But, as I have said, with much the greater part of men who plead this
motive the plea is, if they would only examine their own consciences,
found to be false. And the test of its falsity will be apparent when the
convention slackens. When it is no longer conventional to avoid all
mention of Jews, how many will remain silent merely from the love of
their fellow-men? One might go further and say that when the convention
has gone, any need for this kind of charity will go with it. There is an
exception, of course, in the case of the man whose dislike of Jews is so
violent that he fears himself if he gives any rein to his tongue. That
mania is exceptional; but where it is found certainly its victim will do
well to keep silence. If a man cannot mention the Hebrew alphabet
without a sneer, or the economics of Ricardo without betraying his ill
feeling for Ricardo's lineage, then certainly he had better hold his
tongue when Jews are there. So, too, a Frenchman who raves against the
English had far better not discuss the British Constitution or the
genius of Newton in any society where an Englishman may be present.
There remains the chief obstacle--that of fear.
There is no doubt that the strongest force still restraining an
expression of hostility to the Jew is fear.
In a sense, of course, there is a "fear" of breaking convention--but
that is fear only in metaphor. I mean not this, but the very real dread
of consequences: the feeling that an expression of hostility to Jewish
power may bring definite evils on the individual guilty of it, and a
panic lest those evils should fall upon him. How strong this feeling is,
anyone can testify who has explored, as I have, this most insistent of
modern political ills; and doubtless the greater part of my non-Jewish
readers will recall examples to the point.
It is a fear of two consequences, social and economic, and even of both
combined. Men dread lest hostility to the Jew Domination should bring
them into the grip of some unknown but suspected world-wide power--some
would call it a conspiracy--which can destroy the individual who shall
be so rash as to challenge it. Some perhaps have gone to the length--the
insane length--of reading the word "destroy" in its literal sense and of
fearing for their lives. Such an illusion is laughable. But very many
more are affected by the reasonable conception that they will have
against them, if they provoke it, an intelligent, combined action which
they cannot meet because there is no organization upon their side:
because it is international; because there is behind it a great
intensity of feeling; because through finance it controls the political
machines of all the nations, because it is all-powerful in the
Press--and so forth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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