CHAPTER VIII BOLSHEVISM
The Bolshevist explosion, which will appear in history I think as the point of departure from which shall date the new attitude of the Western nations towards the Jews, is not only a field in which we can study the evil effect of secrecy, but one in which we can analyse all the various forces which tend to bring Israel into such ceaseless conflict with the society around it.
It merits, therefore, a very special examination, both as an opportunity for the study of our subject and as a turning-point of the first moment in history.
Why did a Jewish organization thus attempt to transform society? Why did it use the methods which we know it used? Why was that particular venue chosen? What aim had the actors in view? What measure of success did they hope to achieve? By what method do they propose to extend their influence? When we can answer those questions we shall have gone far to discovering the almost fatal causes of conflict between this peculiar nation and those among whom they move.
The answers usually given to these questions by the avowed enemies of the Jewish race are always inadequate and often false. When they contain an element of truth (which they often do) that truth is quite insufficient to account for the full phenomena. But the accretions of falsehood and exaggeration render the whole thing inexplicable—indeed, these explanations of the Russian revolution are very good specimens of the way in which the European so misunderstands the Jew that he imputes to him powers which neither he nor any other poor mortal can ever exercise.
Thus we are asked to believe that this political upheaval was part of one highly-organized plot centuries old, the agents of which were millions of human beings all pledged to the destruction of our society and acting in complete discipline under a few leaders superhumanly wise! The thing is nonsense on the face of it. Men have no capacity for acting in this fashion. They are far too limited, far too diverse.
Moreover, the motive is completely lacking. Why merely destroy and why, if your object is merely to destroy, manifest such wide differences in your aims? One may say justly that there is always a tendency to reaction against alien surroundings, and in so far as that reaction is intense and effective it is destructive of those surroundings. One may point out that such reaction in the case of the Jews, as in the case of all other alien bodies, is in the main unconscious and instinctive. All that is true enough; but the conception of a vast age-long plot, culminating in the contemporary Russian affair, will not hold water, any more than will the corresponding hallucination which led men to believe that the French revolution (a thing utterly different in kind from the Russian) was the mere outward expression of a strictly disciplined secret body. In the case of the French Revolution everything was put down (by the forerunners of to-day's Anti-Semitic enthusiasts) to the secret agency of The Order of Templars acting unweariedly through six centuries, and finally bringing down the French monarchy. In the case, of course, of the Bolshevist anarchy a still longer range is given to the final result: for "Templars" read "Jews," and for "600" read "2,000" years. It is all smoke.
More serious is the statement that this combination of Jews for the destruction of the old Russian society was an act of racial revenge. There is a great element of truth in that. There is no doubt that the greater part of the Jews who took over power in the Russian cities four years ago felt an appetite for revenge against the old Russian State comparable to that felt by any oppressed people against their oppressors. Probably it was more intense even than any other example that could be quoted. We are all witnesses to the way in which the Russian people, religion, and government, and particularly the person and office of the Emperor—were attacked and decried by the Jews in Western Europe, of the way in which the Jews ceaselessly conspired against the Russian State, and of the brutal repression to which they were subject. When you release a force of hatred so violent it may run to any length. That sudden release, that sudden opportunity for satisfying the thirst for vengeance, must explain a very large part of what followed. But even that does not account for the whole. It would account for mere massacre and mere chaos. It would not account for the attempts—rather pitiful attempts—at construction and for the obviously designed system of direction which has continued on the same lines since the Jews first assumed power and is still fully manifest after nearly five years of that power.