THE JEWS, AGAIN

As the Soviet empire breaks up, anti-semitism is consequences of strongly felt national pride

IT IS the fate of empires that when, finally, thaw sets in, nasty weeds spring back to life. When Lord Mountbatten unfroze the British Raj in 1947, Hindus and Muslims slaughtered each other in masses. Now it is the turn of the Soviet empire to melt, and there is talk of pogroms. This is not to argue for the continuation of imperial rule, but we might as well know what we are in for.

Fanatics in Moscow have revived the bogus Protocols of the Elders of Zion and claim that Adolf Eich- mann was in fact a Jew, conspiring to rule the world. In Hungary stars of David were daubed on the election posters of a party deemed to be led by Jews. In East Berlin the words 'Jewish Pig' appeared on Bertolt Brecht's tombstone (he was not in fact Jewish, but his tattered reputa- tion might be saved by his enemies yet). In Po- land, where few Jews remain, tens of thousands took to the streets to demonstrate for a 'Jew-free Europe'. In Rumania there is talk of purging the sacred national soil of the pol- luting blood of Jews and Magyars.

It was perhaps bound to happen. But anti-semitism is not only on the rise in the former Soviet empire. It is here, too, in the wealthy societies of Western Europe. Last week in France Jewish corpses were dese- crated in a cemetry near Avignon (an act of barbarism repeated in, of all places, Sweden). The body of an eighty-year-old man was impaled on a parasol, and a star of David was painted on the stomach of an old lady. Many French people demons- trated their disguest by marching to the Bastille and smashing up a restaurant where 100 Frenchmen had just celebrated Hitler's birthday. Further violence would have occurred if Simone Weil, the former President of the European Parliament and an Auschwitz survivor, had not intervened. Western anti-semitism was also frozen for a while, under the ice of guilty memories of the Holocaust. Now, as the memories fade and witnesses pass away, mass murder is becoming an abstraction, a passage in the history books, or as M. Le Pen, the French politician, put it, 'an incident'. The strength and swagger of Israel have helped to make anti-semitism more respectable again, as fewer and fewer anti-Zionists care to distinguish between world Jewry and the promised land of milk, honey and rubber bullets.

Anti-semites can point out that in this 'kinder and gentler' time of reaction against the 'greed and selfishness' of the Reagan and Thatcher years, the villains of Wall Street, the take-over artists and junk bond fixers, were almost all Jews.

But there is something else at work in the kind and gentle decade of melting empires, shifting populations and faltering capitalism: the unhealthy obsession with what the eminent German historian, Michael Sairmer, calls 'the healthy nation- al identity'. He means an identity based on national pride, unencumbered by historical guilt, that is to say, the guilt of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Chelmno. Likewise, French revisionists are busy denying the Holo- caust; for then, at last, the blood-stained hands of Vichy France can be washed, General Petain can take his place again in the pantheon of national heroes, and France regain her healthy national identi- ty.

The people (Volk) will live as an actual people, not a people in name only; its outer national unity will reflect its spiritual union. Our people will not stray into rootless flitting about like Jews or Gypsies . . . .

One cannot deny the pull of historical and cultural ties, but modern societies are far too complex to be defined by them. For when such views of national unity, spiritual and racial, predominate, politics are re- garded as divisive and the customs, creeds and folkways of others as threats to 'our' way of life, the fabric of 'our' society, 'our' national identity, or whatever we wish to call it. It is bad enough when the others are coloured and poor, but it is far more dangerous when they are rich and powerful and try to look and behave like us, for such people are like a fifth column in our midst, rootless cosmopolitans conspiring to undermine our civilisation and take over the world. Such fearful fantasies infected the 1930s, and the symptoms are re- ocurring.

T. S. Eliot, who was much afraid that the spiritual and historical legacy of Europe would fall prey to modern barbarism, invented a prototypical rootless cosmopoli- tan, called Bleistein: 'Chicago Semite Viennese'. Bleistein stood for soulless greed, which spelled the end of civilisation. His presence and ill-gained wealth 'money in furs' — were an affront to our spiritual heritage.

The spiritual nation, the Kulturnation that is what Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Rumanian, German and other jingoists now, as ever, wish to establish. It has special appeal when political communities, or nation-states, are vague, non-existent or in a state of crisis. For when the state loses political legitimacy — as currently in the Soviet Union or Rumania — atavistic ideas of community take over. It is not surprising that right-wing romantics in Eastern Europe and Russia — such as Pamyat have revived the spectre of the communist Jew, sometimes in league with internation- al freemasonry. To be sure, this is partly because many Jews were attracted to com- munism and played prominent roles in communist regimes. They often did this because communism offered an alternative to the Kulturnation, from which they were excluded. They were often excluded in communist societies, too, of course, for communists are often as jingoistic as fas- cists, except that they call it 'national liberation'.

So when extreme nationalists speak ab- out communist Jews today, they are not so much concerned with political ideology; it is Bleistein they are afraid of, the rootless cosmopolitan, whose 'lustreless protrusive eye' gazes covetously at the mystical com- munity which he means to control by subterfuge. How deranged such fantasies can be was shown recently when right-wing Russian patriots criticised a theatre pro- duction of a Pushkin story in Sverdlovsk, because the actors allegedly used hidden Zionist, Nazi, Masonic and anti-Russian symbols.

Just as Russians and Eastern European jingoists associate Jews with communism, Western Europeans often look to rootless cosmopolitan America for their prototypic- al Bleistein, the Chicago Semite Viennese. Some romantics, by no means all anti- semitic or right-wing, have taken to dream- ing mistily about something they call the 'European spirit', which is, to use another favourite term of such dreamers, 'organic'. Their Europe, with its traditional values, its ancient history, is forever being threatened by American materialism, self- ishness and amoral, commercial greed. The Americans, in this view, have no traditional values, that is to say, Americans don't have a soul. As Jonathan Clarke, the Oxford historian, put it recently in one of his many articles for the Sunday Telegraph; 'The real American values are divorce, abortion, homosexuality and consumer- ism.'

Clarke is a man of the Right but it might surprise many an anti-American leftist that he or she is a direct heir to the reactionary ideas of Eliot. This is actually less strange than it might appear. Eliot was an admirer of Charles Maurras of Action Francaise, a prominent right-wing anti-Dreyfusard. But there were many socialists who were no less opposed to Dreyfus, since they too saw Jews, especially Jewish capitalists, as a threat to society. Anti-capitalism, anti- Americanism and anti-semitism can be highly congenial and sometimes indisting- uishable bedfellows. Indeed, how close Bleistein can be to left-wing thoughts was illustrated famously some time ago when the New Statesman put Henry Kissinger on its cover, hook-nosed like Fagin, wielding, if my memory serves me well, a bloody butcher's knife. It was meant, no doubt, as an anti-American statement, but it came across as anti-semitic.

It is perhaps a sign of health in British society that Mrs Thatcher's earlier pen- chant for Jewish ministers and American- trained advisers did not elicit similar lam- poons. So far, the anti-capitalist snobbery of the often well-heeled Left has confined its targets to yuppies, estate agents and other parvenus, who, unlike, say, artists and writers, are not entitled to their wealth. Any residual hard feelings about Jewish behaviour find a ready and respect- able outlet in the outraged scrutiny of Israel.

Israel's role in the history of modern anti-semitism has been ironical, to say the least. The early Zionists sought an escape from their persecutors in Europe and Russia. And many of the founding fathers of Israel, like David Ben Gurion, were socialists in favour of an open society that embraced non-Jews. However, Zionists were never united in their aims, and the tension between those who favour an open society and those who seek to replicate the racial, spiritual communities of their perse- cutors has become a permanent fixture in Israeli politics. Today, Israeli fanatics, no less racialist than the anti-semites, are becoming an ever stronger force. To add irony upon irony, many of them come from America. One such figure is the notorious Meir Kahane, who described an American- born serviceman who killed two young Arabs at a sacred Muslim spot in Jerusalem as 'a hero who tried to liberate the Temple Mount from the foreigners' hands'. This is Kahane's idea of a healthy national identi- ty.

Anti-Zionism and anti-semitism are often confused, both by the 'antis' and their targets. To Menachem Begin any critic of Israel would seem to be an anti-semite, which is of course absurd. Yet when one hears, as I did recently, a charming English journalist with strong anti-Zionist views denounce the New York Times because 'it's run by Jews', one begins to understand what Begin is up against.

This particular anti-Zionist fits into a long British tradition of phil-Arabism. He is an admirer of the ancient ways of bedouins and other sons of the baking sands, with their warrior codes, their racial purity and their manly spirituality. What is interesting about the phil-Arabists of this type is that they appear less contemptuous of the atavistic side of Israel — the mad rabbis and the bible-bashing settlers than they are of the modern, secular, indeed democratic side. Israel, to them, is the rootless, cosmopolitan intruder in the ancient world of spiritual communities, indeed a nation of Bleisteins. Naturally, English romantics of this kind are also invariably contemptuous of America, Bleistein's spiritual home.

What, then, can we conclude from all this? Not, clearly, that every anti-Zionist, or anti-American, or anti-capitalist, or even every dreamer of healthy national identities, is an anti-semite. But when these disparate elements come together, a climate of ideas is formed which is ideally suited to anti-semitism, or indeed to being anti-anybody who is not one of us, who does not — dare I say it? — pass the cricket test. This is unpleasant but not lethal in open, democratic societies with reasonably strong economies, for such bigotry can be contained in splinter groups and small political parties. But it can be highly dangerous when politics and economics are in a state of flux, when people are as unsure of their govenments as they are of their next meal. And that is precisely the situation in parts of the crumbled Soviet empire. The least critical place — to pile on one more irony — is probably Ger- many, for East Germany can be contained by the largest democracy in Europe. It is most critical in the Soviet Union, where Russians are finding themselves increasing- ly isolated, humiliated and poor. The Russian writer, A. Yanov, is quoted in Stephen K. Carter's new book, Russian Nationalism, as saying that if perestroika fails, a brutal, anti-Western, fascist dicta- torship will take over. One can imagine where their healthy national identity will lead, especially for Soviet Jews.

There is not much we in the West can do to influence Russian or other fanatics, except to keep our own obsessions about national identity at bay. The jingoists need no encouragement from us. As Saint Just, one of the heroes of the French Revolu- tion, observed, 'There is something terri- ble about the holy love of one's nation, for it is so exclusive that it sacrifices everything to the public interest, without mercy, without fear, without humanity.' He knew whereof he spoke. Not long after he said this, his neck was sliced by the guillotine.