Anti-Semitism as a Canary in our Coal Mine
Reviewing Paul Johnson’s A History of the Jews, one idea at a time
The depth of this history was too much for me to write one review that did it justice, so I decided to discuss several ideas it sparked for me, one at a time.
Rising Anti Semitism as a Red Flag
I woke up one morning with the phrase “anti-Semitism is a canary in the coal mine” reverberating through my mind. Likely because it is the most important thing I learned reading Paul Johnson’s A History of the Jews.
This historical account of these ancient people is a rhythm of moral breakthroughs, intellectual and economic success, followed by resentment, persecution, and ejection. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The most important aspect of that rhythm, I think, is resentment.
Anti-Semitism is a sign of building resentment in a society. Any society that has enough resentment building in it to abandon individual human rights then persecute groups of humans is headed for trouble. Once those human rights are abandoned for their chosen scapegoats, they will be abandoned for everyone. Jews are the resentment scapegoats for Western, Near Eastern, and Middle Eastern civilizations. This pattern is seen throughout the world with other peoples as well. Dr. Thomas Sowell referred to this group of people collectively as “middle-men minorities.”
Middle-Men Minorities
Anti-Semitism is often explained as solely a religious conflict between Jews, Christians and Muslims. Jews rejected Mohammed so Muslims hate Jews. Jews “killed Jesus” so Christians hate Jews.
But we are seeing today that even in a secular society, specifically from self-proclaimed secular Progressives who cannot even declare that calling for the genocide of Jews is against their student code of conduct, there is something beyond religion required to explain this irrational hate. Dr. Sowell’s description of this phenomenon helps us better understand that it is a universal human reaction to the success of minority populations. It’s an expression of resentment towards those who make us hate ourselves.
This pattern of resentment and persecution has been aimed at numerous successful minorities to include “the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Ibos in Nigeria, Marwaris in Burma, overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, and Lebanese in a number of countries.”
“In many times and places, middleman minorities have been forced to flee for their lives from mobs or have been expelled en masse by political authorities. Yet the departure of these supposed “parasites” and “exploiters” has not been followed by a more prosperous life by the rest of the population but usually by economic decline — sometimes catastrophic decline, as the economy of Uganda collapsed after middleman minorities from India and Pakistan were expelled during the 1970s.Similar things happened after the expulsions of Jews in Europe in various periods of history or other middleman minorities in parts of Asia.” — from Dr. Sowell’s above linked essay on the topic
Even Hitler had to be strategic about his extermination of Jews in Germany because he knew how deeply important they were as contributors to the economy and German culture as a whole. As resentful as he was towards their existence and success, he needed a strong economy to build up his armed forces, and had to avoid international outrage that would have resulted from jumping straight to mass murder. So he moved carefully, step by step, towards creating a legal framework that restricted Jews ever more until he had created an entire bureaucracy around the “Jewish problem” that was able to squeeze them out of existence.
We’re not sure exactly who said “The measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members.” It may have been Ghandi. But I would adjust that to “The measure of a society is how it treats its successful minorities.”
In modern societies where empathy for the poor is often raised to the pinnacle of ethical imperatives, nobody is going to argue with you about caring for those less fortunate. But how we treat outsiders when they shine a light on our own failures through their success in our own societies is today’s litmus test for the health of our communities and countries.