I don't usually refer to human beings with the adjective "anti-Semite". Like calling a person a "racist", this PC notion, a favorite of militant Jews, Zionists, and politically correct liberals and Leftists, not to mention hypocritical conservatives, plays on a falsehood. Namely, that racism is a pathological, abnormal, diseased condition of the human soul or psyche.
Unfortunately for anti-racists, racism is no such thing. Instead, racism is a norm of human behavior. It is only with the progress of the Left in the past in the 20th Century that we have seriously challenged people to leave this primitive barbarism behind.
The most perceptive attitude towards racism can be found in a quote by Kaveh Farrokh, a superb, but little-known, progressive Persian historian, in his great essay on the insane anti-Iranian racism that has tainted Arab nationalism (web page of English writings here):
Bigotry is a human trait and has the potential to unfold within any human being (myself included) and must be vigorously crushed.The PC crowd, the hypocritical Zionists, the militant Jews, and the ultranationalist hypocrites of all stripes have racism all wrong.
When we call people "racists" or "anti-Semites" on an individual level, we imply that they have been permanently tainted in some evil way, or that the norm of human behavior is "Kumbayaa" love-everyone-ism, and that racism is some malign evil that afflicts wicked folks, and, sadly, that there is a permanence about it.
Instead, racism is simply a behavior, as opposed to a permanent essence of one's soul or a dye that blackens one's heart forever. It is no more "permanent" than any other human behavior. We can choose to either do it or not. As Farrokh brilliantly notes, it's simply a human trait, like jealousy or envy, that probably every one of us, even the most exalted politically correct angels, is prone to.
Periodically, many of us will display racist attitudes and behaviors in our lives. Instead of condemning those who do so as evil people, we should treat them with kindness but firmness, as we treat one who throws a childish tantrum or has fallen into an insecure, self-hating muddle - just encourage them to cut it out of snap out of it.
Let me ask you: when our friends are bitten by the green-eyed monster, or are bashing themselves verbally, or so depressed they won't get out of bed, do we treat them as if they are evil and permanently tainted? No. Then why do we do the same with those splashing around in the mud puddle called racism?
Most behaviors, even bad behaviors, can be arrested or modified with a bit of willfulness. Those who are are lost in the Racist Wilderness need to be kindly taken under our wings, shown the trail home, and helped along the journey.
Bashing them will only get their back up and cement their errant ways, while feeding our egos with false, "anti-racist", holier-than-thou pride. The "racist" or "anti-Semite" is just like you or me. When we look in their faces, we should see a potential reflection, not a devil with horns.
The subject of this essay is Wendy Campbell. Wendy has written many essays on this blog, but she will not be writing anymore until she stops careening recklessly on the Roads of Anti-Semitism. It's a bit of a phony road anyway. It claims to lead to all sorts of neat places, but the truth is it just winds and winds and you think you are going to some really great places, but in the end, you don't really end up anywhere but lost (at best).
Wendy's essays on this blog, along with my numerous comments, are numerous and can be found here, here, here and here.
I would also like to note that, much to her discredit, Wendy continues to hobnob with Holocaust deniers, Holocaust revisionists, neo-Nazis and other complete and total idiots. I have no idea why a supposedly progressive person wishes to do such a thing.
I feel that it is reasonable for Leftists to make alliance with all sorts of folks, including just about anyone on the Right. However, I do not think we should make any alliance at all with Nazis and fascists. As far as I am concerned, Nazis and to a lesser extent fascists should feel fortunate that we even allow them to remain alive.
I would like to point out that the only rational response to racism (such as the Israeli racism that Wendy nobly opposes) is anti-racism. One does not fight racism with more racism. That's about as reasonable as fighting a fire with a flamethrower.
The problem with the racist Israeli state is a matter of a poisonous ideology called Zionism, which has unfortunately become quite popular with Jewish people and their hundreds of millions of Gentile supporters.
Zionism is a political ideology.
It is not an example of the presumed evils of the Jews, nor is it yet another act in their centuries-old resume of supposedly evil behaviors. It does not necessarily have nothing necessarily to do with the Jewish religion, since the Jewish religion is split on the Zionist question, with anti-Zionist Jews making a strong case that Zionism is heretical.
Discourse that conflates the Jewish people and their religion with the political philosophy of Zionism is often irrational and in many cases, should be condemned. At best, it is frequently a case of sloppy thinking. At worst, it dances a grim tango with one of the deadliest forms of racism in the history of mankind.
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