41845358-Antisemitism

112 ANTISEMITISM
critically, logically or reasonably, ... only inwardly perceived, surmised. ...
We are apparently the last ... of the age of the Enlightenment.” 67 That many
people, including intellectuals and members of the elites, believed these racial
theories—indeed, for some it was a passion, an obsession—was an ominous
sign for Western civilization. It showed how tenuous the rational tradition of
the Enlightenment is, how receptive the mind is to dangerous myths, and how
speedily human behavior can degenerate into inhumanity. Ending in the
Holocaust, racist thinking constitutes a radical counterideology to the highest
Western values, both Christian and humanist. For this reason, the Holocaust
is the central event of the twentieth century or, as a Jewish prayer expresses it:
“Auschwitz is the fact and symbol of our era.”
EPILOGUE
In the Western world, there is a crucial difference between antisemitism before
and after the Holocaust. Today overt expressions of Jew hatred are no longer respectable.
People aspiring to careers in government, business, and the arts rarely
avow antisemitism openly—it has become detrimental on a professional level to
do so—and many organizations, including established churches, publicly deplore
revivals of the old calumnies directed against Jews. Indeed prominent
Catholic and Protestant clergy have voiced regret for the anti-Judaism/antisemitism
propagated by their churches that had poisoned people’s hearts against
the Jewish people with disastrous consequences. One cannot but wonder, however,
whether the blatant antisemitism recently directed at Israelis by Europeans
who are not identified with the far Right will compel a modification of this sanguine
view. Today virulent antisemitism is confined largely to fringe groups,
many of them openly sympathetic to Nazism. These extremists deliberately perpetuate
antisemitic myths, particularly that of an international Jewish conspiracy.
They publish and circulate the Protocols and, in an act of calculated cruelty,
claim that the Jews, in still another expression of their collective wickedness,
made up a story of Nazi genocide. (See chapter 5.) Hate and conspiratorial delusions
about Jews still persist, as the following passage from an antisemitic periodical
illustrates: “Talmudic Jewry is at war with humanity. Revolutionary
communism and International Zionism are twin forces working toward the
same goal: a despotic world government with the capital in Jerusalem.” 68
And on the Internet, the same rubbish is found: “[W]e must first realize
that Satan is real and that he is at war with God. This being the case, it would
be strange indeed if there were no conspiracy dreamed up by him to rule the
world, using agents ...[and] the Talmudic system of Jewry plays a prominent
role in this plan.” 69