In search of anti-semitism: what Christians provoke what Jews? Why? By doing what? - And vice versa

National Review, Dec 30, 1991 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

THE LETTER from Mr. Horan (a stranger) of Fort Smith, Arkansas, came in to the office in june 1991, soon after we had published an article by Joe Sobran to the effect that it was the Earl of Oxford who had written the plays universally attributed to Shakespeare. The writer caught what humor is to be found In Re Sobran and The Problem, and touches, however inadvertently, on some of the questions I intend to explore.

Dear Mr. Buckley:

Look, I love the hell out of Joseph Sobran, but I think that he's getting a little kooky. In fact, I think that he's getting a lot kooky. I'd like to think that he inhaled a little too much sidestream smoke when he took his boy to see the Rolling Stones, but that was two years ago. If Mr. Sobran is not peddling variants on the Blood Libel, he's schmoozing with the Liberty Lobby, or running on (and on) about the Earl of Oxford, or moaning about how we're gonna get whupped in the Desert ...

The boy needs a rest.

Mr. Sobran is the best "Aginner" I have ever seen. Down my part of the country, an Aginner is a feller who is "against" most everything in general. By and by, these folks have to tell you what they are for, as a way of 'splaining why they are agin something that is going on as they speak. The world has done mostly turned Joe's way in the past three years. Hell, even the universities are getting sick of PC. In five years, Mr. Sobran is going to have nothing which he can legitimately be agin ! Well, who would've thunk and Hallelujah. But there's the rub. Aginners would rather have a silly argument than a nice juicy steak and a roll in the hay with a Genuine Hollywood Star. So now Mr. Sobran is having to go find things to ruckus about, and he has picked up a bunch of sure-fire hellraisers: Jews and Shakespeare. Down here in the South, us dum ole dirteaters would say: "Those is issues that deserve a good lettin' alone."

Please impart that little bit of folk wisdom to my Good Buddy. And tell Mr. Sobran that "You should never try to teach a pig to sing: it can't be done, and it annoys the pig." Robertson v. White, 633 F. Supp. 954, 959 (WD. Ark. 1986). After all, it's The Law.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Horan

We'll let Shakespeare go, while making the point in passing that Mr. Horan is mistaken in suggesting that Joe is always caught up by something or another. Our association goes back twenty years, and though it is true that he has a high capacity for sustained indignation, it is only Israel and The Jews that seem to have him semi-permanently obsessed; yes, the right word, I think. I propose to inquire into the question by analyzing Joe Sobran (a close friend) to the extent necessary to explore contemporary anti-Semitism. This is not a history of anti-Semitism or of its causes. It is rather a look at it as revealed by the practices of a few journalists and intellectuals, and by the arguments they use. There is a great deal to be learned from the experience of Joe Sobran.

Types of Anti-Semitism

I HAVE some credentials in the area, among them my own father's anti-Semitism. It is probably never too early to distinguish the kinds of anti-Semitism we run into in the world. The apocalyptic kind was, of course: The Holocaust; and I'll be asking whether the shadow of the Holocaust is being made to stretch too far in contemporary polemics. This is different from denying that the Holocaust is, and will always be, one of the great historical ventures in denatured human barbarism. There are Jews who continue to fear that the fires that lit the Holocaust might one day be rekindled. But there are also Jews who, comfortable with the protocols built up around Auschwitz, are disposed, so to speak, to prolong the period of de-Nazification indefinitely. And fierce anti-Semitism of a threatening kind continues, for instance among the Palestinians. Probably a higher percentage of them hate the Jews than ever Germans hated the Jews in the Thirties, and the Holocaust is eloquent testimony to what a very few, moved by intense clinical passions, can accomplish. And then too, every now and again one comes across such as Amos Elon, writing in The New Yorker (May 13, 1991):

Anyone with more than a fleeting acquaintance with Vienna knows that for every Viennese hatemonger you read about there are many Viennese who are liberal-minded. And yet in a 1980 poll, 20 per cent of the Austrians who responded said they were in favor of legally prohibiting Jews from owning real estate and capital in Austria. A poll taken in 1984 by Vienna University social scientists showed that only 14 per cent of the population was "largely free of prejudice" against Jews. Sixty-four per cent said that Jews were "too powerful" politically and economically. Thirty-four per cent believed that "honest competition" with Jews was impossible. Fifty-seven per cent said that they shouldn't have to be reminded so often of the murder of millions of Jews in the extermination camps. Twenty-one per cent said that the removal of the Jews from our country [under the Nazis] has also produced positive results." In a more recent poll, 23 per cent said that "Jews should not occupy influential positions in our country," and 6 per cent confessed that they would be physically repelled if they had to shake a Jew's hand.