Anti-Semitism, Anti-Americanism, the Bourgeoisie
At the Right Coast Maimon asks why anti-semitism and anti-Americanism are so often linked, and why people are so willing to insult Jews and America. I think all three are connected: the link is anti-bourgeoisieism, if I may create such a vowelish word.
Jews, like Americans, seem to become rich without inheriting riches, and that is suspicious. They are rich, but not aristocratic. I’m just reading the old Russian novel Oblomov, and one of the characters, a corrupt civil servant, expresses this idea well in rant against a German. The German, he says, had a poor father and is now rich without taking bribes– so he must be doing something very dishonest.
Remember that the Nazis were National *Socialists*, and a populist party. They attacked Jews as being unrooted to the soil, as exploiting other people’s labor, and as not having a sense of honor. I think Eastern European anti-semitism must be similar– and there it was actually associated with hostility to the longtime German immigrants, an indication that religion was not the only thing going on.
Maimon says
…Also, Jews and Americans may both be seen as people you can safely jeer at because they don’t hit back: Jews, historically, because they couldn’t; Americans, because they usually don’t.
(Does any major country put up with as many insults, with as little angry come-back, as the United States? Years ago, the city of Calcutta renamed the street housing the US consulate “Ho Chi Minh Street”. It was a calculated insult. Did the US break diplomatic relations with India? Did it close the consulate? Did it rename the street housing the Indian Embassy in Washington “General Dyer Terrace” or “Mohammad Ali Jinnah Gardens”? No to all the above. The US Consulate in Calcutta is still open for business on Ho Chi Minh Street…)
Americans simply don’t have a strong sense of honor. We have some, but not much. The same with Jews. You can insult Americans and Jews, but don’t try to insult a staunch Moslem. It isn’t power– it’s a question of how deeply a person feels an insult, and what costs he is willing to bear to revenge it. We are too bourgeois to fight duels, to either kill or be killed to defend our honor. We say, “Sticks adn stones will break our bones, but words will never hurt us.” And so others (a) despise us, and (b) feel safe in insulting us (but not, nowadays, in breaking our bones).
June 27th, 2005 at 11:28 am
Eric, did you like Oblomov? It’s one of my favorite novels, despite all its obvious flaws. My own feeling is my head is mostly with the Germans, but my heart is entirely with the Russians. One of my great unfulfilled dreams in life is to have a big celebration of something important, and then be able to down a glass of champaign and smash it on the floor and have every one do likewise. I just finished War and Peace, and the Rostovs do that all the time. Of course they’re also perpetually bankrupt. There’s something so wonderful and carefree about the Russian aristocratic attitude despite its obvious problems.
About the politics of it, I agree with Maimon’s point of course. I often think that if Americans simply made honor more of a point, we’d do better. Like after Saddam tried to assassinate Bush pere, insist that Saddam broadcast a public apology (with the text to be written by us) or else we’ll invade. The combination of world power and a lack of noticeable honor was what used to drive the Southerners nuts about Yankees as well.
BTW, have you read “Occidentalism” by Ian Buruma? It says basically the same thing, but with good documentation and a broader data base.