Thomas Sowell, anti-Semitism, and why Jews will always stand alone

 No one is coming to save you.  Tracing the origin of that aphorism is rather difficult at this point, but it contains more than a grain of wisdom.  It is worth remembering that nobody entered WWII to stop the Holocaust.  In Europe, the Allies were forced into the war by attack, and the United States avoided the war with nationalist and nazi-sympathetic factions until Japan forced the issue.  Nobody anywhere entered the war to stop the Holocaust.  Almost nobody cared.  Ending the concentration camps was almost incidental.  Since WWII, Europe and the United States have been somewhat friendlier to Jews than any other countries in history, and the US has been uniquely supportive of Israel.  Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories proliferate about Jews controlling the US government to that end, through our filthy, filthy money, with such pseudo-intellectual academics as Walt & Mearsheimer providing a veneer of academic credibility to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories with The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.  Of course, anyone familiar with the low standards in my indefensible profession will understand the lack of value in that veneer, and all Walt & Mearsheimer did was take a neo-nazi screed, and replace "Jew" with the phrase, "Israel lobby."  Global search-and-replace.  It took a matter of seconds in Microsoft Word.  On top of everything else, it was methodologically sloppier than a junior high short answer to a test question, and demonstrated no knowledge of the workings of American politics.  One had to be not only an old-fashioned anti-Semite, but grotesquely stupid to think that the book had any value whatsoever.  Of course, leftist academics, like certain people I know, loved it.  The actual reasons behind US support for Israel, like nearly everything in this place I call "reality," are complicated.  Yet simple minds cannot abide complexity, and anti-Semitic minds are necessarily simple.

Within American politics, who has our backs?  Ideologically speaking, no one.  Donald Trump froths and rages that Netanyahu has stood with Biden in response to Biden's support, and even dared to acknowledge Biden's 2020 victory.  Trump now praises Hezbollah's brilliance.  This is the GOP's 2024 nominee, and let's not pretend that there is a contest at all.  The primaries and caucuses are canceled.  Behold, cancel culture.  The sane, establishment figure that the GOP almost made Speaker after McCarthy?  That was Steve Scalise, who famously referred to himself as David Duke without the baggage.  He's the sane, establishment guy in the GOP.  Need I continue?  I could do so with the precision of a laser, from space!

Yeah, that's never going to get old.

I should not even have to say anything about the left at the moment.  From The Squad to the boiling-over anti-Semitism on college campuses that even administrations can no longer ignore when some of them find their checks drying up [INSERT JOKE HERE].

The dynamics of American politics have kept the country on Israel's side, geo-politically.  Is it a lack of anti-Semitism, or an ideological opposition to Islamic terrorism?  I would argue, the latter.  There is also the relationship between Israel and Christian conservatives, who are a large voting bloc, and there's more.  As I indicated earlier, most interesting phenomena stem from multiple causes.

Within American politics, though, no one has our backs.  It is a surprise to some that the left does not.  The left, generally speaking, is what we might consider a coalition of minorities, and to the degree that there is a stated ethos beyond economic redistribution among the left, it is to favor the oppressed minority over the majority-oppressor.  Historically, Jews have voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party, in numbers not quite as consistent as African-Americans, but close.  When asked about this phenomenon, particularly in the context of Jews and income (it is merely a statement of fact to note that Jews have significantly higher incomes, on average, than non-Jews), my interpretation has been that Jews perceive ourselves to be "other," and to the extent that one party is the party of "the other," the group dynamics lead Jews to vote for the Democratic Party.  Jews played a significant part in the civil rights movement, and all of this fits together, in a way.

So some are surprised by the prominence of left-wing anti-Semitism, suddenly visible in particularly grotesque ways.  No one should be surprised.

BLM posts images of paragliders.  You know that from North Africa across the Middle East, the Arabic word they use for a black person is "abd," right?  That translates to "slave."  Thanks, y'all.

No one has our backs.  No one ever has, and no one ever will.

This week, students in my Ideology class have been reading Thomas Sowell, or at least, those who bother to read.  I have been thinking about Sowell's argument about anti-Semitism, which you can read here, "Is anti-Semitism generic?"  Sowell's argument is that across times, places and cultures, there will be an excluded group prevented from participating in a range of normal social and economic functions, and that group may seek to find a different niche.  Such a niche, like that of a financial middleman, can result in social prejudice.  The obvious example is the prejudice against Jews as merchants and money-lenders, but Sowell notes similar patterns among migrant Chinese in Southeast Asia, the Parsees in India, and many others.  If the pattern is the same, that suggests a social scientific explanation.

What, then?  Sowell goes further.  Consider left-wing anti-Semitism, which has been the surprise to some, but not to me.  Sowell observes its logical and ideological necessity.  When these groups-- not merely Jews but any of these outsider groups-- finds economic success after multiple generations, not through welfare nor affirmative action (indeed, often despite ongoing discrimination and beginning from more dire poverty than a group receiving welfare), that success is a direct contradiction of every claim made by the left, holding true across time and cultures, making it all the stronger.  The easiest answer is to demonize the group.  They're cheating, they're conspiring, they are the oppressors.  Anti-Semitism almost follows logically from leftist thinking.

Anti-Semitism does not follow from laissez faire economics, but its association with nationalism, and particularly ethno-nationalism means, then, that no one has our backs.  What distinguishes anti-Semitism from what Sowell observes, if we accept the empirical observations he makes, then, is merely this.  Diaspora.  The Parsees did not disperse widely around the world to be a group subject to the same sociological phenomenon worldwide, as an example.  We can study the phenomenon of Chinese immigrants to Southeast Asia, but that is geography-specific.  The more geographically and culturally dispersed, the more widespread the phenomenon.  That's it.

How convincing do I find Sowell's explanation?  There's a there there, but with the social scientist's caveat that everything is more complicated.  Sowell would accept that.  Yet what follows from Sowell is that no one has our backs.

Boo-hoo.  Wa-wa.

Dumb luck saved us from the Holocaust, not good will.  

Most of the time, we cannot assume luck, but luck would have it that most of the time, we do not face a threat like Hitler.  "Genocide" has a meaning.  Words have meaning.

If no one has your back, you have your own back.  The left will chant slogans, but ultimately they cannot abide Jewish achievement.  It is too fundamental a challenge to their central ideology.  Anti-Semitism is practically sewn into the fabric of leftism, and once the slogans are stripped of their lustre, the bare bones of the ideology will reveal itself.  The right is not libertarian, as it claims to be, but too nationalist and ethno-nationalist.

If no one has your back, you have your own back.  Boo-hoo, wa-wa.

How much has been achieved by those facing greater obstacles?  This is not 1930s Germany.  It is 2023 America, and more has been achieved from less, so yes, there are shit students and shit professors chanting vile things on campuses, while demagogic politicians like Donald Trump, The Squad and too many others to name continue to show not merely that there is a thing called "anti-Semitism," but rather that Thomas Sowell was right.

Yet Thomas Sowell came from less than you did, and less than I did.  Take perspective.  What do you do when no one has your back?  You find a niche, and if you are despised for it, then what did Socrates say about that?

What did he care for the opinions of others?  If they are wise, then you should heed their opinions, but if they are not wise, then their disdain matters not at all.

No one has our backs.  This is what it means to be truly other.  So "other" that the other "others" exclude us as the oppressors.  To the actual white supremacists, we are the most impure vermin, to be exterminated like so many rats, and to leftist identitarians, we are the most privileged exemplars of the redefined "white supremacy."  White enough to be murdered by Islamofascists with impunity, and not white enough to save us from the gas chambers of original-formula fascists.  We are whatever you need us to be to justify murdering us.  Schrodinger's other.

Yet what do I care for your opinion if that is your opinion of me?  As long as there is a niche, there is a way for those who don't rely on others.  Those who seek a way have achieved more with less.

No one has our backs.  Acknowledge that, and act accordingly.  That doe not mean leaving others to their fate.  Virtue demands having their backs, but realism means acknowledging that they will never have ours.  Acting according to virtue means acting not for the expectation of a reward, but for the sake of right.

No one has our backs.  No one ever will.  Do right anyway.

Kirk Joseph, "Get Your Shit Straight," from Sousafunk Ave.  Joseph was the long-time sousaphone player for the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.