Free speech is under assault, primarily from the left; a subtype of anti-free speech prevalent in Europe is the banning of hate speech, including some aspects of anti-Semitic speech. Eugene Volokh, in offering support for free speech (about which I am pretty much an absolutist) attempts to make a nuanced argument about the value of tolerating anti-Semitic speech. In so doing, he asks and attempts to answer an age-old question:
Anti-Semitism: Good for the Jews?
Yes, but only when expressed in moderation.
American Jews naturally worry about anti-Semitic speech, for the obvious reason that it could lead to anti-Semitic murder, other crimes, job discrimination and more. They also worry about unfair criticism of Israel, because it could undermine American help for Israel, American trade and professional exchanges with Israel and the like.
But it seems to me there are also contrary effects. American help for Israel--especially private help--is also undermined by any decline in American Jews' emotional connection to Israel, a decline that can stem from (1) growing assimilation, (2) a declining sense that Israel is unfairly embattled and (3) a declining sense that Jews are unfairly embattled and need Israel as a defender and retreat of last resort. Likewise, what these days most undermines the welfare of the American Jewish community as an independent community (rather than just as individual people)? My sense is that the answer is assimilation and declining sense of common fate, rather than an unwillingness to identify as Jews for fear of ostracism or violent reprisal (a fear that was more serious some decades ago).
The interaction between anti-Semitism and Jewish identity is complex and filled with ambivalence. Certainly, Jews, as with any group, have found solidarity through persecution. Jews who grew up in the post-war period understood that the Nazi's anti-Semitism was so inclusive as to cover those who had the "misfortune" of a single grandparent being born Jewish. Assimilation and conversion provided no safety from the Holocaust. The 1967 six-day war and the 1973 Yom Kippur war, when Israel had to fight for its survival, provided Jews with the incomparable power derived from the paradigm shift from eternal victims to active agents of their own destiny. It is impossible to underestimate the change in the Jewish self-identity that these victories engendered. Yet, while the victories were impressive, they were also incomplete.
Robert Avrech has a wonderful post about the problems that have metastasized for Israel from winning wars without the Arabs losing:
Amos pauses, slowly, sadly shakes his head.
"We did not properly win the Six Day War. Oh, we won it, but the world stepped in and declared a ceasefire. Do you realize what a disaster that was? That's why we just fought this war. Back in '67 the Arabs were able to walk away and lie to their people about the nature of the war—even though they were decisively beaten. And we just crushed them again. In some ways even worse. But again the world allows them to escape defeat without surrendering. These ceasefires are killing us. Let me tell you this: until we defeat the Arabs, until they are made to surrender, hand over their swords—we will never have peace."
Unfortunately, Robert Avrech's post suggests a major problem with Eugene Volokh's post. Note John Ray's comment:
Volokh’s argument in that regard is in fact an old one. I look quickly at the history of the idea concerned as part of my article here. Some Jewish writers even feel that Jews NEED their persecutors — that it is only persecution that has held Jews together as a group for so many years.
I myself think that is a bit extreme but the idea that victims and victimizers do in some cases and in some senses collude is not an unusual one. It is one foundation of the study known as "victimology".
Note that Volokh is NOT condoning actual persecution of Jews — just antisemitic speech. I am rather pleased that someone is able to make that distinction. Leftists notoriously do not. To them anything from the words "you people" (as Ross Perot found out) to a lynching is all the same — all "racism"
I would suggest to Eugene Volokh and John Ray that history shows that when it comes to anti-Semitic speech and anti-Semitic action, there one very rapidly devolves into the other as anti-Semitic speech leads inexorably to anti-Semitic action; it always has and it always will; it is part of the very nature of the psychological structure of anti-Semitism.
In my post Pity the Poor Anti-Semite I described how the anti-Semite projects his own hatred and rage onto the Jew, in the process disavowing responsibility for his own murderous impulses and devaluing and disowning his own agency. At the same time he idealizes the Jew as a demi-God with vast powers to control and harm him:
Here is the crucial point for those who imagine that a tiny group of people, barely 60 years out of an almost successful genocide, left with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, comprising approximately .05% of the world's population, who came to the desert in Palestine and built a modern technological nation, would have the time and interest to simultaneously devote themselves to oppressing the Muslim world, with almost 100 times their population and oceans of oil:
The anti-Semite necessarily defines himself as monumentally inferior to the Jew.
This resides in the core of the anti-Semite and renders him permanently damaged and weakened. Only the aid of a being much greater than themselves, Allah, can save them from disaster. Short of such divine intervention, they are doomed to remain defeated. The Muslim nations of the world do not see it as within their abilities to compete in a world of high technology, higher education, competitive open economies; no, they look to nuclear weapons, only available to them by virtue of their Allah given oil money rather than by the sweat of their own brows, to bring them relief from the often imagined depredations of the now conflated Jewish/American demi-Gods.
Once a person or group of people has taken the first steps down the path of anti-Semitism they have set in motion a positive feedback loop that can only end in their marginalization or destruction. As an example, the Palestinians "narrative" includes the idea that the Jews are inferior people. At the same time they imagine the Jews to be supermen who can devise the most devilish technology (partly true, of course) with which to continue the oppression of the poor, weak, ineffectual Palestinians. Since the "narrative", in effect a paranoid delusional system, involves disavowing their own responsibility for their plight, there is nothing they can do to alleviate their plight beyond attacking the Jew. Every setback then becomes yet another data point to support their inferiority and the Jews' superiority.
The more refined and elegant anti-Semites, so many of whom reside within the left wing elites, unknowingly adopt the structure of the paranoid narrative, but cover its core with rationalizations and intellectualizations (the hallmark of the out of touch academic.) Once having set foot on such a path, the incremental movement from mild or moderate anti-Semitism to overt genocidal anti-Semitism is merely a matter of time and degree. This does not mean reasoned and rational criticism of Israel is impossible but it does mean that once a person accepts the paranoid structure of Palestinian innocence and victimization and Israeli intransigence and oppression, the inevitable result is excusing and rationalizing (usually by omission, as is the common habit of the MSM) behavior and speech that can only lead to mass murder.
I would suggest to Eugene Volokh that while I agree that free speech must be protected, when it comes to anti-Semitism, there is no such thing as moderation.
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