[96]The differences among individuals belonging to the same human variety are always greater than those perceived between races regarded as distinct units.
[97]No one has ever been able to show a single authentic Aryan. The descriptions of him, both moral and physical, his measurements and also the description of his inner life, are all purely fantastical.... Today out of a thousand educated Europeans, nine hundred ninety-nine are persuaded of the authenticity of their Aryan origin. In the history of human errors this doctrine will some day without doubt assume a place of honor.
[98]When we go through the list of external differences which appear to divide men, we find literally nothing which can authorize their division into superior and inferior beings, into masters and pariahs.... The science of inequality is emphatically a science of White people. In pursuing this course the elementary commandments of experimental science are transgressed.
[99]In a word, the term, race, is only a product of our mental activities, and outside all reality.... They (races) exist in us but not outside us.
The eminence of certain European nations today is historical and cultural, not racial. Otherwise, how explain the past eminence of Egypt, Babylon, Greece and Rome? True, some try to detect an admixture of Nordic, or at least of Aryan blood in these nations as a cause of their once high civilization. But to claim this is so to dilute the meaning of the word that almost any blood may be considered “Aryan.” The fact is that the Jew now in the United States did not kill Jesus but is still accused of it; and is not a Semite but is still accused of that. The one accusation like the other is merely a rationalization of the social trait of intolerance, now sprung to growth in the United States.
4.
Minor accusations against the Jews need only summary consideration. Needless to say, many of them are true but probably none of them are actual causes for hatred of the Jews. The theory of Burton J. Hendrick that the Russian Jews are inferior racially to the west European ones is merely another variety of the race theory and is worth no more than any variety. The Jews are called materialists and money-grabbers, which many of them are, as well as many non-Jews; they are accused of having wealth and of being subverters of wealth, and some Jews are in each of these categories. Some Jews are bootleggers, as they are called. Possibly some Jews have been traitors, though the writer in the Dearborn Independent seems to have taken a great deal of trouble to prove that Benedict Arnold may or may not have had some Jewish accomplices. Certainly the complaint of the colleges that many of their Jewish students are not socially acceptable is entirely correct. The Jew is the only immigrant group whose poor boys attend institutions of higher learning in any large numbers. Other groups usually wait at least a generation until they have acquired both prosperity and some American culture before their children attend college. Besides, there are a number of Catholic universities which are attended by many Irish and Italian youths, while there is no such school to divert the Jewish youth. Hence there is no doubt that many young Jews attend college who are externally uncouth, who speak English with an accent, who wear shabby clothes, and who have no interest in athletics, dancing or undergraduate activities. It is certain, however, that these young people learn to conform very rapidly indeed; and that, before they learn, they may be able to contribute a little variety and interest to the monotony of American youth.
A charge of great importance during the height of prejudice against the Russian Soviet government was that the Jews were responsible for that government, its success and its excesses. The inevitable conclusion was, then, that the Jews were trying to introduce the ideals of the Soviets into the United States. Even when this conclusion was not drawn, the connection was so emphasized as to minister to anti-Semitic sentiment. John Spargo [100]made a special effort to minimize this rather indirect, but at the time very dangerous piece of propaganda. He showed that the number of Jews in high position in Russia was very small, while the larger number of government clerks and similar functionaries was due to the larger percentage of educated men among Jews than among the mass of Russians; that the great commercial class of Jews were financially ruined by the socialistic policy of the government; that the Jews of Russia were divided among the several political parties for and against the Communists; and finally that the Bolsheviki had suppressed Jewish religious schools, like Christian ones, and estranged the orthodox of both religions. But the anti-Semitic writers used the Russian Revolution to show the growing menace of Jewish power the world over.
Finally, the charge of the Dearborn Independent that there is a Jewish world conspiracy to overthrow the governments of the world in favor of an all-Judaic power. To the person who knows Jewish life, broken into so many conflicting theories and different cultural and economic groups, the whole viewpoint is too ridiculous to require disproof. It is merely another sign that the modern conception of social and economic process is very new indeed and has made little headway into the group mind. Every world process from the World War to the fall of the German mark, from immodest clothing to vapid popular songs, must be blamed on a person or race. In this case the person disliked is the Jew, and everything is blamed on him. But a different group prejudice could just as well ascribe these same factors to the German (as during the war), to the Russian, to the international bankers, or to the Republican party. Again, we are confronted by the rationalization of a group prejudice, and in this case the rationalization is merely unusually fantastic.
As Ludwig Lewisohn sums up anti-Jewish prejudice: