Chapter 13.
Anyone who essays to discuss the Jewish
Question in the United States or anywhere else must be fully
prepared to be regarded as "anti-Semite," a
"Jew-baiter." Nor need encouragement be looked for from
politicians, people or Press. The people who are awake to the
subject at all prefer to wait and see how it all turns out. There
is a vague feeling that to use the word "Jew" openly,
or to expose it nakedly in print, is somehow improper. Polite
evasions like "Hebrew" and "Semite" (both of
which are-subject to the criticism of inaccuracy) are timidly
assayed, and people pick their way gingerly as if the whole
subject were forbidden, until some courageous thinker comes along
with the word "Jew," and then the constraint is
relieved and the air cleared.
The word "Jew" is not an epithet; it is a
name, ancient and descriptive, with a significance for every
period of human history, past, present and to come.
The chief difficulty in writing about the Jewish
Question is the super-sensitiveness of Jews and non-Jews
concerning the whole matter. There is probably not a newspaper in
America, and certainly none of the advertising mediums which are
called magazines, which would have the temerity even to breathe
seriously the fact that such a Question exists. The Press in
general is open to fulsome editorials in favor of everything
Jewish, while the Jewish Press, which is numerous in the United
States, takes care of the vituperative end.
The idea seems to be fixed in the Jew by inheritance
that any public discussion of the Jewish Question is organized
and inspired by a Jew-hater. That idea is sought to be fixed in
the Gentile by propaganda; that any writing which does not simply
cloy and drip sirrupy sweetness towards things Jewish is born of
prejudice and hatred. It is, therefore, "full of lies,
insult, insinuation, and constitutes an instigation to
massacre." These terms can be found in current Jewish
editorials.
WHAT IS "ANTI-SEMITISM"?
Anti-Semitism is a term which is bandied about
too loosely. If it continues to be used indiscriminately and
vituperatively about all who attempt to discuss Jewish
characteristics and Jewish world-power, it will, in time, arrive
at the estate of respectability and honor. It may be a useful
clearing of the ground to define what anti-Semitism is not.
1. It is not a recognition of the Jewish Question. If
it were, then it could be set down that the bulk of the American
people are destined to become anti-Semites, for they are
beginning to recognize the existence of a Jewish Question and
will steadily do so in increasing numbers as the Question is
forced on them from the various practical angles of their lives.
The Question is here. We may be honestly blind to it. We may be
timidly silent about it. We may even make dishonest denial of it.
But it is here and in time all will have to recognize it. In time
the polite "hush, hush," of over-sensitive or
intimidated circles will not be powerful enough to suppress it.
But to recognize that Question will not mean that we
have gone over to a national campaign of hatred and enmity
against the Jews. It will only mean that a stream of tendency
which has been flowing through our civilization has at last
accumulated bulk and power enough to challenge attention, to call
for some decision with regard to it, to call for the adoption of
a policy which will not repeat the mistakes of the past and yet
forestall any possible menace of the future.
2. The public discussion of the Jewish Question is
not "anti-Semitism." Publicity is sanitary. But the
kind of publicity given to certain aspects of the Jewish Question
in this country has been very misleading. It has been discussed
more fully in the Jewish Press than elsewhere, but not with
candor or breadth of vision. The two dominant notes - sounded
over and over again with monotonous regularity - are Gentile
unfairness and Christian prejudice. It is fortunate for the Jews
generally that the Jewish Press does not circulate very widely
among Gentiles, for it is probably the one established agency in
the United States which, without altering its program in the
least, could stir up anti-Jewish sentiment by the very simple
expedient of a general reading among non-Jews. Jewish writers
writing for Jewish readers present unusual material for the study
of race consciousness and its accompaniment of contempt for other
races.
On the side of the daily Press, there has been no
serious discussion at all. When it mentions the Jews, it has
stock complimentary phrases for the purpose. The publicity given
to the Question in this country consists in misrepresentative
criticism of the Gentiles by the Jewish Press, and
misrepresentative praise of the Jews by the non-Jewish Press. An
independent effort to give constructive publicity cannot,
therefore, be laid to anti-Semitism, even when some of the
statements which are made in the course of it arouse resentment
of Jewish readers.
3. Nor is it anti-Semitism to say that the suspicion
is abroad in every capital of civilization, and the certainty is
firmly held by a number of important men, that there is active in
the world a plan to control the world, not by territorial
acquisition, not by military aggression, not by governmental
subjection, not even by economic control in the scientific sense,
but by control of the machinery of commerce and exchange. It is
not anti-Semitism to say that, nor to present the evidence which
supports that, nor to bring the proof of that. Those who could
best disprove it, if it were not true, are the International Jews
themselves, but they have not disproved it.
WHY DISCUSS THE JEWISH QUESTION?
Because it is here, and because its emergence
into public thought should contribute to its solution, and not to
a continuance of those bad conditions which surround the Question
in almost every country. The Jewish Question has existed in the
United States for a very long time. Jews themselves have known
it, even if Gentiles have not. There have been periods in our own
country when it has broken forth with a sullen sort of strength
which presaged dark things to come. Many signs portend that it is
approaching an acute stage.
Not only does the Jewish Question touch those matters
that are common knowledge, such as finance and commercial
control, usurpation of political power, monopoly of necessities,
and autocratic direction of the very news that the American
people read; but it reaches into cultural regions and so touches
the very heart of American life. The Question reaches down to
South America and threatens to become an important factor in
Pan-American relations. It is interwoven with much of the menace
of organized and calculated disorder which troubles the nations
today. It is not of recent growth, but its roots go deep, and the
long Past of the Problem is counterbalanced by prophetic hopes
and programs which involve a very deliberate and creative view of
the future.
THE ANSWER-TOO MUCH POWER!!
Their heritage of tolerance has something to do
with the extreme nervousness about public discussion of the
Jewish Question on the part of many Gentiles, but perhaps their
instinctive sense of the difficulty involved has more to do with
it. The Gentile attitude is best expressed by the desire for
silence - "Why discuss it at all?" Such an attitude is
itself proof that here is a Problem we would evade if we could.
Why discuss it at all? - the keen thinker clearly sees in the
implications of such a question, the existence of a Problem whose
discussion or suppression will not always be within the choice of
easy - going minds.
Wherever you read of the Jewish Question being
resolutely approached in the history of countries which have ever
tackled it, wherever you go in the world today - in any country
where the Jewish Question has come to the forefront as a vital
issue, you will discover that the principal cause is the
outworking of the Jewish genius to achieve the power of control.
Here in the United States is the fact of this remarkable minority
attaining in 50 years a degree of control that would be
impossible to a ten times larger group of any other race. That
creates the Jewish Question here.
No similar minority of any people would occasion
comment, because we would not meet with a representative of them
wherever we went in high places - in the innermost secrecy of the
councils of the Big Four at Versailles; in the United States
Supreme Court; in the councils of the White House; in the vast
dispositions of world finance - wherever there is power to get or
use. We meet the Jew everywhere in the upper circles, literally
everywhere where there is power. And that is where the Jewish
question begins - in very simple terms - How does the Jew so
habitually and so resistlessly gravitate to the highest places?
Who puts him there? Why is he put there? What does he do there?
What does the fact of his being there mean to the worlds THAT is
the Jewish Question in its origin. From these points it goes on
to others, and whether the trend becomes pro-Jewish or
anti-Semitic depends on the amount of prejudice brought to the
inquiry, and whether it becomes pro-Humanity depends on the
amount of insight and intelligence.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The original was published in June, 1920. The comment is even more applicable to the present United Nations setup; a more formidable organization because of its greater power through American membership.
The use of the word Humanity in connection with
the word "Jew" usually throws a side meaning which may
not be intended. In this connection it is usually understood that
humanity ought to be shown toward the Jew. There is just as great
an obligation upon the Jew to show hum humanity toward the whole
human race.
The Jew has been too long accustomed to think himself
as exclusively the claimant on the humanitarianism of society;
society has a large claim against him that he cease his
exclusiveness, that he cease exploiting the world, that he cease
making Jewish groups the end and all of his gains, and that he
begins to fulfill, in a sense his exclusiveness has never yet
enabled him to fulfill, the ancient prophecy he boasts that
through him all the nations of the earth should be blessed.
The Jew cannot go on forever fulfilling the role of
suppliant for the world's humanitarianism, he must himself show
that quality to a society which seriously suspects his higher and
more powerful groups of exploiting it with a pitiless rapacity,
which in its wide-flung and long-drawn-out distress may be
described as an economic pogrom against a rather helpless
humanity.
WHY THE " INTERNATIONAL JEW " ?
There has been used in this series the term
"International Jew." It is susceptible of two
interpretations; one, the Jew wherever he may be; the other, the
Jew who exercises international control.
The real contention of the world is with the latter
and his satellites, whether Jew or Gentile. This International
type of Jew, this grasper after world-control, this actual
possessor and wielder of world-control is a very unfortunate
connection for his race to have. And the significance of this is
that this type does not grow anywhere else than on a Jewish stem.
There is no other racial or national type which puts forth this
kind of person.
It is not merely that there are a few Jews among
international financial controllers; it is that these
world-controllers are exclusively Jews. Since world-control is an
ambition which has only been achieved by Jews, and not by any of
the methods usually adopted by would-be world-conquerors, it
becomes inevitable that the question should center in that race.
It is not the point to insist that in any list of
rich men there are often more Gentiles than Jews; we are not
talking about merely rich men who have, many of them, gained
their riches by serving a System, we are talking about those who
control- and it is perfectly apparent that merely to be rich is
not to control. The world-controlling Jew has riches, but he also
has something much more powerful than that.
The International Jew rules not because he is rich,
but because in a most marked degree he possesses the commercial
and masterful genius of his race, and avails himself of a racial
loyalty and solidarity the like of which exists in no other human
group. He rules, at the top of affairs in every country worth
while, by virtue of certain qualities which are inherent in the
Jewish nature. Every Jew has these qualities even if not in the
supreme sense, just as every Englishman has Shakespeare's tongue
but not in Shakespeare's degree. And thus it is impracticable, if
not impossible, to consider the International Jew without laying
the foundations broadly upon Jewish character and psychology.
We may discount at once the too common accusation
that this greater form of Jewish success is built upon
dishonesty. It is impossible to indict the whole Jewish people or
any other on a wholesale charge. No one knows better than the Jew
how widespread is the belief that Jewish methods of business are
all unscrupulous. There is no doubt a possibility of a great deal
of unscrupulousness existing without actual legal dishonesty, but
it is altogether possible that the reputation the Jewish people
have long borne in this respect may have had other sources than
actual and persistent dishonesty. To indicate one of these
possible sources: The Jew at trade is naturally quicker than most
other men. It is said that there are other races which are as
nimble at a trade as is the Jew, but the Jew does not live much
among them. Now, it is human nature for the man with slower,
easy-going traditions to believe that the quicker man is too deft
by far, and to become suspicious of his deftness. The slower mind
is likely to conceive that the man who sees so many legitimate
twists and turns to a trade, may also see and use a convenient
number of illegitimate twists and turns. The Jews, as the records
show for centuries, were a keen people in trade. The nimble
eagerness of the Jew for trade bustled into the midst of trade
traditions, he broke them all wherever he went. He went after
trade, the old leisurely tradition was to make trade come to the
trader. Everyone suspects the "sharp" fellow even
though his sharpness may be entirely honest. A man who would
break trade traditions would stop at nothing ! The Jew was
anxious to sell. If he could not sell one article to a customer,
he had another on hand to offer him. The old tradition was that
it was strictly unethical and unbusiness-like to handle more than
one line of goods, or to deal in more than one "trade";
that it was contemptible and underhand to go out and get a
brother tradesman's customers away from him. It is as easy as
child's play to connect this energy with dishonesty. The Jew went
after trade, pursued it, persuaded it. He was the originator of
"quick turnover and quick profit." He originated the
installment plan. The Jew's shops became bazaars, forerunners of
our modern department stores, and the old custom of one shop for
one line of goods was broken up .... the Jew was not playing the
game, the staid old-fashioned merchant thought. As a matter of
fact he was playing the game, the game to get it all into his own
hands-which he has practically done.
The Jew has shown that same ability ever since his
entry into trade in the various countries he has established
himself down the centuries. His power of analyzing the money
currents amounts to an instinct. His establishment in one country
represented another base from which the members of his race could
operate. Whether by the natural outworkings of innate gifts or
the deliberate plan of race unity and loyalty, all the Jewish
trading communities and relations, and as these trading
communities increased in wealth, prestige and power, as they
formed relations with governments and great interest in the
countries where they operated, they simply put more power into
the central community wherever it might be located, now in Spain,
now in Holland, now in England.
Whether by intention or not, they became more closely
allied than the branches of one business could be, because of the
cement of racial unity; the bond of racial brotherhood cannot in
the very nature of things exist among the s Gentiles as it exists
among the Jews.
Gentiles never think of themselves as Gentiles, and
never feel that they owe anything to another Gentile gas such;
wherein lies their vulnerability. Thus they have been convenient
agents of Jewish schemes at times and in places when it was not
expedient that the Jewish controllers should be publicly known;
but they have never been successful competitors of the Jew in the
field of world-control.
From these separated Jewish communities went power to
the central community where the master bankers and the master
analysts of conditions lived. And back from the central community
flowed information of an invaluable character and assistance
wherever needed. It is not difficult to understand how, in such
conditions, the nation that did not deal kindly with the Jews was
made to suffer, and the nation that yielded to them their fullest
desire was favored by them. They have made many nations feel the
power of their displeasure and this system exists in greater
power today. The coordination of Jewish activity has been a
harmful thing for the world. This is the element which is
bringing the Jewish Question to the bar of public opinion. May
the International Jew go on as he has gone, or does his duty to
the world require another use of his success?
POWER FOLLOWS THE INTERNATIONAL JEW
It is an important fact to be noted in
connection with the "persecution" and consequent
wanderings of the Jews about Europe that wherever they wandered
the center of business seemed to go with them!
When the Jews were free in Spain, there was the
world's gold center. When Spain drove out the Jews, Spain lost
her financial leadership and has never regained it.
Students of the economic history of Europe have
always been puzzled to discover why the center of trade should
have shifted from Spain, Portugal and Italy, up to the northern
countries of Holland, Germany and England They have sought for
the cause in many things, but none seemed to be completely
explanatory. When it is shown that the change was coincident with
the expulsion of the Jews from the South and their flight to the
North, when it is known that upon the Jews' arrival the northern
countries began a commercial life which has flourished to our
day, the explanation does not seem difficult. Time and again it
has been proved to be the fact that when the Jews were forced to
move, the center of the world's precious metals moved with them.
It is also to be noted that the era of greatest
national spiritual culture is shown during the period when the
Jews were expelled from England and Spain. These two great
countries have given much to the world, the best of it they gave
during their freedom from contact with Jewish ideas.
"WHEN AMERICA AWAKES!"
It is clearly proved that in the world today
there is a central force which is playing a vast and closely
organized game, with the world as its table and universal control
for its stakes. Civilized people have long ago lost confidence in
the argument that "economic conditions" are responsible
for all the changes that occur. Under the camouflage of
"economic law" a great many phenomena have been
accounted for which were not due to any "law" whatever,
except the law of the selfish human will as operated by the men
who have the purpose and the power to use the nation as their
vassals.
"Economic" reason no longer explains the
condition in which the world finds itself today. Neither does the
ordinary explanation of "the heartlessness of Capital."
"Capital" has endeavored as never before to meet the
demands of "Labor," and labor has gone to extremes in
leading capital to new concessions-but what has it advantaged
either of them? "Labor" has heretofore thought that
"Capital" was the sky over it, and it made the sky
yield. But behold, there was yet another higher sky which neither
capital nor labor had seen in their struggles with one another.
That sky is so far unyielding.
There is a super-capitalism which is supported wholly
by the fiction that gold is wealth. There is a super-government
which is allied to no government, which is free from them all,
and yet which has its hands in them all. There is a race, a part
of humanity, which has never yet been received as a welcome part,
and which has succeeded in raising itself to a power that the
proudest Gentile race has never claimed.
The "labor question," the wage question,
the land question, cannot be settled, no question that confronts
the peoples of the world can be settled, until first of all this
matter of an international super-capitalistic government is
settled.
"To the victor belongs the spoils" is an
old saying. In a sense it is true that if all this power of
control has been gained and held by a few men of a long-despised
race, then either they are super-men whom it is powerless to
resist or they are ordinary men whom the rest of the world has
permitted to obtain an undue and unsafe degree of power Unless
the Jews are super-men, the Gentiles will have themselves to
blame for what has transpired, and they can look for
rectification in a new scrutiny of the situation and a candid
examination of the experiences of other countries When tracing
all the anti-social and colossally harmful methods of
world-control to their source, it is found that the responsible
parties all have a common characteristic. Is it any wonder that
the warning which comes across, the sea-"Wait until America
becomes awoke to the Jew!" has a new meaning?
"In this divergence between the Gentiles
and ourselves in ability to think and reason is to be seen
clearly the seal of our election as the chosen people, as higher
human beings, in contrast with the Gentiles who have merely
instinctive and animal minds. They observe, but they do not
foresee, and they invent nothing (except perhaps material
things). It is clear from this that nature herself predestined us
to rule and guide the world."
- The Fourteenth Protocol.