Throwback Hatred

On Friday, the Daily Cal published a rather shocking op-ed by one Matthew Soldad concerning the possibility of future war with Iran. The publishing in and of itself, of course, was little surprise: the managerial staff of the newspaper notoriously is as efficacious in weeding out offensive material before printing as a basketball hoop would be in straining linguini. Neither was it the article's anti-Semitic sentiments that caused this particular piece to stand out. Instead, it was the well-read, almost traditionalist tenor of Mr. Soldad's anti-Semitic argumentation that has led even the most cynical of Berkeley Jews (yours truly) perplexedly to furrow his brow. Ordinarily in such instances, the most appropriate course of action is to take the high road, and rather than lending credence to the inflammatory discharge by analyzing its logical flaws, instead demanding to know how such nonsense could have been given the floor in a public forum to begin with. In this case, though, the piece itself demands specific attention, not to issue rebuttal, but to explore context.

The purpose of Mr. Soldad's article is to unmask and berate an influential cadre of Neoconservatives who successfully demanded and orchestrated the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and who plan to launch war against Iran to reinvigorate the flaccid American economy and protect Israel. He grants said cadre an unusually all-encompassing sphere of influence for a Berkeley political theorist, going so far as to relieve George W. Bush and Dick Cheney of some of their ordinary moral culpability by arguing that their road to warpath was Google mapped by Neoconservative "slight of hand." He also takes the unusual (though by no means original) approach of relating Neocons to Trotskyites, whom, he argues, are their Soviet analogues. Soldad's piece takes the leap from contentious – and bizarrely placed – to objectionable when it defines Neocons as a "group of largely Jewish members who follow the teachings of the Jewish academic and neo-Machiavellian Leo Strauss." He accuses them of employing a "fog with which [they] disguise themselves," and cites Joe Klein (political writer for that bastion of governmental theory, Time magazine) in placing them among "people out there in the Jewish community who saw [Iraq] as a way to create a benign domino theory and eliminate all of Israel's enemies."

Of course, the notion of Jewish conspiracy stretches back centuries, at least as far as the Jewish Emancipation of the Enlightenment. The famous manifestations of these theories are widely recognized, and even, to some minds, excessively taken advantage of: the dissemination of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the echoes of its vitriolic fear in the Beilis Trial and Doctors' Plot; the danger of the "Jewish peril" as described in Mein Kampf and the enacting of the Holocaust; American assertion that Jews were responsible both for the abandonment of the gold standard and for communism; and the recurring ideas of Zionist Occupation Governments, political lobbies, and control of the media. Though one would be irresponsible in comparing Soldad's powerless missive to these historical atrocities, one would be hard-pressed to miss the parallel arguments. What's described is nothing more or less than a concealed group of Jews, united behind a perverse code (some Straussian take on The Prince), manipulating world affairs to suit their own greed- and ideology-driven agenda.

Briefly, in anticipation of claims that these arguments are based not on racism, but on modern political exigencies: why mention Judaism here at all? Why describe Leo Strauss – with his city-first (i.e., tradition-unfriendly) philosophy and his profoundly uncertain stance on the truth of religion – as a "Jewish academic," unless you believe his ethnicity to be central to his appeal to the apparently Jewish Neoconservative alliance? For that matter, why label the Neocons "largely Jewish" to begin with? Is it to suggest that the vocal, rich, Fundamentalist Christian sector of the Israel Lobby has, like Bush and Cheney, been manipulated by Jewish slight of hand? Or to return to the lead-in of the article – and the oldest anti-Semitic chestnut in the canon – and imply Jewish conspiracy aimed at pecuniary gain?

One can only wonder what purpose the editors of the Daily Cal believed Mr. Soldad's op-ed would serve in the context of their (very) local newspaper. Presumably, they intended to give much-needed voice to the community, and possibly, to spread awareness of an alarming growing trend in the modern world. Yet what they've demonstrated most palpably is that as long as the fire of bigotry rages on within the hearts of small, hateful men, racist tropes need not necessarily adapt themselves to the times. It is, in fact, these oldest and most grizzled trees whose foundations bind the soil of this toxic forest, and we must be vigilant never to let our callous familiarity with their thorny branches distract us from our duty to uproot them.