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nydus/The JewsPublic

This book examines the relationship between the Jewish people and the nations in which they reside. The author argues for the necessity of open discussion and the abandonment of concealment to address the political tensions surrounding this issue.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER VII THE ANTI-SEMITE

does not exist any more than do many other modern hypothetical abstractions, and which, anyhow, does not come into the matter. The Anti-Semite is not a man who hates the modern Arabs or the ancient Carthaginians. He is a man who hates Jews.

However, we must accept the word because it has become currency, and go on to the more essential matter of discovering how those to whom it applies are moved, what the result of their action would be if (or when) they could act freely; and, most important of all, of what they are a sign.

The Anti-Semite is a man marked by two main characters. In the first place he hates the Jews in themselves. His motive is not a hatred of their presence in our society. His motive is not the hatred of concealment, falsehood, hypocrisy, corruption and all the other incidental evils of that false position. These things, indeed, irritate him, but they are not his leading motive. His leading motive is a hatred of the Jewish people. He is in intense reaction against this alien thing which he perceives to have acquired so much power in his society. The way in which it has exercised this power especially exasperates him. But he will remain a hater of the Jewish nation when they are despised, insignificant, and neglected, and he will remain a hater of it even if there be then attached to its position no accidents of secrecy, falsehood and financial corruption. The type increases rapidly when Jews have power: it becomes almost universal when they begin to abuse that power. It dwindles as that power declines. But it is always the same and is an index of peril.

The Anti-Semite is a man who wants to get rid of the Jews . He is filled with an instinctive feeling in the matter. He detests the Jew as a Jew, and would detest him wherever he found him. The evidences of such a state of mind are familiar to us all. The Anti-Semite admires, for instance, a work of art; on finding its author to be a Jew it becomes distasteful to him though the work remains exactly what it was before. The Anti-Semite will confuse the action of any particular Jew with his general

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