Sir: I should like to say that I agree with
every- thing written by Mr.Szamuely regarding Israel and the left (9 June) butthink that the argument can be carried even further.
After long reflection on this matter, I have come to the conclusion that every Socialist is a potential anti-semite. The reasons for this are to be found both on the higher intellectual plane and also at the more elementary emotional level.
To begin with the intellectual motives. To the Socialist, the Jew is a nuisance because be stands in the way of the Socialist aim of reducing every- body to a dead level of uniform mediocrity. The Jew is enterprising; the Jew is an individualist; the Jew is self-reliant and does not allow himself to become dependent on the state. To the doctrinaire Socialist, all these things are anathema.
On the emotional level, one of the main driving forces of socialism is the envy and resentment which the mediocre always feel towards those who have greater talent and ability and therefore achieve greater material success, and this emotion not infrequently expresses itself in the form of anti-semitism. (The Ibos are the Jews of Nigeria, the Chinese are the Jews of Indonesia.) Of course, the mediocre never like to admit that others really deserve to be better off than themselves, hence the mythology of exploitation (socialism) or swindling (anti-semitism). We see the same process in the Arabs attempt to blame their defeat on to western intervention.
Eric Taylor 66 Uplands Road, Woodford Bridge, Essex
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