On Being Called an Anti-Semite in Montana

Walt was also accused of having brought to campus "in a suit and tie what used to be the province of those who burned crosses while wearing sheets and hoods." To associate this eminent scholar with the church and school burnings, beatings, castrations, shootings, lynchings, and political assassinations carried out by the Ku Klux Klan required a willingness to say anything, no matter how irresponsible, against an adversary marked not for intellectual defeat but for moral destruction.

David Duke, the best-known contemporary Klansman, gave an interview to the New York Sun, a newspaper implacably opposed to Mearsheimer and Walt, saying that their article had confirmed all of his own claims about Jewish control of the United States. This interview has become an exhibit in the case against Mearsheimer and Walt as anti-Semites.

Duke's distinctive contribution to Klan politics was a campaign to modernize it by creating a nonviolent, completely legal party and by replacing the white-sheeted Imperial Wizard, the leader of the Klan, with a National Director in a suit and tie, thereby setting the precedent that Walt was said to have followed in his racist foray into Montana.

In his memoirs, Duke blames the Jews for World War II, feminism, America's permissive immigration policy, and globalization. Behind all humanity's misfortunes, he sees the evil designs of "the world's oldest, most powerful, and virulent form of ethnic supremacism." When questioned by the New York Sun about Duke's endorsement of his article, Walt said, "I have always found Mr. Duke's views reprehensible, and I am sorry that he sees this article as consistent with his view of the world."

The attempt to group Walt and Mearsheimer with the likes of Faurisson and Duke reveals the real aims behind the campaign of denigration that began on my campus last September: to shut down critical inquiry into the activities of the Israel lobby and to blacken the name of anyone with the temerity to speak up about them. In an open society, however, anti-Semitism cannot be made to include the public investigation of highly effective lobbies. It is long past time to part with the idea that the only foolproof method of defense against the charge of anti-Semitism is 100 percent support for whatever the Israeli and American governments want in the Middle East.

The founders of this country understood that public life must include discussion of the ways power works. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote about factions "who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." He feared that the "cabals of the few" would be a permanent problem for the republic. The invasion of Iraq is not the first war in our history to have been started by "men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs." The evidence that Mearsheimer and Walt provide constitutes a reason for a civilized debate on the role of the Israel lobby in helping to bring about the Iraq war.