I’d like to better understand anti-Semitism in America, because when I first learned of it as a teen (having grown up in a small town in Kansas and never knowingly met a Jew until college) my reaction was “Huh?!? Why?”
My understanding of prejudice is that it is driven by stereotypes. Regardless of whether the stereotypes have any basis in reality, once acquired a negative stereotype fuels the hate (because the object is now hateful) and then the hate sustains the stereotypes and encourages further negative stigma to be added to the stereotype.
But what about Jews? To me a stereotypical Jew is somewhere between a Woody Allen and a Mel Brooks (sorry if that’s not flattering, but we’re talking stereotypes). For women, the characters of Mike Meyer’s Coffee Talk on SNL. Odd or funny, but certainly not offensive.
If a stereotypical young black man is in a drug-dealer and a stereotypical Italian is a mafioso, a stereotypical Jew is a dentist. What’s to hate? Am I way off here?
I wanted to clarify we’re talking about America here and the American stereotypes. I’m sure in Europe where anti-Semitism was (at least at one time) extreme, the stereotypes would be quite different.
Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, for the record, are NEW YORK Jews. (Almost a redundancy, but not quite. ;)) Amusing, actually, since as comedians they have very little in common.
The kind of Jew people are afraid of is a shifty, super-rich and secrective - but extremely powerful - banker who uses all manner of devious tricks to further his own ends, most of which are about destroying Christianity. They control the media and the banks (oh, and the major universities, especially on the East Coast) and will stop at nothing. Most of their evil plans involve controlling all of the world’s governments through their dominance of financial institutions (this gets fancy names like the Zionist Occupied Government). Jews are associated with money and power, and nobody trusts either. They’re also a small and not particularly visible group, which lends itself to furthering that kind of thing.
To add to your second post, I don’t think these stereotypes are really any different among anti-Semites on either continent, minus my reference to East Coast colleges. By media, by the way, I meant both the news and entertainment. Jews were a stateless people until fairly recently, and as such were aliens and outsiders wherever they went - so they got the same kind of treatment immigrants always get, plus some other factors that made it worse.
There are a lot of different stereotypes regarding Jews. Among those who go all out in their hatred, Jews (often the same Jews, simultaneously) are attempting to dominate the world through banking on the far Right and are trying to conquer the world through Communism on the far Left. (People who hate are often not very rational.)
To see the absurd extent to which some people will go in their hatred, go to Google and do a search on “Zionism”.
The only consistent stereotype of Jews that exists in the U.S. (among several contradictory ones) is that they are brainy. (This, of course, is a bit ironic considering that there was a very real movement in the late nineteenth century to bar immigration of Jews on the grounds that they were too stupid to succeed in the U.S.)
I think one source of the prejudice is the historical fact that Jews were barred from many professions and therefore gravitated to some of the less savory professions like money lending (leading to banking). And it is hard to believe for how many generations these images can persist. (Look at the Serbs and Kosavars.) Then Jews were subject to quotas when they immigrated to the US where they were allowed to be full citizens. I don’t know when the first Jew became a professor in an Ivy League college, but I know that the first one at Penn, where I went to college, was in the 30s and he had an Italian sounding name. But they had their traditional businesses and went into them in large numbers.
Let’s not mince words. Anti-semitism is a direct consequence of Christianity and the blaming of the Jews for the death of Jesus. It was official Catholic doctrine from an early time, and that mostly codified what was generally extant in Christian controlled areas.
From Raymond P. Scheindlin’s A Short History of the Jewish People pp. 65-6:
The effect of this policy was to isolate and brutalize the Jews for centuries. They were banned from owning land and from joining the guilds, often exiled, and limited to ghettos when they were tolerated. The Third Lateran Council prohibited Christians from charging interest on loans. This allowed Jews to become pawnbrokers, moneylenders, and bankers but created hatred from those who borrowed money and couldn’t or merely didn’t want to pay it back. At numerous times and places, Jews were prevented from collecting on loans or exiled to keep them from collected, further impoverishing them.
Add to this the charge of the blood libel, which stated that the Jews slaughtered and drank the blood of a Christian child each year. This first appeared in Norwich, England in 1144, and the accusations continue to this day.
And yet, the Jews survived and some of them even thrived over the centuries. This stirred even more jealousy and accusations that the Jews were in league with the devil, untrustworthy, too quick to reward their own, or even secretly in control of the world.
The U.S. was settled and run almost entirely by Europeans, so it isn’t hard to understand why these attitudes would reach and thrive in America, especially since the official lack of sanctions against the Jews allowed them to become even more successful and prosperous. (Although there were many informal sanctions. Ivy League colleges had express quotas limiting the number of Jewish students until well into the 20th century. Country clubs and other social groups where business was done excluded until recently.) Jews especially prospered in occupations that were looked down upon by the genteel (and gentile) upper classes, like the movie and record businesses, and their new fortunes engendered more resentment.
Jewish culture always stressed education and the free public school system helped Jews tremendously in the U.S. After the Ivy League quotas were lifted, Jews garnered a hugely disproportionate share of admissions, and are highly over-represented throughout the professions, universities, sciences, and the arts. Remember, Jews are only about 2% of the U.S. population. But this only serves to convince their enemies that they are secretly in control of those institutions.
Even after World War II, the support of Jews for Israel continued to raise resentment, as they were seen as disloyal to the U.S.
Admittedly, anti-semitism has abated remarkably since World War II in America, and Jews are freer and less hated here and now than anyplace ever. (Ironically, their best earlier treatment was in Germany pre-Hitler, and this created resentments he skillfully exploited.) But anti-semitism has never died, and is flaring up in places all over the world. For most Christians it is still the invisible crime, never acknowledged and often secretly tolerated and abetted.
Zionism is the belief that Jewish people constitute a nation and as such they are entitled to a nation-state (typically in Palestine).
To suggest that anyone who talks about, or critiques, Zionism is anti-semitic is ridiculous. Heck, in Israel Zionism is something to be proud of (Zionism::Patriotism).
A few points along these lines that I feel like making: The first is that the most powerful elements of the Zionist lobby in the United States is made up of the Christian right, not Jews. The second is that you will find a breed of more careful anti-semites who work to make sure that they only appear to criticize Zionism when in actuality they are indeed criticizing the Jewish people. But there most certainly is room for legitimate political discussion on the merits of Zionism and there is definite debate over where the Zionist implementation of the Zionist goal is something that was just.
Finally, while there are a bunch of crazy conspiracy theories going on about Zionist world control, many of them anti-semitic, it’s worth pointing out that Zionists in history have not always been the most friendly and upright bunch. Just sixty-some years ago, “Palestinian Terrorists” were Zionist Jews. Really, go read the FBI file on Irgun. Irgun was, briefly, the terrorist group that followed Jabotinsky’s brand of gun-Zionism. Jabotinsky also created the Betar youth movement, and on their webpage they proudly display their FBI file.
That being said, it’s nonsensical to call critics of Zionism and Zionists anti-semites, just as it’s nonsensical to justify anti-semitism because of Zionism.
More discussion on Zionism should probably be taken to GD.
Although, if the question is “Who hates Jews and why?” a search on “Zionism” will quickly bring up any number of crackpots. Legitimate histories, discussions, and even criticisms will also show up, on such a search, obviously. However, since Zionism is such a hot-button word for the anti-semitic, a search on “Zionism” or “Zionist” will eventually produce a wealth of information regarding those who hate Jews.
The point was not to link Zionism with any negative perspective, but to provide a search keyword that would act as a quick index to those for whom Zionism is always negative.
