Reflections on Jews, “Anti-Semitism” and Free Speech
Andrew Joyce
“He will appear in our
national discussions, not only giving advice, but attempting to direct
policy, and will be puzzled to discover that his indifference to
national feeling is annoying.”
Hilaire Belloc, The Jews, 1922.
I recently charted
the history of Jewish efforts to restrict free speech in Britain, and
noted common themes and practices in how they have achieved advances in
this sphere. I think that it would be a worthwhile endeavor to elaborate
upon the manner in which these measures are affecting Whites in the
present, as well as highlighting the fact that Jewish efforts to
restrict free speech are ongoing.Hilaire Belloc, The Jews, 1922.
The Forward reports that, in late October, European rabbis called on governments throughout the continent to pass laws targeting speech against Jews. The move took the form of a resolution passed by the standing committee of the Conference of European Rabbis (CER), which convened in Tbilisi, Georgia. Pinchas Goldschmidt, CER President, told journalists that the CER demanded that “additional countries follow the example set by France and Germany, and devise legislation that targets hate speech against Jews specifically. … It is something that few countries have but is necessary in light of the rise in anti-Semitic violence and hate speech, as we have witnessed this summer.”
Goldschmidt’s comments clearly reflect ongoing Jewish anxieties at the strength of anger against Israel in Western Europe — anger provoked by Israeli atrocities in Gaza. In my previous article, I noted that Jewish activity to restrict free speech is closely linked to specifically Jewish concerns. Thus, while Jewish politicians and activists are often keen to point to the supposedly broader applications and benefits of the legislation they propose (the pretence to “universalism,” and to be against all forms of “racism”), Jewish activity in this sphere is very closely linked to periods in which Jews, and only Jews, feel threatened.
For example, I pointed out that some of the earliest Jewish moves to restrict free speech in Britain were not undertaken on behalf of Caribbean Blacks or Pakistanis, but rather were conducted following the backlash against Jewish terrorism targeting the British administration in Palestine. Jewish efforts at this time took the form of attempting to ban the criticism of Jews, first at a Labour Party conference and later in Parliament itself. The aim was not to fight “racism,” but to eliminate any expression of negativity towards Jews and Jewish actions. Only when the “direct” route failed did Jews broaden the scope of their efforts, bringing a range of non-Whites into the fold, in an attempt to present the image of a coalition of the downtrodden.
The resolution passed by the Conference of European Rabbis represents nothing new. Jews have been attempting to make “anti-Semitism” illegal for decades, if not centuries. This is a fundamental aspect of the perennial Jewish drive for special protections — protections that have been clearly necessary for the pursuit of a group strategy which has proven over vast stretches of historical time to expose the group to criticism, anger, and violence from other peoples. Furthermore, the level of success in achieving the criminalization of anti-Jewish critique can be seen as a benchmark of Jewish power in a given state. For example, as David Shneer comments, at the same time it established state-sponsored Yiddish-language publishing houses, Jewish writers’ groups, Jewish courts, Jewish city councils, and Jewish schools, the Soviet Union was the first country in the world to make all forms of anti-Jewish activity illegal.[1] Barbara Epstein adds that a Soviet criminal conviction for “anti-Semitism” would result in an eighteen-month prison sentence.[2]
Going back much further, we can see that Jewish power in the medieval period, rooted in the close relationship between Jews and powerful kings or elites, was sufficient for the effective criminalization of anti-Jewish activity. For example, Bernard Bachrach points out that in early Medieval Italy “those who harmed Jews were effectively and severely punished.”[3] In Medieval Hungary, Jews carried letters from the king and other members of the elite guaranteeing them an array of special protections and privileges, including exemption from “harassment and persecution,” as well as “all kinds of attack.”[4] This was common throughout Europe.
Jews, although clearly self-identifying as members of a group, nevertheless view any criticism of that group as “anti-Semitism.” Anti-Semitism is then deemed to be fundamentally wrong and, by nature, illegal. In the Jewish mind, all “anti-Semites” are criminals. Indeed, in Contemporary Antisemitism: Canada and the World, Morton Weinfeld writes that “most forms of anti-Semitism are clearly illegal and socially unacceptable.”[5] This despite the fact that Weinfeld himself concedes that “anti-Semitism” is itself poorly defined, and that “after all, Jews can be paranoid, or simply mistaken about perceived anti-Semitism. Moreover, some Jews might be opportunistic and label as anti-Semitic legitimate criticism of Israeli policy.”[6]
Even Weinfeld’s caveat is flawed, since most Jews would see any criticism of Israeli policy as innately illegitimate. And the reason any criticism of Israeli policy is seen as illegitimate is the unceasing struggle of Jewry with its own fears — that to permit any expression of criticism would be to open the floodgates to unimaginable horrors.
Faced with such fears, together with the Jewish drive to secure group interests, Jews have clearly shown a preference for working with non-Jewish elites to impose repressive measures on the lower orders — a phenomenon, as noted above, that extends back over the ages. Rather than allow open discussion of Jewish conduct, in my review of Hilaire Belloc’s The Jews I argued that the nature of the Jewish quest for special protections and repressive legislation increased in intensity after World War II:
A new world was to be fashioned. No longer was citizenship for the Jews enough — now Jewish security was to be sought by regulating non-Jews and imposing limits on the exercise of their citizenship. Since World War II this has taken the form of everything from engineering the demographic profile of Western nations, to “hate speech” laws and lobbying for gun control. One of the crucial functions of The Occidental Observer has been to catalog instances where, under the guise of equal citizenship and other Western liberal fads, Jewish organizations have been moving towards achieving immunity from criticism, and water-tight levels of Jewish security, in the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, France and many other nations. Thus a process which began following the Enlightenment with Jewish admission to citizenship, has slowly evolved to the gradual diminution of the citizenship of non-Jews and the ascendance of Jews to privileged, protected status throughout the West.But, as Belloc pointed out, using fear and legal repression to stifle criticism of Jewish conduct is at best a temporary solution to the frictions caused by that conduct. In the longer-term Jews are pursuing a very dangerous course of action — what has been termed a “risky strategy.” Based on a false sense of power and relative security, the use of fear only “dams up and enormously increases the latent force of anger against Jewish power. … It is like the piling up of a head of water when a river valley is obstructed, or like introducing of resistance into an electric current (Belloc: 263).” It is a “fierce irritant and accounts for the high pressure at which attack escapes when once it is loosened (Belloc: 263).”
Weinfeld, clearly aware of the risk of taking things too far in the criminalizing of attitudes, asks: “If someone believes, say, that Jews stick together, or look after their own, is that anti-Semitism or a sociological observation?”[7] Well, we know how the ADL would respond to that question, since asking if Jews stick together is a permanent fixture of their annual survey of anti-Semitism. That doesn’t stop the ADL from working extremely hard to ensure that Jews do in fact stick together. Nor does it stop the ADL from labelling empirically demonstrable sociological observations of many writers as “anti-Semitism.”
By making themselves immune from criticism, Jews draw attention to the very facts they are attempting to conceal. Belloc observed (161) that
you cannot long confuse interest with hatred, the statement of plain and important truths with mania, the discussion of fundamental questions with silly enthusiasm, for the same reason that you cannot long confuse truth with falsehood. Sooner or later people are bound to remark that the defendant seems curiously anxious to avoid all investigation of his case. The moment that is generally observed, the defence is on the way to failure.One of the reasons that organized Jewry pushes ahead with dangerous moves like this is that it appears to oscillate, simultaneously, between fear of possible negative group outcomes and an over-estimation of its current security. We are all familiar with stock Jewish phrases which appeal to “what if?” scenarios – perhaps summed up best in the “Never Again” mantra. Kevin MacDonald has explored, in depth, the way in which Jews constantly commemorate racial tragedies such as expulsions and executions, real or imagined. Fears and anxieties directed toward the host population are constant, manifesting in unceasing annual surveys of “anti-Semitism” around the world. Fear, based on a skewed interpretation of Jewish history, drives Jewish hatred of Whites. And yet at the same time, and despite the catalog of Jewish group strategy failures throughout history (seen in several demographic catastrophes), many Jews are convinced that this time things will be different. We have therefore seen occasional examples of stunning Jewish arrogance, and frank admissions of the extent of Jewish power in, for example, Hollywood.
Of course, a lot of this arrogance is based on the success of Jews in monopolizing the media and other important areas of national life. Great confidence is also taken from the success of Jewish intellectual movements in the post-war period. Take the assertions of Jewish academic, Zygmunt Bauman writing on the impact of Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno and Fromm in his Liquid Modernity (Blackwell; New York, 2000; p. 22). Bauman crowed that: “What has been cut apart cannot be glued back together. Abandon all hope of totality, future as well as past. … Neither the rerooting of the uprooted nor the ‘awakening of the people’ to the unfulfilled task of liberation is on the cards.” To Bauman, we are “cut apart,” made rootless, unable to form cohesive communities. There will be no liberation — no awakening of the people. Similarly, Alan Dershowitz writes that
We have much to celebrate. Thanks to the determined efforts of Jewish individuals and organizations, anti-Semitism in America is at an all-time low. … Remaining pockets of anti-Semitism such as the militias, the Holocaust deniers, the neo-Nazis, and the Nation of Islam are well outside the mainstream, and the current crop of Jew-haters are, for the most part, marginalized, desperate, and generally impotent, certainly as compared to our state- and church-sponsored enemies of the past.[8]But even this level of Jewish hubris is nothing new. Although some things are very different now than in the past — the influence of television and the modern media among them — many things remain the same. Jewish power and influence in White countries is still rooted heavily in the co-opting of, and to some extent reliance upon, ethnically treasonous non-Jewish elites. Although hard to get rid of, changes within these elites do occur, and when they do it is an historical fact that Jews have proven extremely vulnerable. Whether we are discussing a Medieval English interregnum, the creation of a new state such as Romania, or the collapse of faith in the Weimar government, Jews have not fared well in nations undergoing a transition of ruling elites.
Also, while television has proven to be a weapon against us, the internet has been (and hopefully will continue to be) a considerable boon. White advocacy, in its modern form(s), is a very novel movement. And, as Belloc pointed out (The Jews, 156), like all new movements:
When they begin they are ridiculed. As they grow they come to be feared and boycotted; but of those that are successful it may be justly said that the moment of success begins when they turn the corner and from a fad become a fashion. It is still the fashion to separate oneself from the anti-Semitism movement. You still hear men, when they write or speak upon the Jewish problem, no matter with what hostility to the Jew, excuse themselves as a rule at the beginning of their remarks by saying, “I am no anti-Semite.” For some flavor of the old ridicule still attaches to the name. But fashions change rapidly and the new fashion which comes in to support a growing thing, when it does arrive, arrives in a flood.
Jewish organizations and politicians do fear us, and with willing non-Jewish helpers they are busying themselves, even now, with efforts to bring the internet under some form of control. They see it as a means through which our movement grows and gains in strength. They see that it has helped us reach hands across state lines, national borders, and oceans to our brothers and sisters across the world. They see how it has facilitated the exchange and dissemination of our ideas, the education of the curious, the creation of new businesses, the pooling of resources, and the formation of new political and social groupings. They crow about the strength of their position, and they push hard to shut us down, but deep down they are all too aware of the countless many who, decades or centuries earlier, preceded Bauman and Dershowitz in over-estimating the Jewish position. Even where Jews have been successful in introducing “hate speech” laws, these laws have not proven invulnerable. For example after two years in the law books Canada’s Section 13 of the Human Rights Act, which legislated against “the communication of hate messages by phone or on the Internet,” was repealed on the motion of Alberta Conservative Brian Storseth. Perhaps reflecting an awareness of the undemocratic nature of the “appointed” “think tank” tactic used by Jews to introduce such laws, Storseth described the Canadian human rights tribunal as “a quasi-judicial, secretive body that takes away your natural rights as a Canadian.”
But we, in turn, should not over-estimate our own strength. There is no doubt that Jews are taking their pound of flesh through legal repression and the successful exercise of the legislation they themselves worked so hard to introduce. Earlier this year I wrote about the case of the musician Varg Vikernes who, having been subjected to months of persecution by French police, was ultimately fined €8,000 and given a six-month suspended prison sentence for writing blog entries deemed to “incite hatred” against Jews and Muslims. Meanwhile in Great Britain a 75 year-old retired hairdresser, Paul Griffith, faced a six month legal ordeal and over $2000 in costs after being criminally charged with causing “racially or religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress.” Griffith’s error was in responding to an airport request to remove his shoes by joking: “I’m not Muslim, am I?”
A few more examples from what could be a much longer list:
- Canadian man Mark Harding was convicted of hate speech in 1998 after distributing pamphlets critical of Muslims and Islam. His punishment included Islamic indoctrination under Mohammad Ashraf, general secretary of the Islamic Society of North America.
- In 2006, 14-year-old British schoolgirl Codie Stott found herself seated in a discussion group with Pakistani students who proceeded to speak in a foreign language (presumably Urdu). After respectfully asking if she could switch groups because she couldn”t understand, her teacher shouted “It’s racist, you’re going to get done by the police.” Stott was eventually brought to a police station, arrested, fingerprinted, questioned on suspicion of a “section five racial public order offence,” and placed in a bare jail cell for three-and-a-half hours. She ultimately was released without charge.
- Columnist Mark Steyn and Maclean’s — Canada’s largest newsweekly — were charged with hate speech in 2007 after the magazine printed an excerpt from Steyn’s Islam critique America Alone.
- Australian parliamentarian Susanne Winter was convicted of “incitement” in 2009 after making statements critical of Islam and Mohammad. She was given a suspended three-month prison sentence and fined $31,000.
- In Britain, 21-year-old Garron Helm was sentenced to four weeks in jail for using Twitter for depicting Jewish Labour M.P. Luciana Berger with a Jewish star superimposed onto her forehead. A year earlier Berger had successfully prosecuted another man for anti-Jewish remarks.
[2] B. Epstein, The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism (57).
[3] B. Bachrach, Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe (32).
[5] M. Marrus (ed), Contemporary Antisemitism: Canada and the World (36).
[6] Ibid.
[8] A. Dershowitz, The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century (54).
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