Anti-Semitism: Coming to America?

It's not here yet, says writer J.R. Dunn at The American Thinker.   Helen Thomas's outrageous and virulent comments show that in some precincts, ant-Jewish rhetoric is tolerated if not encouraged.   But the swift reaction against her by the American mainstream (which trickled up to influence elite opinion) indicates that anti-semitism has yet to grab a foothold in American society as it has in Europe and elsewhere, argues Dunn.

Dunn ties the fall of France and Germany as great powers directly to the modern, intellectual variant of anti-semitism that grew like topsy within their societies beginning in the 19th century.  In France, the Dreyfus affair in the 1890's caused a decades-long split among the ranks of intellectuals, between those who believed that Dreyfus was framed (he was) and those who needed his Jewishness as the only proof of treason.  According to Dunn, many among the "ultramontane, ultranationalist" elements in France wore anti-semitism as a badge of honor.

In Germany, heavy-duty intellectuals like Richard Wagner in the 1850s pushed anti-semitism from the fringes of polite society to the salons of the elites that held enormous influence over popular opinion.  They gave anti-semitism the intellectual weight and heft necessary to penetrate the consciousness of the masses and move to the center of "Deutsche Politik." Less than a century later, both France and Germany lay in ruins, the former destroyed by the latter and the latter defeated by the America and her allies.

So far, says Dunn, anti-semitic (disguised as pro-Palestine or anti-Israel) rhetoric in America is confined to "second-rank or over the hill" activists and entertainers like Danny Glover and Jane Fonda (and hack journalists like Helen Thomas) with an assist from pseudo-intellectuals like John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt of "Israel Lobby" fame and Jewish liberals like Peter Beinart.  The Obama administration has introduced some figures of low repute and standing who harbor anti-Jewish sentiments, like diplomat Charles Freeman.  But there exists no popular figure in America with wide-ranging appeal to the masses a la Wagner in Germany that could give anti-semitism the respectability and intellectual grounding necessary for it to spread into the heartland.

What the Helen Thomas affair shows, says Dunn, is that European-style anti-semitism has not spread to America in any significant sense.  Dunn wonders, however, whether there lurks in our future a dark and evil figure with the stature and renown to influence the masses into adopting the "oldest hatred" in its most virulent form.