A QUESTION OF ANTISEMITISM

The murder of one or two or 10 Jews may not elicit outrage because many people view Jews as a monolithic entity, like the Borg. It’s dehumanizing, dangerous — and seeping into mainstream society.

We shouldn’t need reminding: Jews are individual humans.

Last December, a Harvard Harris poll asked American respondents the question: “Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?”

And the survey said …

But, wait … what?

Before we get to the seriously effed up responses to the survey, let’s take a minute to consider the massively effed up question itself.

Jews as a class …?

When did Jews become a “class”?

Are other social or ethnocultural groups considered a “class”? Are African-Americans a “class”? Are LGBTQ+ people a “class”? Where did this term come from? (We’ll get to that in a minute — and it’s a big problem.)

Meanwhile, what did Americans say in response to this truly warped question?

In reply, 27% said that “Jews as a class are oppressors,” while 73% saw this as a “false ideology.”

That more than one in four Americans apparently believes that Jews are oppressors is deeply worrying. But so is the fact that a legitimate public opinion pollster would pose a question that is founded on prejudiced premises.

Let’s get back to the ABCs of antiracism that we (and Harvard Harris) should have learned years ago. Prejudice is based on essentialization. That is: All ABC people are XYZ.

It would be bad enough if the survey had asked “Do you think that Jews as a class are awesome people or is that a false ideology?”

They didn’t.

First, without justification or explanation, they set out parameters for a question based on the idea that “All Jews are XYZ.”

Then, they filled in the XYZ blank with one of the oldest antisemitic tropes: That Jews are a powerful, nebulous unit bent on dominating and oppressing non-Jews.

There is a devious tactic called “push polling.” This is a corrupt strategy in which, for example, a political candidate perpetrates a scam in the guise of a survey not intended to gauge opinion but to spread false information. For example: “If you knew that Candidate B drowns kittens, would that make you (A) More likely to vote for them (B) Less likely to vote them, or (C) I hate kittens.”

I am confident that the Harvard Harris poll was not deliberately intended to sway people to see Jews as oppressors.

At first, I pondered whether it was possible that the whole thing was, itself, an experiment in antisemitism — that the survey was undertaken on antisemitic premises to see how many people would call it out for being based on antisemitic premises.

But this is far too elaborate and devious an idea. And perhaps it gives too much credit to the perpetrators of the poll.

I have to conclude the entire exercise was, plain and simple, Exhibit 23,982 in the seeping of antisemitism into mainstream society.

Even leaving aside the question of Jews as “oppressors,” it is problematic, if not dangerous, to use a term like “Jews as a class.”

Where did that term even come from?

Karl Marx.

Marx viewed Jews less as a people or an ethnicity than as an economic class. His writings on Jews rank among the most overtly antisemitic ideas in history, and yet they echo through today’s left (even the non-Marxist left), as they do in this survey question to which 27% of American respondents replied affirmatively.

Among his millions of other words, Marx wrote:

“Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.”

I’ll wait here to finish my argument while you take a shower …

*

We’ll come back to the substance of the question (Jewish power, domination and oppression). But let’s reiterate: Essentializing any group by assuming all members embody certain characteristics is the very definition of prejudice. 

But antisemitism often takes this a dehumanizing step further. 

In some instances, antisemitic ideas (and when I use this term, I include unconscious biases that may seem excluded by the prefix “anti”) seem to actually erase the individuality of the members of the group.

We sometimes hear well-intentioned people say that “Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, but the Jewish people survived.”

This is perhaps intended as a form of admiration. After unimaginable horrors, the survivors rebuilt their individual lives, their collective communities and even a new country.

But six million did not survive — and this phrasing suggests that those who died were not individuals who were murdered, but part of some nebulous entity that can lose an enormous proportion of itself but then self-replenish, as if they are something other than human. This dehumanization is foundational in antisemitism. (It is also an example of the positive/negative double-edged sword of antisemitism and philosemitism, about which more in a future post.)

This is a deeply dangerous and dehumanizing idea. Yet it may help explain the stunning lack of concern over massively increasing antisemitic attacks, even murders.

If we hold, even unconsciously, the parallel ideas that Jews are not so much a group of people but a monolithic entity (like the Borg on Star Trek or something) and the assumption that this monolithic “class” is oppressive and powerful, our response to antisemitic hate crimes might be understandably muted. A report of the murder of one or two or 10 Jews may not elicit the compassion and outrage it deserves.

Our response to such reports could, instead, lead us to conclude that, unfortunate as these acts of violence may be, “the Jewish people,” the amorphous collectivity we perceive them to be, will continue to thrive. As if the murder of an individual is, in the larger context, little more than an amputated toe.

This theory is grotesque, obviously. Given the “Jewish power” motif, though, as well as the nonchalance with which even the most violent antisemitism has been met in recent years, it is worth considering whether the tepid response to massively growing antisemitism is based on a combination of these stereotypes and dehumanizing assumptions.

And this illustrates why antisemitism is the “prefect prejudice.” The very characteristics that define it shield it from challenge.

Jews attacked? Jews assaulted? Jews murdered?

Not to worry!

Jews are powerful. They’ll be fine.

Survey says: 27% of Americans agree!