That extreme was an almost universal folly in the immediate past,
especially in this country. It is now abandoned by all of our generation
save a few people of an official sort, and these will not long maintain
an attitude outworn and already ridiculous.
But the other extreme remains to be studied. It is, in our society,
quite a recent phenomenon, though it has gained very great strength in
recent years and is increasing alarmingly. It is the extreme of hatred.
It is the extreme manifested by those who have but one motive in their
action towards the Jewish race, and that motive a mere desire for its
elimination. It implies that there is no peace possible between the two
races; no reasoned political solution. It relies upon nothing but
antagonism. It is already very strong, and its adherents believe
themselves to be on the eve of a sort of blundering triumph.
Every one who desires to deal with this grave political matter
practically, that is, to establish a permanent policy, will be much more
concerned with the extreme here examined than with the other extreme,
which ignores the problem altogether. For this new extreme of active
hatred is flourishing; that other, older extreme no longer functions.
The near future will have to deal, in practical politics, not only with
the problem presented by the Jews as an alien power within the State,
but (what will probably prove a more difficult matter) with the hater
of the Jew, who is claiming, and rapidly achieving, power on his side.
The type is as old as the problem; it is two thousand years old. But it
waxes and wanes. Its modern name of "Anti-Semite" is as ridiculous in
derivation as it is ludicrous in form. It is partly of German academic
origin and partly a newspaper name, vulgar as one would expect it to be
from such an origin, and also as falsely pedantic as one would expect,
but the exasperated mood of which it is a label is very real.
I say the word "Anti-Semite" is vulgar and pedantic: that I think will
be universally admitted. It is also nonsensical. The antagonism to the
Jews has nothing to do with any supposed "Semitic" race--which probably
does not exist any more than do many other modern hypothetical
abstractions, and which, anyhow, does not come into the matter. The
Anti-Semite is not a man who hates the modern Arabs or the ancient
Carthaginians. He is a man who hates Jews.
However, we must accept the word because it has become currency, and go
on to the more essential matter of discovering how those to whom it
applies are moved, what the result of their action would be if (or when)
they could act freely; and, most important of all, of what they are a
sign.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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