Jews Are Hated Because They’re Terrible at Failing
The alarming rise in Jew hatred across the United States, and especially on college campuses, has left many people bewildered. How could this be? After all, Jews have contributed so much to America– why would they attract so much hatred? And why has this hatred risen so sharply in the last few years?
In a recent lecture in Los Angeles, Pulitzer prize-winning columnist Bret Stephens brought up a societal shift that has especially hurt the Jews: the reframing of success as “white privilege.” At a time when the corrosive notion of “systemic racism” has permeated our culture, the new sinners have been dominated by those who are “white” and successful. If you fall into that privileged camp and haven’t learned to virtue signal, watch out.
This notion of connecting success to the bourgeois status of privilege undermines the very American ideal of meritocracy—the idea that those who work hard are more likely to succeed. This is clearly bad news for the Jews. The Jewish ethos since we first arrived in this country has been to work hard and aim for success. Must we now fall and fail in order to be accepted? It’s not a question Jews want to answer.
In this new social landscape, Jews are in a lose-lose position. When the white and successful are stereotyped as the new oppressors, Jews are seen as the most privileged whites, the ultimate oppressors.
That’s why Jew haters tend to get hysterical when something like October 7 disrupts that narrative. They see over 1200 Jews get massacred in Israel, and, instead of showing empathy, they rush madly to the streets to promptly put the Jews back in their place in the forever oppressor club.
It’s not a coincidence that the starkest evidence against that oppressor narrative—posters of Jewish hostages taken captive by Hamas—have been the target of such vitriol. Jews have no right to claim oppressed status. That club has a long waiting list, and Jews are last on the list.
It’s counterproductive to think we can end Jew hatred when so much of that hatred is connected to Jewish success. Even the vaunted elixir of “education” has a limited effect. Education about what? About the long history of Jew hatred and why it’s so unfair? What if fairness has nothing to do with it?
Instead of fighting back by trying to eradicate the hate, it’s more useful to fight, as many are doing, by using the law to defend ourselves against unlawful discrimination and harassment, especially on college campuses. Better to file legal complaints than to simply complain.
Competing in the Victim Olympics is also a losing battle. Regardless of the fact that most hate crimes are against Jews, few people are inclined to buy our claims of victimhood. It doesn’t fit the American Jewish brand, not even when we bring up the six million we lost eighty years ago in the Holocaust. That was then, this is now. In America, the hardwired perception is that Jews are successful and powerful. They have made it.
Of course, even before white privilege became America’s big sin, there was plenty of Jew hatred to go around, as there has been for millennia. The difference now is that the perception of Jews as the ultimate white privilege sinners has opened the floodgates. It’s now open season on the Jews.
Have you noticed the new level of chutzpah among Jew haters? There’s not just hate and ugliness but a frenzied pleasure, a fearlessness. Jew hatred and Israel hatred are now a blur. Among the hundreds of examples we’ve seen, I can’t help thinking about that poor math professor at MIT who had no choice but to allow a student to interrupt his class with anti-Israel venom. The sheer brazenness of the student was stunning.
In a provocative 2013 essay in the British online journal Fathom, philosopher Eve Garrard argued that antisemitism actually brings pleasure to the haters.
To really understand Jew hatred, she wrote, “we have to look outside the cognitive domain to the realm of the emotions, and ask: what are the pleasures, what are the emotional rewards which anti-Semitism has to offer to its adherents?”
She cites three principal sources of pleasure: “first, the pleasure of hatred; second, the pleasure of tradition, and third, the pleasure of displaying moral purity. Each of these is an independent source of satisfaction, but the three interact in various ways, which often strengthens their effects.”
It’s strangely discomfiting to hear from a scholar that “anti-Semitism is fun, there’s no doubt about it. You can’t miss the relish with which some people compare Jews to the Nazis, or the fake sorrow, imperfectly masking deep satisfaction, with which they bemoan the supposed fact that Jews have brought hatred on themselves, especially by the actions of Israel and its Zionist supporters, and that they have inexplicably failed to learn the lessons of the Holocaust.”
The eerie pleasure that Jew hatred provides is not something that can be easily erased or wished away. It’s ingrained and immutable, just like the perception that Jews are successful is ingrained and immutable.
The way forward is not to despair but to recognize and incorporate that reality. Given that it’s no use trying to convince the world that Jews are victims,
we might as well own our success and double down on our Jewish identity. Better to walk with the strength of the proud than limp with the fragility of the weak. By all means, let’s continue to stay vigilant, to correct the lies, to fight in the courts and protect the safety of Jews everywhere. But it would behoove us not to lose sight of the long game.
Things may look bleak at the moment, but in the long run, we know we’d rather be punished for succeeding than rewarded for failing.
When success becomes “white privilege,” it’s open season on the Jews.
jewishjournal.com