jews convert to Christianity. Bachrach reveals that this was merely a stratagem to entice potentially disloyal Byzantine Jews to support the Empire’s wars against the Persians and Muslims. As it turned out, the Jews called the emperor’s bluff and refused their support, and Heraclitus still did not enforce the decree. Byzantine Jews later repaid their emperor’s tolerance by rioting in Constantinople in 641 and attacking the Hagia Sophia in 661.

Then, of course, there was the famously pro-Jewish king Charlemagne who did everything he could to promote Jewish mercantile and scholarly activity. In particular, he encouraged the Jewish group known as the Radanites to trade far and wide across Europe, the Muslims world, and beyond. Bachrach even speculates that it is partially because of Charlemagne that Jews became so dominant in international trade to begin with. Despite this beneficence, however, Jews still found ways to abuse the system. For example, they forced Charlemagne to ban Jewish mint masters from operating out of their homes so to cut down on fraud. He also had to prohibit Jewish moneylenders from accepting “the persons of free Christians” as collateral.

As for controlling his kingdom’s economy, Charlemagne

emphasized the importance of the local market where his officials could oversee weights and measures, collect taxes, and monitor prices. Some Jews in the Carolingian realm seemed to have found it more profitable to do business from their homes away from the government’s watchful eye. Charlemagne therefore issued an administrative order forbidding Jews from storing commodities intended for sale such as grain and wine in their homes and thus hoped to stop business from being done outside of the market place.

Bachrach often makes the point that many of the acts of monarchs deemed by lachrymose scholars as anti-Jewish were in fact either sheer bluffs, toothless edicts, retributive fair play, or rational responses to Jewish malfeasance. Charlemagne’s actions above are a great example of this last type of behavior.

The most persistent opponents (I hesitate to use the term “enemy”) of the Jews during the early Medieval period were the Church magnates. They were naturally most concerned about Jewish intermarriage and proselytization as well as the continued Jewish practice of owning and circumcising—thereby converting—Christian slaves. Since Church leaders, at least on paper, had little to gain from the economic benefits that unfettered Jewish activity brought to the table, they were quick to rail against the gross injustices associated with this activity. Of the Carolingian times, Bachrach writes (emphasis mine):

Thus there are contemporary reports that Jews purchased Christian slaves from Christian owners and sold the former to the Muslims in Spain. Jews also apparently castrated some slaves especially for the foreign market and even kidnapped Christian youths for sale abroad.

The growing Jewish trade in pagan Slavs was also a problem. Obnoxious behavior such as Jews entering convents to have “secret dealings” with nuns further offended the ecclesiastics.

Incidentally, in his Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (Princeton University Press, 1993), Louis Feldman points out that the circumcision of slaves well into the sixth century was a Jewish religious law at least partly for ritual reasons (circumcision enabled slaves to perform their duties, such as handling food, in a manner consistent with Jewish religious law) but undergoing this procedure did not mean that the slaves had been converted to Judaism. Like Bachrach, Feldman also emphasizes Jewish wealth and prosperity and their alliances with wealthy, powerful non-Jews.

The strongest and most notable anti-Jewish Church presence during this period was Bishop Agobard of Lyons (see also Andrew Joyce’s “Agobard of Lyon and The Origins of the Hostile Elite”). During the reign of Charlemagne’s son Louis in the early ninth century, Agobard actively campaigned against Jewish criminal excesses and constantly pressured the crown to enforce the anti-Jewish laws which had been on the books since Roman times. Further, he promoted a general segregation of Jews and gentiles and strongly opposed the ongoing Judaization of Western Europe. If Agobard had his way, Christians would be banned from purchasing wine and meat processed by Jews. Clearly, all of this would have severely limited Jewish economic strength in the nascent Holy Roman Empire, and was something that Louis—who was even more pro-Jewish than his father—would not have allowed.

Things came to a head around 822 when Agobard and a Jewish slaveowner faced each other in imperial court. Essentially, Agobard had absconded with one of the Jew’s slaves, a former pagan who had been converted to Judaism (willingly or not, Bachrach does not say) and later baptized by Agobard. The judge found in favor of the slaveowner, and Louis added insult to injury by peremptorily dismissing Agobard from the court. Bachrach then rationalizes Agobard’s actions and essentially asks the reader to sympathize with him rather than with the king, the court, or the Jews. After mentioning how various supporters of Agobard had to go into hiding or were punished by imperial officials after the trial, Bachrach writes:

He [Agobard] seems to have believed, and he was correct, that compromise with the militant, aggressive, and powerful Jews of Lyonnais would have meant defeat for the Church. As a religious churchman deeply committed to the spiritual health of his flock he had little choice in his course of action; he fought and lost.

That the greatest anti-Jewish advocate of the era met with total defeat is a powerful blow against the lachrymose school of Jewish historiography. Bachrach makes this point several times throughout his volume, and he is quite convincing. He also makes plain that such an approach not only selectively remembers anti-Jewish actions among gentiles and downplays their pro-Jewish behavior, it also exaggerates the power of monarchs and their willingness to enforce anti-Jewish laws. Bachrach essentially accuses lachrymose scholars of exaggerating Jewish suffering during the early Medieval period in Western Europe.

This then leads us to the next question: if the Jews are exaggerating historical events during this period, what other historical events are they exaggerating? It’s a fair question, and one which exceeds the scope of Bachrach’s study. Nevertheless, Bachrach, to his credit, leaves the door open for its pursuit.

We should remember that Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe is more a commentary on historiography than a work of history per se. It’s too thin to be otherwise. Readers shouldn’t look to it for many “gotcha” moments whereby Jewish historical sins are revealed and historic anti-Semitism exonerated. Yes, there is some of that, but one would be better served viewing American Krogan’s excellent 6-part video series entitled The Visigoths and the Jews for this sort of thing. For his part, Bachrach remains evenhanded by presenting the positive side of the equation. He often depicts Jewish-Christian interaction as voluntary and mutually beneficial. He’s also quick to point out the good Jews can do, such as in 793 when the Jews of Narbonne—the same place where they had been illegally trading in Christian slaves—defended their city and the Carolingian realm against Muslim invaders.

It gets to the point where we begin to wonder if these are even Jews that Bachrach is writing about. His depictions appear strange compared to the Jews that Europeans have known so well since the Middle Ages. Yes, the vigor, venality, economic proficiency, and internationalism will ring a few bells. But one does not find much zealous proselytizing or military prowess among Jewish diasporas these days. Further, Bachrach makes little mention of usury and almost no mention of economic exploitation or cultural degeneracy. Anything resembling the Jewish revolutionary spirit which caused so much damage in the twentieth century also does not make an appearance. Could it be that such stereotypically Jewish traits were less common back then in that part of the world than they are today? Perhaps one reason why Western European Jews and Christians got along relatively well during this period was because these Jews were somehow genetically different than modern Jews? Bachrach never mentions whether he was writing about the Sephardim or the Ashkenazim. Perhaps the evidence from that period was too murky in 1977 to make such distinctions?

In any event, with Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe Bernard Bachrach has given us a highly useful work with which to refute the pervasive lachrymose school of Jewish historiography.

[1] Bernard S. Bachrach, “The Jewish community in the Later Roman Empire as seen in the Codex Theodosianus,” in “To See Ourselves as Others See Us”: Christians, Jews, “Others” in Late Antiquity, ed. J. Neusner & E. S. Frerichs (Scholars Press).

Carl Jung and the Jews

June 29, 2024/32 Comments/in Featured Articles, Jewish Aggressiveness, Jewish Writing on Anti-Semitism/by Marshall Yeats

“The Jew truly solicits anti-Semitism with his readiness to scent out anti-Semitism everywhere.”
Carl Jung, 1934

For a long time I’ve been fascinated by the way in which Jews obsess over deceased, historical figures who made unflattering comments about their race. The more famous and talented, the greater the intensity of the obsession. Such preoccupations have featured previously at The Occidental Observer, for example in the Jewish vendetta against T.S. Eliot, and against his contemporary Ezra Pound. In Anthony Julius’s T.S. Eliot, anti-Semitism and Literary Form, for example, Julius writes that Jews reading Eliot’s poetry are both “appalled and impressed.”^[1] They are appalled because they perceive an unjustified critique upon their ethnic group, and they perceive this critique more acutely because of their ethnocentrism. They are impressed, on the other hand, because they appreciate, and are threatened by, the talent of their target, often despite themselves. The ‘attraction’ which brings them back repeatedly to their target arises from the desire to deconstruct and demean that talent, and therefore avenge or mitigate the critique.

Jews are also firmly in the grip of a historically rooted fear or paranoia. The past is ever present for Jews, prompting them into risky and extremely aggressive actions against host populations. The perfect expression of this paranoia can be found in a very recent article in The Guardian by Jewish journalist Barney Ronay. Ronay is currently in Germany to cover the European Football championships, but he can’t seem to focus on sport. He informs his readers that he has “loved being in this warm, friendly place for Euro 2024, a homecoming of sorts. But that doesn’t stop it terrifying me.” He continues:

Here, by way of example, is a non-exhaustive list of German things that have felt terrifying to me, begun on my first day at the Euros when a happy German woman was laughing uncontrollably on a train passing through woodland outside Munich and I realised that happy uncontrollable German laughter is terrifying. German trains are terrifying. German railway sidings are terrifying. There are transport vibes here, fleeing energy. A German forest is terrifying, in particular a German forest clearing. An empty German park at dusk is terrifying. Any German village square is terrifying … What else? German dark wood furniture. A row of parked German bicycles (Where are they going? Will I need one?). German staircases, corridors, suitcases. Most German shoes. All discarded German shoes.

Many of these fears have their origins in tales passed down to Jewish children, and reinforced through Jewish cultural and political groups. Fear is a key ingredient in the cement that binds Jewish ethnocentrism, which is why the ADL invests a lot of money in surveys of anti-Semitism intended to terrify and shepherd the ethnic flock into cohesive action. In Ronay’s case, “Family myth dictates one of my distant uncles was pulled off a train and shot. The bullet passed through his neck, he lay down for a bit, got up and rejoined the resistance.” I applaud his use of the word myth here, but there are many hundreds of thousands of Jewish families which cherish such fantastical boogeyman tales as historical fact. And Jewish fear, and Jewish ethnocentrism, needs its boogeymen, be they obvious ones like Hitler, or more persistent cultural figures such as Eliot or Pound—figures who can still be discussed publicly with a level of respect and admiration. Among such figures we find Carl Jung.

Carl Jung and the Culture of Critique

Although, or perhaps because, Jung was once associated with psychoanalysis, a movement so Jewish that it comprises one of the Jewish intellectual movements highlighted in Kevin MacDonald’s Culture of Critique, the Swiss psychiatrist has increasingly become the focus of condemnation, deconstruction, and criticism in recent years. In the recently-published Anti-Semitism and Analytical Psychology: Jung, Politics and Culture, Jewish academic Daniel Burston writes that:

In today’s world of psychotherapy, one cannot be a Jungian without having to answer the charge that Jung was both a Nazi and anti-Semitic. … His statements on the over-materialistic values of Jewish psychology, and its corrosive effects on the spiritual nature of the psyche, were made in the 1930s. … Psychoanalysts have used it as a reason not to study Jung; other intellectuals use it as a reason to discredit Jung.^[2]

In a paragraph that reads a little like something from a horror novel, Jung’s place as a boogeyman is introduced early, with anti-Semitism explained as a mysterious, ghostly and terrifying phenomenon:

After reading this book, perhaps Jungians will grasp why so many Jews think of anti-Semitism as a shape-shifting but deathless adversary that lives forever in the hidden recesses of Christian and Muslim cultures; one that lies dormant for shorter or longer periods, but always returns to torment us through the ages.

Shape-shifting and deathless. Oh my.

Burston draws a distinction between what he calls “low-brow, high-intensity” anti-Semites, and “high-brow, low-intensity” anti-Semites. He explicitly mentions Kevin MacDonald as an example of the latter, and places Jung in this category also. Burston claims that “anti-Semitic intellectuals” like MacDonald and Jung, while non-violent, “will also offer cover or support for less educated, more overt kind of anti-Semites when circumstances require.” The smear is therefore that men like MacDonald and Jung are essentially thugs in suits.

Burston traces Jung’s thought to the neo-conservative movement dominant during his university years, with Jung painted as having imbibed a semi-barbaric quasi-Germanism. “It rejected naturalism and was drawn to symbolism and irrationalism. In politics it questioned democracy and rejected socialism, preferring a Nietzschean elitism. . . . Jung adopted [Eduard von Hartmann’s] critique of modernity [including his] concern about the ‘Judaization’ of modern society. . . . For Jung, Freud became the representative of such a rationalistic, ‘disenchanted’ view of the world.”^[3]

By the 1920s and 1930s, supporters of Freud and of Jung increasingly saw each other as opponents in a battle for civilization as each defined it. Because of his anti-materialism and his criticism of many of Freud’s more perverse theories, Freudians, most of whom were Jewish, regarded Jung as an anti-Semite and latterly as “a herald of fascist and Nazi barbarism.” Burston continues in this vein, arguing for a “significant and disturbing link between the dynamics of antisemitism over the centuries and the psychology and politics of Carl Jung.”

A crucial problem that Jews, past and present, have with Jung is that he dared to turn the analytical gaze back on the Jews themselves. While the entirety of psychoanalysis seemed geared towards what Kevin MacDonald termed “a radical criticism of gentile society,” as well as the development of self-serving theories of anti-Semitism, Jung developed a cutting critique of Jews and of what he called “Jewish anti-Christianism,” with many of his observations arising from direct experience with the Jewish psychoanalytic milieu. In other words, Jung put Jewish quacks “on the couch.” In a letter to an associate dated May 1934, Jung explained:

The Jewish Christ-complex makes for a somewhat hystericized general attitude … which has become especially clear to me in the course of the present anti-Christian attacks upon myself. The mere fact that I speak of a difference between Jewish and Christian psychology suffices to allow anyone to voice the prejudice that I am an anti-Semite. … As you know, Freud previously accused me of anti-Semitism because I could not countenance his soulless materialism. The Jew truly solicits anti-Semitism with his readiness to scent out anti-Semitism everywhere. I cannot see why the Jew, like any so-called Christian, is incapable of assuming that he is being personally criticised when one has an opinion of him. Why must it always be assumed that one wants to condemn the Jewish people?

For this affront, Jung is both dangerous and unforgivable in Jewish eyes. Burston is far from unique in wanting to diminish Jung because of his views on Jews. In the late 1990s a similar effort was made by the British Jewish academic Andrew Samuels, who claimed that “in C.G. Jung, nationalism found its psychologist.” The fearful response of Samuels to Jung was to claim that it was Jung who was gripped by a fear of Jews. Samuels tried to put Jung “on the couch” and to psychologize his attitudes to Jews by explaining them as being rooted in feelings of being threatened:

My perception is that the ideas of nation and of national difference form a fulcrum between the Hitlerian phenomenon and Jung’s analytical psychology. For, as a psychologist of nations, Jung too would feel threatened by the Jews, this strange so-called nation without a land. Jung, too, would feel threatened by the Jews, this strange nation without cultural forms — that is, without national cultural forms — of its own, and hence, in Jung’s words of 1933, requiring a “host nation”. What threatens Jung, in particular, can be illuminated by enquiring closely into what he meant when he writes, as he often does, of “Jewish psychology.”

Even in the early 2000s, there seemed to be a divide between non-Jewish scholars keen to keep Jung in the public eye, and Jewish scholars keen to keep him in the gutter. In a letter to the New York Times in 2004, one “Henry Friedman” took issue with Robert Boynton (NYU) and Deirdre Bair (National Book Award winning biographer) for their apparent agreement that Jung was “neither personally anti-Semitic nor politically astute,” thus absolving Jung of some of the worst accusations levelled against him by Jewish critics keen to associate Jung with the ideas of National Socialism. Friedman called this “a further contribution to a misleading attempt to minimize the importance of Jung’s anti-Semitic racism and his contributions to the Third Reich’s genocidal policies.” Friedman continues:

It is pathetic that Jung should be excused from responsibility for his virulent racism and his importance in the Nazi movement. Most important, it is likely that his ideas about psychoanalysis were instrumental in Hitler and Göring’s desire to cleanse psychoanalysis of Freud’s ideas — especially the notion of the Oedipus complex, which apparently offended Hitler’s sensibilities. To conclude that Martin Heidegger was more of a collaborator than Jung serves to divert attention from the serious nature of Jung’s involvement with the Nazis’ anti-Semitic propaganda. Whether he was a worse offender than Heidegger is hard to assess, but as one who wrote papers on the inferiority of the Jewish race, Jung deserves a special degree of condemnation, not the lame excuse granted him by both Bair and Boynton.

Jung’s Attitudes Towards Jews

Jung’s professional and private writings contain a significant amount of material about Jews, and the content is most often highly critical. It is therefore not surprising that Jews should see Jung as a formidable opponent. Jung made many statements which appear to concur with Kevin MacDonald’s assessment that psychoanalysis under Freud was a Jewish intellectual movement. In 1934 Jung received much criticism for an article he published titled The State of Psychotherapy Today, in which he wrote that psychoanalysis was “a Jewish psychology.” Defending himself against accusations of racism for suggesting that Jews and Europeans have a different psychology, Jung explained:

Psychological differences obtain between all nations and races, and even between the inhabitants of Zurich, Basel, and Bern. (Where else would all the good jokes come from?) There are in fact differences between families and between individuals. That is why I attack every levelling psychology when it raises a claim to universal validity, as for instance the Freudian and the Adlerian. … All branches of mankind unite in one stem—yes, but what is a stem without separate branches? Why this ridiculous touchiness when anybody dares to say anything about the psychological difference between Jews and Christians? Every child knows that differences exist.

Jung believed that Jews, like all peoples, have a characteristic personality, and he stressed the need to take this personality into account. In his own sphere of expertise, Jung warned that “Freud and Adler’s psychologies were specifically Jewish, and therefore not legitimate for Aryans.”^[4] For Jung, a formative factor in the Jewish personality was the rootlessness of the Jews and the persistence of the Diaspora. Jung argued that Jews lacked a “chthontic quality,” meaning “the Jew … is badly at a loss for that quality in man which roots him to the earth and draws new strength from below.”^[5] Jung penned these words in 1918, but they retain significance even after the founding of the State of Israel, since vastly more Jews live outside Israel than within it. Jews remain a Diaspora people, and many continue to see their Diaspora status as a strength. Because they are scattered and rootless, however, Jung argued that Jews developed methods of getting on in the world that are built on exploiting weakness in others rather than expressing explicit strength. In Jung’s phrasing, “the Jews have this particularity in common with women; being physically weaker, they have to aim at the chinks in the armour of their adversary.”^[6]

Jung believed that Jews were incapable of operating effectively without a host society, and that they relied heavily upon grafting themselves into the systems of other peoples in order to succeed. In The State of Psychotherapy Today Jung wrote: “The Jew, who is something of a nomad, has never yet created a cultural form of his own, and as far as we can see, never will, since all his instincts and talents require a more or less civilized nation to act as host for their development.” This process of group development often involved ‘aiming at the chinks in the armour of their adversary,’ along with other flexible strategies.^[7]

Jung also believed (in common with a finding in Kevin MacDonald’s work) that there was a certain psychological aggressiveness in Jews, which was partly a result of the internal mechanics of Judaism. In a remarkably prescient set of observations in the 1950s, Jung expressed distaste for the behavior of Jewish women and essentially predicted the rise of feminism as a symptom of the pathological Jewess. Jung believed that Jewish men were “brides of Yahweh,” rendering Jewish women more or less obsolete within Judaism. In reaction, argued Jung, Jewish women in the early twentieth century began aggressively venting their frustrations against the male-centric nature of Judaism (and against the host society as a whole) while still conforming to the characteristic Jewish psychology and its related strategies. Writing to Martha Bernays, Freud’s wife, he once remarked of Jewish women that “so many of them are loud, aren’t they?” and later added he had treated “very many Jewish women — in all these women there is a loss of individuality, either too much or too little. But the compensation is always for the lack. That is to say, not the right attitude.”^[8]

Jung, meanwhile, was cautious about accusations of anti-Semitism, and he was “critical of the oversensitivity of Jews to anti-Semitism,” believing “one cannot criticise an individual Jew without it immediately becoming an anti-Semitic attack.”^[9] It is certainly difficult to believe that Jung, who basically argued that Jews had a unique psychological profile and had developed a unique method for getting on in the world, would have disagreed with the almost identical foundational premise of MacDonald’s trilogy. In fact, Jung believed that playing the victim and utilizing accusations of anti-Semitism against their critics were simply parts of the Jewish strategy—a useful cover for concerted ethnocentric action in “aiming at the chinks in the armour of their adversary.” For example, after the war, in a 1945 letter to Mary Mellon, he wrote, “It is however difficult to mention the anti-Christianism of the Jews after the horrible things that have happened in Germany. But Jews are not so damned innocent after all—the role played by the intellectual Jews in pre-war Germany would be an interesting object of investigation”^[10] Indeed, MacDonald notes:

a prominent feature of anti-Semitism among the Social Conservatives and racial anti-Semites in Germany from 1870 to 1933 was their belief that Jews were instrumental in developing ideas that subverted traditional German attitudes and beliefs. Jews were vastly overrepresented as editors and writers during the 1920s in Germany, and “a more general cause of increased anti-Semitism was the very strong and unfortunate propensity of dissident Jews to attack national institutions and customs in both socialist and non-socialist publications” (Gordon 1984, 51).[i] This “media violence” directed at German culture by Jewish writers such as Kurt Tucholsky—who “wore his subversive heart on his sleeve” (Pulzer 1979, 97)—was publicized widely by the anti-Semitic press (Johnson 1988, 476–477).

Jews were not simply overrepresented among radical journalists, intellectuals, and “producers of culture” in Weimar Germany, they essentially created these movements. “They violently attacked everything about German society. They despised the military, the judiciary, and the middle class in general” (Rothman & Lichter 1982, 85). Massing (1949, 84) notes the perception of the anti-Semite Adolf Stoecker of Jewish “lack of reverence for the Christian-conservative world.” (The Culture of Critique, Ch. 1)

These sentiments echoed comments made in November 1933 to Esther Harding, in which Jung expressed the opinion that Jews had clustered in Weimar Germany because they tend to “fish in troubled waters,” by which he meant that Jews tend to congregate and flourish where social decay is ongoing. He remarked that he had personally observed German Jews drinking champagne in Montreaux (Switzerland) while “Germany was starving,” and that while “very few had been expelled” and “Jewish shops in Berlin went on the same,” if there was a rising hardship among them in Germany it was because “overall the Jews deserved it.”^[11] Perhaps most interesting of all in any discussion of Jewish acquisition of influence, it appears that in 1944 Jung oversaw the implementation of quotas on Jewish admission to the Analytical Psychology Club of Zurich. The quotas (a generous 10% of full members and 25% for guest members) were inserted into a secret appendix to the by-laws of the club and remained in place until 1950.^[12] One can only assume that, like other quotas introduced around the world at various times, the goal here was to limit, or at least retain some measure of control over, Jewish numerical and directional influence within that body.

Jung was of course operating in a time period in which racial self-awareness was acute on all sides. Kevin MacDonald explains in The Culture of Critique that, within psychoanalysis, there was a clear understanding among Jews that Jung was an Aryan and not quite capable of being in full communion with its Jewish members and leaders. MacDonald writes:

Early in their relationship Freud also had suspicions about Jung, the result of “worries about Jung’s inherited Christian and even anti-Jewish biases, indeed his very ability as a non-Jew to fully understand and accept psychoanalysis itself.” Before their rupture, Freud described Jung as a “strong independent personality, as a Teuton.” After Jung was made head of the International Psychoanalytic Association, a colleague of Freud’s was concerned because “taken as a race,” Jung and his gentile colleagues were “completely different from us Viennese.” (The Culture of Critique, Ch.4)

Conclusion

To the extent that psychoanalysis continues to exist as a movement, or at least as a niche within academia and culture, it’s clear that Jung “the Teuton” continues to haunt Jews with his comments and criticisms, and the split that occurred in the lifetime of Jung and Freud persists in some fashion a century later — a testament to the fact, perhaps, that psychoanalysis was a tool for racial conflict from its inception. Were he alive today, I’m sure Jung would be amused but perhaps not surprised that he continues to feature in the psyche of Jews, as terrifying a boogeyman as uncontrollable German laughter.

^[1] A. Julius, T.S. Eliot, anti-Semitism and Literary Form (Thames & Hudson, 2003), 40.

^[2] D. Burston, Anti-Semitism and Analytical Psychology: Jung, Politics and Culture (Routledge: New York, 2021).

^[3] G. Cocks (2023). [Review of the book Anti-Semitism and Analytical Psychology: Jung, Politics and Culture, by Daniel Burston]. Antisemitism Studies 7(1), 215-222.

^[4] B. Cohen, “Jung’s Answer to Jews,” Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche, 6:1 (56–71), 59.

^[5] Ibid, 58.

^[6] Ibid.

^[7] T. Kirsch, “Jung’s Relationship with Jews and Judaism,” in Analysis and Activism: Social and Political Contributions of Jungian Psychology (London: Routledge, ), 174.

^[8] Ibid, 177.

^[9] T. Kirsch, “Jung and Judaism,” Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche, 6:1 (6-7), 6.

^[10] S. Zemmelman (2017). “Inching towards wholeness: C.G. Jung and his relationship to Judaism.” Journal of Analytical Psychology, 62(2), 247–262.

^[11] See W. Schoenl and L. Schoenl, Jung’s Evolving View of Nazi Germany: From the Nazi Takeover to the End of World War II (Asheville: Chiron, 2016).

^[12] S. Frosh (2005). “Jung and the Nazis: Some Implications for Psychoanalysis.” Psychoanalysis and History, 7(2), (253–271), 258.

On Russophobia and “Anti-Semitism”

May 26, 2022/27 Comments/in Featured Articles, Jewish Academic Activism, Jewish Writing on Anti-Semitism/by Spencer J. Quinn

I first learned of the term “Russophobia” many years ago in Robert Wistrich’s 1991 book Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred. My initial impression was essentially that Russians on the “radical right” were attempting to turn the tables on Jews by accusing them of what is effectively the inverse of anti-Semitism (i.e., Russophobia). Of course, this was little more than a mere stratagem designed to obscure their true anti-Semitic intentions. Although not at all thuggish or violent, the proponents of Russophobia, according to Wistrich, were especially dangerous since they included many prominent writers and scholars and had viable connections within the Soviet power structure of the day. Wistrich saw through it all, and so should any right-thinking gentile.

Of the people decrying Russophobia, Wistrich writes:

They are in favor of patriotism, law and order, and traditional values blended with ecological concerns to preserve the Russian cultural heritage. What they claim to hate are the destructive influences of ‘liberals’ in Soviet life, the fads and so-called ‘Russophobes’ – those émigrés, dissidents and above all Jews who are quite falsely said to denigrate Russian history and mock the backwardness of Russian culture. [Igor] Shafarevich’s tract, entitled Russophobia (1989), can be taken as the Bible of this anti-Western, anti-Socialist and antisemitic gospel, driven by intellectual paranoia and an apocalyptic vision of the spiritual crisis confronting Soviet society.

This was essentially my baseline for Russophobia for many years prior to my conversion on the Jewish Question upon reading Kevin MacDonald’s The Culture of Critique. I again encountered Shafarevich’s name when researching Solzhenitsyn and the Right. Solzhenitsyn mentions Shafarevich quite often in his memoirs—always in a positive light—and included three of Shafarevich’s essays in his 1974 From Under the Rubble collection. One of these essays was the incipient version of Shafarevich’s famous work The Socialist Phenomenon.

Shararevich (who was one of the twentieth-century’s leading mathematicians and who died in 2017 at the age of 95.) distributed his long essay “Russophobia” as samizdat in the early 1980s, and published it in the Soviet periodical Nash Sovremennik in 1989. In 2002, he published an expanded version of this essay as Three-Thousand-Year-Old Enigma, a full-length treatise on Russo-Jewish relations, similar to Solzhenitsyn’s Two Hundred Years Together—but with greater emphasis on religion. Unfortunately, no English translation of this work exists as of yet.

What’s interesting about “Russophobia,” however, is not only its thoughtful and well-argued counter-Semitism, but the shallow and dishonest responses it engendered from Jewish writers, which tarnished much of Shafarevich’s reputation in the West after the fall of the Soviet Union. From the essay’s onset, Shafarevich expresses concern for the “spiritual life” of Russia. He notes that starting in the 1970s, a flood of anti-Russian literature was being produced which he saw as “the expression of the view of an established, cohesive school.” According to these writers, Russia is inherently despotic and oppressive due to the backward nature of the Russians themselves, which manifests itself mostly through violence, servility, and “messianism.”

Shafarevich counters such slander over several pages of historical discussion, for example, on Richard Pipes’ claim that Tsar Nicholas I served as the model for not only Soviet totalitarianism but for Hitler’s Third Reich as well. Shafarevich demonstrates clearly that totalitarianism was fully developed in the West prior to Nicholas I, and so Tsarist Russia should be let off the hook for initiating “all of the 20th century’s antiliberal tendencies.” As for “Messianism,” Shafarevich deftly reminds his readers that the outlook which appoints a certain group as being “destined to determine the fate of humanity and become its savior” began not with the Russians but with the Jews thousands of years ago. And as for the claim that “the revolution in Russia was predetermined by the whole course of Russian history,” Shafarevich points out that socialism was already fully-developed in the West before gaining any kind of foothold in Russia in the nineteenth century. For evidence, he cites the lack of Russian proto-socialist authors of the stature of Thomas More or Tommaso Campanella, and how early Russian socialists such as Mikhail Bakunin and Alexander Herzen started their socialist endeavors only after they emigrated to the West. He concludes [emphasis in the original]:

Thus, many phenomena that the authors of the tendency we are examining proclaim to be typically Russian prove to be not only not typical of Russia but altogether non-Russian in origin, imported from the West: that was the payment, as it was, for Russia’s entry into the sphere of the new Western culture.

Now, by this point in the essay, the savvy reader will know where it’s going. Although Shafarevich had hardly used the J-word, the people he was skewering had names that echo into eternity—or if they don’t, they should. Grigory Pomerants, Richard Pipes, Boris Shragin, Alexander Yanov, Boris Khazanov, and others. Essentially, Shafarevich is accusing Jewish writers for being the nucleus of this Russophobia and imbuing it with Jewish nationalism. He’s not responding to these people as individuals. He’s responding to them, however politely, as Jews. And that is unacceptable to the same Jews who gleefully condemn Russians as Russians. See how that double standard works?

“Are these authors interested in the truth at all?” he asks. He later probes for ulterior motives:

And hatred for one nation is usually associated with a heightened sense of one’s belonging to another. Doesn’t this make it likely that our authors are under the influence of some sort of powerful force rooted in their national feelings?

In this passage, one can sense a precursor to the evolutionary struggles between populations as found in MacDonald’s Separations and its Discontents and The Culture of Critique.

Shafarevich borrows terms from historian Augustin Cochin, who divided the antagonists of the French Revolution into “Lesser people” and “Greater people.” The former group, an elite minority, lived in a spiritual and intellectual world at odds with the established order, as represented by the latter group. The Lesser People were bent on revolution and enforcing newfangled notions such as equality and freedom, while the Greater People insisted upon Catholicism, concepts such as honor and nobility, loyalty to the King, and taking pride in French history. These were the very things that the Lesser People considered dead weight and wished to remove, with maximum violence if necessary.

Shafarevich applies this duality to 1980s Soviet life by demonstrating how this Jewish school of Russophobia had the same motives and possessed the same hatred that Cochin’s Lesser People had for the Greater People. Their platforms were eeriely similar. In both cases, the Lesser People stressed individualism over nationalism, a disconnect from history, and an utter contempt for the people.

He states that Yanov pushed the idea that

humanity is quantized ONLY INTO SEPARATE INVIDUALS, and not into nations. It is not a new viewpoint. Humanity dispersed (or “quantized”) into individual units that are totally unconnected to one another—such, evidently, is Yanov’s ideal. [emphasis in the original]

As for Russian history, it is complete “savagery, coarseness and failure;” nothing but “tyranny, slavery, and senseless, bloody convulsions.” Religion, according to Pomerants “has ceased to be a trait of the people.” Pomerants also declared that love for one’s people is more dangerous then love for animals and that Russians possess “a lackeyish mixture of malice, envy and worship of authority.” Watch how he advocates for genocide:

The peasant cannot be reborn except as a character in an opera. Peasant nations are hungry nations, and nations in which the peasantry has disappeared [sic!] are nations in which hunger has disappeared.

Andrei Amalrik, a non-Jewish ally, insults the Russian thusly:

And if language is the fullest expression of the spirit of the people, then who is more Russian—the “little Negro” Pushkin and the “little Jew” Mandelshtam, or the muzhik in the beer hall who, wiping his spittle across his unshaven cheeks, bellows: “I’m a Russian!”

Khazanov declares not only that he finds Russia repulsive but that “to be a member of the Russian intelligentsia at the present time inevitably means being a Jew.” Shragin proclaims that the Russians being treated worse than all other groups in prisons was “just and logical.” Furthermore, none—not a single one—of these authors apply similar criticisms to Jews—only to Russians. The authors simply presume Jewish innocence before going out to destroy the reputation of the Russian people. Such attitudes breed revolution and terrorism, as was demonstrated in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, and culminated in the inhuman atrocities of the Bolsheviks (which, Shafarevich demonstrates, also contained a nucleus of Jews). Shafarevich recognizes that for the Greater People, this is essentially a recipe for death.

Shafarevich:

[a] people that assesses its own history IN THAT WAY cannot exist. We are dealing here with a phenomenon that vitally affects us inhabitants of this country. [emphasis in the original]

This sentence represents the essence of the current struggle of the White Dissident Right, and the core of “Russophobia.” We, as the Greater People elite, oppose the Lesser People elite—most of whom are Jews—not because we possess an a priori hatred of Jews but because we wish to survive as a people. Shafarevich demonstrates how adhering to the Lesser People’s platform will guarantee that we won’t survive as a people. Really, it’s either-or.

As expected, Jews everywhere accused Shafarevich of anti-Semitism. Walter Laqueur responded with a New Republic essay entitled “From Russia with Hate,” in which he straight-facedly asks if Shafarevich was an admirer of Hitler (despite how Shafarevich condemns the Nazis as totalitarians in “Russophobia”). Semyon Resnik nitpicked on minor factual inaccuracies regarding Shafarevich’s treatment of the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. He also accused Shafarevich of perpetuating a blood libel by describing the murder as a “ritual act”—as if this undermines the main points of Shafarevich’s essay.

In his stunningly spiteful 1990 essay entitled “Russian History and Anti-Semitism of Igor Shafarevich,” Eliezer Rabinovich sets up a straw man by accusing Shafarevich of blaming solely the Jews for the Bolshevik Revolution (something Shafarevich explicitly does not do in section eight of his essay). He dodges the question of whether Jews were prominent among the Bolsheviks by declaring such Jews as Trotsky and Zinoviev as “anti-Jewish Jews.” He then disputes much of Shafarevich’s historical exegesis and harps on Russian flaws and Russian culpability for past atrocities. Fair enough. No people is without sin, and Shafarevich claims nothing of the sort with Russia. Further, Rabinovich’s arguments do not necessarily refute Shafarevich’s. It is possible for Russophobia and anti-Semitism as the authors describe them to exist simultaneously. Yet Rabinovich states flatly that “Jewish Russophobia simply does not exist,” while Russian anti-Semitism does. Talk about presumption of innocence! How can anyone take such a self-serving zealot seriously?

Josephine Woll in her Soviet Jewish Affairs essay entitled “Russians and ‘Russophobes’” smears Shafarevich as a radical slavophile. She then, quite superficially, attempts to employ logic against him.

Shafarevich argues inductively, from results to ’causes.’ There are demonstrations and strikes. Their causes cannot be objective circumstances (in any event, Shafarevich does not consider that possibility). Therefore they must be provoked. Who could benefit from provoking them? Those who hate Russia and wish to see her weak. Who feels such hatred for Russia? Jews. QED.

Note how Woll completely ignores the evidence Shafaravich presents to support his idea that Jewish nationalism is the driving force behind Russophobia. Do the quotes he presents not evince contempt for Russia? Are most of their authors not Jewish? Aren’t these authors attacking Russia and Russians while not simultaneously attacking Israel and Jews? How can one not detect enemy action in all of this?

And this brings us back to Wistrich and his ludicrous claim that certain Jews “are quite falsely said to denigrate Russian history and mock the backwardness of Russian culture.” Falsely, is it? Did he not read “Russophobia?” In his book, Wistrich didn’t even include “Russophobia” among his source material, only Woll’s article and others like it. Did Robert Wistrich lie out ignorance or knowing? And none of these writers make credible attempts to counter Shafaravich’s evidence or disprove his conclusions. For them, it’s enough to label such conclusions as anti-Semitic. Whether such conclusions adhere to the truth, like the existence of Russophobia itself, is a less pressing matter.

Review of Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism

March 9, 2018/58 Comments/in Featured Articles, Jewish Writing on Anti-Semitism/by Alex Fontana

I had known about Douglas Rushkoff’s treatment of Judaism; Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism, for some time and had always meant to read and review it.[i] A video of Rushkoff discussing his take on Judaism surfaced online discussing the infamous ‘Barbara Spectre moment’ — that is a political gaffe from the tribe’s mouth. We can say these “Spectre moments” are when a Jewish activist candidly discusses Jewish cultural activism on non-Jews and their nations. Here’s Rushkoff’s Barbara Spectre Moment:

The thing that makes Judaism dangerous to everybody, to every race, to every nation, to every idea, is that we smash things that aren’t true, we don’t believe in the boundaries of nation-state, we don’t believe in the ideas of these individual gods that protect individual groups of people; these are all artificial constructions and Judaism really teaches us how to see that.

In a sense our detractors have us right, in that we are a corrosive force, we’re breaking down the false gods of all nations and all people because they’re not real and that’s very upsetting to people.”

The central reason Jews like Rushkoff and Barbara Spectre allow themselves to speak candidly about Jewish social engineering is because they believe that by manipulating predominantly non-Jewish societies they are doing the world a service — they are in fact doing God’s work. By undermining their host nations so as to bring about conditions of disunity, Jews like Rushkoff and Spectre believe that in performing this role of “a corrosive force” “breaking down the false gods of all nations and all people,” they are performing a mitzvah as part of their god-ordained task of tikkun olam. A mitzvah is translated as a ‘commandment’ but more commonly means a good deed done from religious duty. Rushkoff describes tikkun olam as “a poetic way of expressing the responsibility Jews have to ‘heal the earth.’[ii] In my two part essay on integration, “Manspreading for Lebestrum,” I discuss the HBO series Show me a Hero, based on a book by Jewish New York Times writer Lisa Belkin about the integration struggle in Yonkers between the NAACP and their Jewish lawyers versus the ethnic Whites of Yonkers. Again we discern the same underlying self-justification:

Belkin seeks to frame the issue of integration in terms of a progressive Jewish solution to the Jewish problem, while fully retaining her Jewishness. When asked about the overtly Jewish role in integration, Belkin neither denies nor downplays the Jewish role. Instead she invokes the Jewish religious principle of Tiklun Olam, a Hebrew phrase meaning ‘repairing the world.’ Tiklun Olam, was described by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch in terms of a Kehilla (community) of Jews in galut (diaspora) successfully influencing their non-Jewish neighbors.”[iii]

Review: The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews — Part Two

December 27, 2017/27 Comments/in Featured Articles, Jewish Ethnic Networking, Jewish Writing on Anti-Semitism/by Andrew Joyce, Ph.D.

Everard Mercurian (1514-1580)

“Being children of this world, pompous, cunning, fake, self-seeking, etc., it is certain that they fit religious life very badly and that it is impossible to maintain union with them. If those of this blood are made superiors, they employ almost all their government in external things: they promote genuine mortification and solid virtues very little, and seem to be merchants, seeking first seats and being called rabbis; they are hardly eager to seek perfection that is described in the parts 5 and 6 of the Constitutions; and readily admit others of the same blood who are very unworthy.”
Manuel Rodrigues, Jesuit curia in Rome.

Go to Part 1.

The Racial Struggle for the Jesuit Order

The complaints of native Spanish members of the Society of Jesus, regarding the crypto-Jewish Jesuit elite, are remarkably uniform. Predominant among their concerns was the Jewish tendency towards monopoly, nepotism, arrogance, aggressive ambition, and an air of insincerity in the practice of Christianity. Of particular concern was the fact that the Spanish Jesuit Order was becoming an exclusive enclave of influential Jews that stretched out even into the heart of Rome.

The epigraph above, from Manuel Rodrigues, highlights all of these themes, some of which have been empirically demonstrated. For example, the body of research compiled by Maryks and other scholars, and discussed in Part 1, more than provides sufficient evidence in support of the accusation that crypto-Jews were “readily admitting others of the same blood.” Moreover, Benedetto Palmio, an Italian assistant to two native European Jesuit Superior Generals (Francisco de Borja and Everard Mercurian), complained of the “multitude and insolence of Spanish neophytes,” whom he described as a “pestilence (133).” Stressing that “where a New Christian was found, it was impossible to live in peace,” he added that “those who governed in Rome were almost all neophytes. … This sort of people and almost no other were being admitted in Spain (133).” King Phillip II of Spain had by the 1570s taken to describing the Jesuits as a “Synagogue of Hebrews.” (133)

The method of leadership employed by this crypto-Jewish elite was further described by Palmio as despotic. The crypto-Jewish elite in Rome was behaving “not as fathers but as masters (135).” Reflecting age-old Jewish ethnic networking, there were gross ethnic disparities in promotions to high office, with Palmio stressing that “the neophytes want to dominate everywhere and this is why the Society is agitated by the tempest of discords and acrimonies (138).” Conversos were “overly ambitious, insolent, Janus-faced, pretentious, despotic, astute, terrible, greedy for power, and infamous.” (142) Lorenzo Maggio, an Italian Jesuit curia in Rome, complained that “those from the circumcision subverted the entire house of the Society.” (117) Read more