Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] THE SUCCESSFUL ANTISEMITE 309
Simonini murders, sometimes with passion, sometimes without. He
throws away life as though it were a tissue. His paranoid view of the world
is convinced that “Jews become doctors and pharmacists in order to control
Christian bodies as well as minds” (Eco 2011, 44).
Baum (2005) has addressed the question of whether antisemitism is a
mental disease. Although Baum does not postulate mental illness as a cause,
in a research paper of Christian and Muslim antisemites, he finds statistical
correlations that suggest:
The more one held antisemitic beliefs, the more likely they were to harbor
psychotic thinking. Conversely, the opposite was true. Persons who
believed the less antisemitic stereotypes had less pathological thought.
Diana is a strange character in the novel, an American expat who has
attained some popularity as a mystic. She is a woman who switches into
bizarre personalities and is used as a propaganda source by Simonini and
others. She is another clearly insane character caught up with the successful
antisemites. After Simonini has intercourse with the drugged Diana, he
murders her. He stashes her body in his favorite sewer, a sewer in which he
has also stashed several other victims. This sewer is an integral part of
Simonini.
Anthony Julius, referring to the writing of his book about antisemitism
in England, observed that: “Writing this book has been somewhat like
swimming long distance in a sewer” (Julius 2010, x). The metaphor of a
stinking sewer is an apt one for the vilest aspect of humanity. Many of the
mentally ill are stuck in this nightmarish environment. Simonini returns regularly.
This rank, insensate place, one that a healthy person would choose to
exit from as soon as possible, is as much a part of him as his right arm.
There is some indication that the successful antisemite—those with
same traits as Simonini and Asa Carter—may be mentally ill.
Asa Carter wrote the touching The Education of Little Tree, which was
a runaway best-seller. He later claimed it was an authentic autobiography as
an American Indian child in the 1930s. The entire work, however, was one
of fiction. Carter as well had renamed himself four times before he died.
Each name had a different personality.
Carter probably knew he was lying when he clamed some of the names
were not connected to him. The real Asa (Ace) was a Klu Klux Klan organizer.
He was so antisemitic that in the 1950s even native Alabama citizens
protested him. He organized violent racist groups. He shot two men in an
argument over finances of his racist group. He was a speechwriter—unacknowledged
but well paid—for George Wallace in his most racist days.