In Search of Anti-Semitism

National Review, Dec 28, 1992 by Jacob Neusner

LEAVE it to William Buckley to see right to the heart of a complex issue. Instead of assuming that "we all know" what anti-Semitism is, he takes up the burden of sorting matters out. This he does with wit, insight, common sense--and unfeigned affection for the Jews and appreciation of what the State of Israel stands for. I don't know of a more profound statement of affirmation than these words on the special claim of that state upon the moral conscience of the West: "There is no geographical promontory out there, populated by Catholics who are exposed to terminal persecution ... there is no Catholic Israel out there, surrounded by Catholic-hating Moslems who have five times attempted to drive the Catholics to the sea, and into it.

"I would hesitate, then, to endorse a blanket proscription against an anti-Catholic candidate ... I am ready to concede that in our world, in our time, Jews have inherited distinctive immunities."

Here is a Christian (not merely a gentile) who has earned the right to instruct us all on anti-Semitism.

The instruction is sorely needed, for no -ism covers so many disparate attitudes and prejudices. "Anti-Semitism" refers to so many diverse issues that to go out "in search oF' it is the right approach. The truth is, Buckley does not find much, and most of what he finds scarcely qualifies. For the cases covered in this lively and vigorous book, so far as the Right is concerned, represent not so much an ideology of race-hatred as overheated differences of opinion on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. As Buckley shows, it is on the Left that anti-Semitic attitudes and policies flourish, where writers and politicians use anti-Semitism as a means of winning votes and intimidating enemies.

To find a conservative politics of authentic anti-Semitism in this country, you have to read history books. I challenge anyone to contradict Joseph Sobran's sensible observation: "In a society where Jew-hating was rife, charges of anti-Semitism would have no bite." Today's Rumania, Hungary, Poland, and Russia prove exactly that. There, if you want to get elected, you do well to establish your credentials as a Jew-hater; or, at least, avoid identifying yourself as a friend of the Jews. In present-day America, most true anti-Semites live out their years in forest caves in Idaho. Or they do their best to hide their inclinations from the general public, like David Duke, or to appeal to a sectarian political ghetto, like Gus Savage. (Even so, Duke and Savage lost.) From collections of such goofballs and crackpots as these, long-lasting political movements are not made.

The "ism" in anti-Semitism bears with it the claim that we are dealing with a cogent doctrine, a coherent public policy, a way of viewing the world, like Communism or fascism or any of the other -isms and -ities that form of diverse details a systematic account of the social order. And that, indeed, is what in its time and place anti-Semitism accomplished: a complete explanation of why things were so rotten, and what must be done to make them better. That is why, in Europe, political parties could coalesce around anti-Semitism. "The Jews are our misfortune"--as so many Germans put it before 1945--was not a casual observation, nor was it limited in its application. It explained not, say, why Christian Germans should keep Jewish Germans out of the universities, but why the final solution to the Jewish problem would save Europe. Anti-Semitism defined a politics, not the admissions policy of a country club.

Clearly, the stakes are not to be trivialized. In this country in the 1930s, political movements could coalesce around anti-Semitism, as Father Coughlin showed. But in the context of an essentially cordial conservatism since World War II, crying "anti-Semitism" is tantamount to shouting "fire" when someone lights a cigarette. In this documentary study of the complex of attitudes, beliefs, and actions that all together fall into that single capacious category, Buckley completes the project he undertook a generation ago: to rid the Right of the scandal of Jew-hatred.

We should keep in mind the centrality of William Buckley in the formation of an inclusive conservatism in which whites and blacks, Jews and gentiles, Christians and Muslims, now share common tasks in the public interest. That the cases of alleged anti-Semitism on the Right that Buckley takes up scarcely compare to the bonafide anti-Semitism of the old Right, let alone today's far Left, attests to his success.

The book itself requires little introduction in the pages of the magazine where most of it initially appeared. Two parts of it have appeared in NR: First, there is the original essay, in which Buckley reviews four cases in which anti-Semitism has been alleged, involving Mr. Sobran, Patrick Buchanan, The Dartmouth Review, and The Nation. Among these cases, only The Nation produced virulent Jew-baiting. The Dartmouth Review got a bum rap, pure and simple. The other two cases clearly caused much anguish, but, an honest man, Buckley deals with them forthrightly and with good judgment. Then comes a rich collection of comments on Buckley's essay, to which he responds. Much in these pages is fresh, and all of it retains its bite.