From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Subject: Anti-Semitism (was Re: WARNING0
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 92 01:06:09 GMT


In article <Bw5x3v.4yH@dcs.ed.ac.uk> pdc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Paul
Crowley) writes:

>Anti-semitism seems to have been mostly discredited in
>Western Europe and the US since the Final Solution.  It's
>alive and well in Eastern Europe though --- a friend came
>back from Hungary recently reporting that they're blaming
>the Jews if they stub their toe on a stone.  Poland in
>particular is starting to look very ugly.

I have no doubt (and hi, Paul, long time).  But I think one
could easily support the argument (I'm quite sure about the
USA) that anti-Semitism is essentially as virulent as it
ever was.  It is superficially discredited and of course
officially unthinkable.

In parts of the country where there are relatively few
Jewish people (and *that* is an item of interest), overt
anti-Semitism is certainly not that common.  But in urban
areas with more concentrated Jewish populations, and
especially where members of such highly religious sects as
Hassidic Jews are common, the virulence of the bigotry is
scarcely less than in Poland.

Much anti-Semitism is relatively subtle, that is, not that
obvious to non-Jewish people who are not sensitized to see
it.  But in job preference, political life, access to
decision-making, and a large number of other areas, these
less blatant forms of bigotry are no less effective (indeed
more so, in some cases) than such disgusting and cowardly
acts as spray-painting swastikas on synagogues.  (We've had
quite a bit of this sort of defacing here.)

I've recently read a very good book, "Chutzpah," by Alan
Dershowitz.  He's not very popular with a lot of people
because he takes controversial civil-liberties cases, for
example defending Leona Helmsley not so long ago.  And he
unblinkingly calls out Noam Chomsky as an anti-Semite.  But
the book is fascinating in a number of ways.  His remarks on
the long tradition of anti-Semitism in the Harvard Law
School (his own academic base) are eye-openers, or were to
me.

>On the sins of the father...  I think that it's a mistake to
>be talking about past injustices when there are so many
>present ones to go on.

As in the example you go on to cite, excessive concern with
the past is an unacceptable drain on progressive energies.
But any time this general thrust comes up, I grow concerned
over the increasingly common idea that "all that" lies
somewhere in the past.  Too many people think anti-Semitism
had only to do with Nazis.  This is a cruel deception, a
smokescreen all too readily accepted by good liberals who
want to be released from any responsibility for the
realities of the present manifestations of this kind of
bigotry.  This is especially true of anti-Semitism, where
incredible distortions of historical fact, for example in
some Christian attitudes towards Jews, are common.

-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
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