Never Again is Now (Section 4)

Anti-Semitism and the Onset of Societal Decay

Antisemitism is less about the Jews than it is about the societies in which they live. Or, to say it universally, a society is best judged not only on how it treats its minorities, but how it treats its successful minorities. Anytime a minority group within a society outpaces the success of the majority population, it naturally holds a mirror up to the majority. They can respond with interest and ask why, but usually they simply respond with resentment.

This is what I referred to in Never Again is Now (Section One) as the middleman minority phenomenon. Thomas Sowell writes about it here: Are Jews Generic? We just happen to live in Western Societies where the Jew is the most common, but not the only, victim of this resentment which is endemic to humanity’s psychology.

To understand why anti-Semitism serves as the "canary in the coal mine," we must recognize that it is the first symptom of a society succumbing to an atmosphere of irrationality fueled by resentment. Just as a canary dies when the oxygen in a mine is replaced by toxic gases, a civilization begins to perish when the tragic vision - humanity is forever flawed and imperfect able - is replaced by the utopian delusion -humanity is perfectible and any imperfection is the fault of a system or a people. The good thing about these fumes is that you can “smell” them if you know what to look for.

The Healthy Society and the Tragic Vision

A healthy society operates on the tragic (constrained) vision as outlined by Thomas Sowell in his book, A Conflict of Visions. It is a society that accepts the world as a place of complexity and inherent limitations. In this state, people accept responsibility for their own failures and understand that progress is incremental, requiring trade-offs and discipline. This realism acts as a structural integrity for the state, allowing for the rule of law and the protection of the particular individual. This inherent flaw in humanity is best reflected structurally by the separation of powers in the United States’ Constitution. It assumes human beings are flawed and too much power in one set of hands would be tragic.

However, as a society decays, it enters what Nietzsche called a state of “soul-dizziness.” This dizziness is the disorientation that occurs when the tragic vision is abandoned in favor of the unconstrained vision—the belief that all human suffering can be eliminated if only the right system is implemented or the right enemy is removed. When the air of reality becomes too heavy to breathe, society begins to look for a singular, simplified cause for all its collective woes.

This is why we see a schizophrenic like shift in what frustrated people are shouting: one day they are waving BLM flags, another they are chanting F$%K ICE, then they are all wearing keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags while wearing masks to avoid a pandemic which ended years ago. The aim of their single reason for society’s problems keep shifting, constantly looking for the one answer. Always looking for the one scapegoat whether it be an ideology or a person.

The Toxic Gas of Resentment

To continue with the canary in the coal mine analogy, resentment is the gas that fills the vacuum left by the departure of reason. It is the psychological rebellion of the Nietzsche’s tarantula against the realist. Because the Jewish people represent the most historically successful middleman minority—thriving through the very intellectual and economic realism that the utopian mind finds offensive—they are always the first to be detected by the canary.

This is why my ears perk up so much when I hear tropes about Israel or Jews in general having undue influence over our nation or specific politicians. The common accusation of being paid every time a person stands up to antisemitism or criticism of a Jew is a modern version of this. I experienced this specifically when pointing out how Arabs in Israel live freer than Arabs in Muslim nations, and then was flooded in the comments with accusations of receiving $7,000.

Anti-Semitism is the ultimate simplification of a complex world. It transforms the tragic difficulties of global economics, cultural shifts, and political failure into a manageable narrative: a conspiracy of the few against the many. To punish the Jew is to purify the air by removing the toxic element. But this is the fatal error of the miners. The Jew is not the toxin; the Jew is the sensor. When a society abandons reason and law to silence the canary, it is not cleaning the air—it is simply breaking the instrument that warns them the air is fatal.

The Onset of Total Decay

Once the canary is dead, the decay accelerates. History shows that no society that has indulged in anti-Semitism has remained a free or stable society for long. This is because the same irrationality required to believe in the “Zionist Puppet Master” or the “Globalist Cabal” is an irrationality that eventually consumes all other thinking.

This is what worries me the most - ideas do not stay in their lanes. When I have friends casually use these antisemitic tropes, I don’t think that they specifically hate Jewish people. But the ideas they propose are unwittingly tied to antisemitic tropes and they end up defending their ideas to defend their egos. Eventually, they end up surrounded by people who have done the same thing as defending their egos is more important than understanding the truth, if it requires self-reflection.

The tarantulas of the Left and Right, having found success in their zero-sum attack on the Jewish realist, do not stop there. Once they have tasted the intoxicating power of scapegoating, once they have finished with the Jew, they inevitably turn on the rest of the populace. The same unconstrained power used to seize the property of the middleman is soon used to seize the property of anyone else who represents a challenge to utopia. The same utopian zeal used to purge the clannish minority is soon used to purge the unfaithful majority.

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Pastor Martin Niemöller

The death of the Canary is a signal that the society has lost the ability to govern itself. It has traded the covenant—the sacred, particular bond between individuals—for the system—the mechanical, devitalized control of the mob. By the time the rest of the miners realize they are suffocating, the air is already too thin to support them. To defend the canary is to defend the very oxygen of the Western mind: the belief that truth matters more than resentment, and that the tragic realist of any ethnicity or religion is the only one who can lead us safely out of the depths.