Chapotraphouse

(This takes five minutes to read and it briefly discusses violence.)

I never seriously considered addressing this stereotype until I read this:

I suppose what disturbs about all of this is that these sentiments aren’t coming from sieg-heiling neo nazis or skinheads as most would think… but literally from ordinary working class “normal” people. These same people I know are against ICE, hate Trump, want worker’s rights (especially since I’m from a red state) and recognize the bullshit system for what it is. And yet we move from one scapegoat to another and nothing is ever done.

The problem with responding to antisemitism is that it is like shooting fish in a barrel: the stereotypes are so flimsy and half-assed that I suspect that some antisemites secretly know that they’re bullshit, but if even lower-class people are falling for them then I am going to be patient and explain why the stereotypes fail to withstand scrutiny. Tonight’s subject is the stereotype that Jews are a ruling class.

Let’s pretend, for the sake of argument, that it has never been true that 19% of Jewish households in 12 communities around the United States either cannot make ends meet or are just managing to make ends meet: I am sure that antisemites can tap into their inner Joseph McCarthy and conclude that the Jewish Federations of North America made that up to fool us. And presumably, there are Jews so utterly stingy that they don’t even want to pay temple fees, despite the fact that synagogues are inarguably nice spots for community. Let’s conveniently overlook those and focus on something else.

Now, when a class rules, it has substantial effects on education. Take the capitalist class, for instance. One of the clues that the capitalist class rules is that it bombards generic anticommunist hacks like Anna Applebaum and Timothy Snyder with awards, whereas serious historians such as Stephen G. Gross and Gian Giacomo Migone remain ignored. In pretty much any U.S. school, you’ll find history classes that present negative views on the Soviet Union and the other people’s republics (unless you are one of those neo-McCarthyists who thinks that everybody who does not adhere to your suggested curricula must be a communist). Compare how these courses cover U.S. history and how they cover Soviet history and you should see a stark contrast.

On the other hand, the way that U.S. education covers Judaism is insubstantial. I apologize in advance for not finding a more recent source, but the dating should be irrelevant for this stereotype. Quoting Jason Eugene Allen’s ‘The Treatment of the Monotheistic Religions in World History High School Textbooks: A Comparison of Sample Editions 2001–2007’:

This study examines the treatment of the three most practiced monotheistic religions, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, within the pages of High School World History Textbooks. The results find that within World History textbooks Christianity and Islam receive more coverage than Judaism in narrative content, word usage, illustrations, and questions presented.

Christianity receives the greatest amount of narrative content in all textbooks studied whereas Islam has portrayals that highlight the spiritual aspects of the religion to a greater extent than do Christianity and Judaism. Judaism received the least amount of coverage of the three religions. Very little is presented concerning the accomplishments and overall history of Judaism unless it has a connection to Christianity or Islam.

[…]

Like Muslims and Christians, the followers of Judaism have criticisms about their faith’s depiction in World History textbooks. A major Jewish concern is that World History textbooks cover Ancient Jewish History more in-depth than events affecting their religion during the latter half of the twentieth century. Many Jews feel that their religion receives little coverage in terms of Judaism’s religious beliefs. Arie Kizel (2005) claims that modern events surrounding their histories are overshadowed by more traditional topics such as Ancient Jewish History and The Holocaust.

(Emphasis added.)

There is nothing difficult to believe about Allen’s assessment: how many Gentiles can describe Purim? How many Gentiles can describe Yom Kippur? Pesach? Tisha BʾAv? Rosh Hashanah? Tu BiShvat? Sukkot? Anything other than Channukah? Even many of the Gentiles vaguely familiar with Channukah unless likely to understand its significance, mistaking it as Christmas with a Jewish paint job.

How many Gentiles can describe the Hebrew calendar? How many Gentiles even know that the Hebrew calendar exists? How many Gentiles know the rules for handling Sifrei Torah? How many Gentiles have a positive opinion of the Talmud? How many of us have heard of Nebuchadnezzar and Antiochus IV? Speaking of Judaism’s enemies, I have asked at least four Jewish adults now if they had ever heard of Symon Petliura. Do you know how many of them said yes? Zero. Zero of the Jewish adults whom I asked had heard of Symon Petliura, and I suspect that their replies would be identical if I asked them about Anton Denikin.

Were Jews a ruling class, we would not hear the end of the pogroms of 1917–1923 (the proto-Shoah), nor would we hear the end of the Polish–Cossack Wars, nor the sackings of al-Quds/Jerusalem, including the destructions of its temple. Many of us hear about the Shoah, yes, but the quality of education is substandard: I once heard Blaze Bernstein, in a video, incorrectly say that all of the victims perished in concentration camps, whereas in reality the Axis exterminated a substantial portion of them not only in concentration camps but also in outdoor areas such as Babi Yar. Poison was not the Axis’s only method of extermination: bullets, explosives, hangings, fire, willful negligence (leading to dehydration, hypothermia, emaciation, illnesses, and suicides), involuntary experiments, as well as hand‐to‐hand combat, were all involved. Uncommon methods included drowning, vivisepulture, dog attacks, and running vehicles over victims. I truly believe that Shoah deniers obsess over the strawperson that all of the victims died from poisoning because mainstream Shoah education fails at everything apart from covering the absolute basics.

There is no need for a Jewish ruling class to hide any of this history from us. But ‘Ah,’ I hear someone say, ‘surely Mark Zuckerberg and others prove that a Jewish ruling class exists.’ My answer: no, they don’t. Approximately 20% of billionaires being Jewish simply means that approx. 80% of goyische billionaires have accepted White or White-passing Jews as assimilators, much as they are now willing to accept Irelanders and Italians as assimilators.

One could claim that a few Jews must be manipulating these goyim, but the fact of the matter is that these are grown-ups who are more than capable of making their own choices and running their own lives; there is no power differential between billionaires, and billionaires don’t need Jews around to tell them to make immoral decisions. So why focus on only one fifth of this class instead of its entirety? Why do the 80% — including antisemites such as Donald Trump and Elon Musk — deserve a break? The answer is that they don’t.

This ruling class, including the few Jews within it, is content with letting militant antisemites spew their bile both online and offline, offering nothing more than a suggestion that we either attempt to politely reason with these hatemongers or simply ignore them. The same ruling class that is quick to suppress content from Southerners sympathetic to their governments is the same one that takes its sweet time before gently asking antisemites if they could maybe tone it down a little.

In short, if Jews were a ruling class, then this would have to be the most incompetent ruling class in living memory.