To hate America is to hate humanity
PAUL JOHNSON
What is the most serious form of racism in the world today? It is anti-Americanism, How so? Because it is deliberately whipped up by intellectuals and governments. Racism has always existed, in all societies, and to some extent it is a characteristic of human nature to draw unfavourable distinctions between oneself and those radically different. In ancient Egypt the ideogram for an Egyptian was distinct from that of a human of any other kind, and this is characteristic of most idiomatic scripts, including modern ones. I suspect racism will always exist in one form or another, but its dangers can be, and are being, overcome by travel and education, by higher living standards, intermarriage and all the effects of globalisadon, On the other hand, in some areas they are being inflamed by organised government or theocratic activity.
We see this happening in Zimbabwe today, where the regime deliberately dispenses anti-white venom to make it easier for its elite to steal white assets. Far more serious and widespread is the anti-Semitism (merging with anti-Westernism and especially antiAmericanism) promoted by many governments in the Arab/Muslim world. This has a long history. Modern anti-Semitism, deliberately fostered by authority, was piloted by the Tsarist regime, where agents organised pogroms and disseminated the most notorious of all racist tracts, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This blatant forgery, exposed as such nearly a century ago, reached the Middle East just after the first world war and has never been out of print there since. Its importance was immeasurably enhanced by one of the most serious mistakes in the whole of Britain's colonial history.
This was the appointment, in 1921, by the mandatory government in Jerusalem, of Mohammed Amin Al-Husseini to be senior judge or Mufti of Jerusalem. He was not only head of the biggest landowning class in Palestine and the dominant figure in the newly created Supreme Muslim Council; he was also a dedicated killer who devoted his entire adult life to race-murder. The year before he had been sentenced to ten years' hard labour for provoking bloody anti-Jewish riots. He had innocent-looking blue eyes and a quiet, almost cringing manner, but he outrivalled even Hitler in his hatred for Jews. He was not only the progenitor of suicide bombing and such killer-networks as alQa'eda, he was also the bridge between Nazi anti-Semitism and the Arab world. A photograph survives of him and Himmler, smiling sweetly at each other. It has a charming inscription by the SS chief, To His Eminence the Gross Mufti': the date was 1943, when the Holocaust was moving into top gear.
Thanks to the Mufti, not only was The Protocols circulated throughout the area, especially in schools, universities and religious colleges, but it was soon joined by Mein Kampf. This again, in Arabic translation, has never been out of print in that part of the world, Nowadays it is also disseminated in the Balkans, where 400 new mosques, built with Saudi money, keep up the anti-Semitic. anti-Western view of the world among young Arabs. Hitlerism and its policy of extermination as a solution to problems has penetrated deeply into the official structure of belief in some Arab countries. Thus in Syria, Israel's neighbour, children in state schools are taught that not only must the Jewish inhabitants of liberated Palestine be killed, but the Jews of the United States too, for without this there can be no final solution. (And, while on this subject, it is disturbing to read that a new translation of Mein Kampf is circulating among Muslims in Britain.) In the great arc of the Muslim world, antiJewish propaganda tends to shade into hatred of whites, of Europe, of America, of Christianity, of the modern world, of capitalism: it is racial, religious, economic and cultural. These last two aspects explain its links and sympathies with intellectuals in Europe. The collapse of Soviet communism, the decision of China to participate in the world market economy, the impotence and destitution of such remaining hard-line Stalinist regimes as Cuba and North Korea, have left a huge vacuum in the Left's pantheon of hero-states. Neither Islamic fundamentalism nor Arab nationalism is an attractive replacement. But in the almost bottomless despair of the Left negative emotions propel their partisanship in a pro-Arab, pro-Muslim direction.
These negative emotions are twofold. The first and most important is anti-Americanism, a characteristic of the Left for more than half a century, and now perhaps stronger than ever among intellectuals who view America's emergence as the triumphant sole superpower and the world's most dynamic economy with passionate and irrational hatred. But in their eyes America is not only an odious animal. but marsupial, and in its pouch are the Jews — Israel, the source of all evil in the Middle East, being its progeny. Significantly, this is roughly how Hitler saw America under the Roosevelt administration.
Then again, intellectuals on the Left have always been devoted to conspiracy theory, which lends itself perfectly to anti-Semitism. Indeed, The Protocols is an exercise in conspiracy-fabrication. The notion that rich and powerful Jews confederate to manipulate governments and pursue political objectives is at the heart of modern anti-Semitism. One weekly magazine recently carried an article under the heading 'A kosher conspiracy?', which neatly fits into this category. A hostile inquiry into the American Jewish lobby, featured in another magazine, serves the same purpose, conveying suggestions of immensely powerful figures working behind the scenes to determine what the world's sole superpower does to the enemies of the Jews.
Today, indeed, it is often difficult to distinguish between anti-Semitism and antiAmericanism. This is particularly marked in the EU, where two leading powers, France and Germany, adopted anti-Semitic policies at government level within living memory: both have been prominent in issuing warnings to the United States not to take forceful measures against Iraq. Anti-Americanism in continental Europe is more broadly based than in Britain, where it is largely confined to intellectuals on the Left. In France and Germany in particular it is based on envy of America's military potency and continuing economic dynamism.
Yet what is America? It is not a race but a cohesion of all the races of the world. It will soon be a nation of 300 million, 10 per cent of whom were not even born there. Its creation from Europe. Africa and Asia is a continuing process, as countless immigrants arrive each year and are quietly absorbed and prosper. Moreover, these citizens, whose parents, grandparents or ancestors came from all over the world, are given the chance to participate in democracy at all levels, which exists nowhere else on earth. More than 600,000 offices in the US are elected. The entire public ethos of America is fashioned to finding out what the voters want and constructing policy on their wishes. America is successful precisely because it is a working multiracial democracy. To be antiAmerican, therefore, is to be anti-humanity. For no other country represents so clearly the current wishes and long-term aspirations of the human race.
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