ANTHONY JULIUS: A REVIEW OF JONAH GOLDHAGEN’S “THE DEVIL THAT NEVER DIES”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324463604579042904257147952.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen wants us to believe that anti-Semitism is the devil as the devil is envisioned by revealed religion. That it has no parallel in the history of prejudice. That it has been at the core of Christian civilization for two millennia. That, inscribed in the Quran, it is the constituent feature of Arab and Islamic civilizations. Anti-Semitism, moreover, has had its reach vastly expanded by the new, anti-Israel, form it has taken—as well as by the fact that Jew-hating populaces have been migrating around the world, specifically from Arab and Islamic countries to Europe and elsewhere.
With “The Devil That Never Dies,” Mr. Goldhagen hopes to present “a fundamentally new perspective” on this phenomenon and a systematic analysis of the causes and consequences of enmity toward the Jews and of the role played by the Internet and other digital technologies in its spread.
Anti-Semitic expression, according to Mr. Goldhagen, has exploded in the past 10 years in both volume and intensity, notwithstanding that no politician in Western Europe or the U.S. would dare to propose an eliminationist program, nor any legal restrictions on Jews. Yet much anti-Semitism lurks beneath the surface, among political, religious and other influential leaders—not just in the U.S.—and among those leaders who when speaking publicly give no reason to suspect that they harbor such views. In country after country, in democratic country after country, Jews must hide their identity lest they be physically, not to mention verbally, attacked.
Mr. Goldhagen addresses his readers directly: He will disclose “alarming truths.” Alarming because hitherto unknown, one infers. The real nature and many features of “globalized antisemitism”—a term the author says he introduced—have been barely discerned and are poorly if at all understood. He will correct this. He concludes his book with an appeal: “People of good conscience unite.”
If the book delivered on its claims, it would be most welcome. But this is a bad book. It lacks balance and originality. It misrepresents or misreads several readily available texts. It is radically under-researched—the brief endnotes comprising mostly Web references to news items. (For example, though he criticizes Stéphane Hessel’s 2010 book, “Time for Outrage!,” the relevant endnote cites not the book itself but a New York Times story about it.) It is characterized throughout by overstatement and contains some truly ludicrous judgments. (John Chrysostom wasn’t “the most significant theologian of the Catholic Church after Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire.”) Its tone is querulous, hectoring and self-important. (Apparently, we needed Mr. Goldhagen to point out the significance of English as a world language, a feature of the global era hitherto, he says, “virtually uncommented-upon.”)
We live in a world turning and teeming with ever-proliferating anti-Semitism, Mr. Goldhagen says hyperbolically. The Internet, which is available to everyone all the time everywhere, purveys eliminationist anti-Semitism. In addition, anti-Semites have co-opted the British Broadcasting Corp. Even so, most of the world’s anti-Semitism and overwhelmingly most of Europe’s anti-Semitism remain hidden.
The author criticizes, while also relying on, existing surveys of anti-Semitic attitudes. Extrapolating sloppily from the results of surveys of Germans and Italians conducted in different years, he estimates that “perhaps 200 million Europeans see Jewish Israelis as being Nazi-like.” He has done no empirical research of his own, offering instead his own speculations about the number of anti-Semites. Mr. Goldhagen isn’t a reliable guide to his subject.
He attributes to a private letter remarks in fact made by T.S. Eliot in lectures published in 1934. Everyone who knows anything about Eliot knows these words, and—more important—knows their provenance. They have been much analyzed, both defended and criticized. The cause of Mr. Goldhagen’s mistaken attribution seems to be that he didn’t read Eliot’s own words in the place they appear but instead in an encyclopedia of anti-Semitism.
More consequentially, Mr. Goldhagen accuses “Catholicism’s St. Augustine” of calling for the extermination of Jews. He relies upon this passage from the “Confessions”: “How hateful to me are the enemies of your Scripture! How I wish that you would slay them (the Jews).” The two words in parentheses are editorial additions, and a moment’s checking of the passage reveals that Augustine isn’t in fact referring to the Jews, whose protection as witnesses of Christianity’s truth he advocated. The scriptural work Augustine defends is none other than Genesis, and the targets of his ire are pagans (specifically, the Manichaeans). In the sentences that follow, Augustine turns to another group—it might indeed be the Jews, though it is much more likely to be fellow Catholics who don’t share his theological positions. He specifically doesn’t class them with Scripture’s “enemies”; they are “not faultfinders, but extollers of Genesis.”
I have written this review with reluctance. That there should be strife within the party to which Mr. Goldhagen and I both belong, the party of anti-anti-Semites, will only give satisfaction to the haters. But we must be the smart, truth-telling participants in this terrible struggle; we must be intelligent in our judgments, reliable in the claims we make. And for sure, while we must not minimize dangers, we shouldn’t overstate them either. “The Devil That Never Dies” doesn’t contribute to our existing understanding of anti-Semitism; it doesn’t give anti-anti-Semites fresh, good arguments. Indeed, it is so easily and justly dismissible, it weakens the very cause its author seeks to promote.
Mr. Julius is the author, most recently, of “Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England.”
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