Source: M. J. Olgin: Leader and Teacher
Published: Workers Library Publishers, New York, December 1939.
Transcription/HTML Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2006. You can freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive as your source.
WHEN you argue against anti-Semitism, do not put yourself on the anti-Semite’s level. Do not take his premises for granted. Do not wish to set him straight “from his own point of view.” Rather put yourself on the general basis of democracy which the overwhelming majority of the people accept. Argue from the point of view of general decency and good-neighborliness. Above all things expose the social forces behind anti-Semitism, explain which group tries to benefit by anti-Semitism. In doing so you will raise the level of political and social understanding of the people you address yourself to, and in this way combat anti-Semitism.
The authors of the pamphlet, Father Coughlin, His ‘Facts’ and Arguments,[1] have devoted nearly one-half of their work to proving that Jewish bankers of the United States did not finance the Bolshevik Revolution. This was a good piece of work; in fact too good, for it produced too formidable an array of facts to disprove an obviously silly statement. But in doing so the authors, unfortunately, placed the argument on the basis of Coughlin’s “Weltanschauung.” They assumed together with Coughlin that Communism is bad, that Communism must be fought. The second half of their pamphlet is devoted to proving that Communism has brought the Jews nothing but sufferings and persecution. One of their chapters is entitled, “How Jews Have Been Persecuted Under Communism.” They quote a statement that “thinking Jews the world over see the liquidation of the Communist regime in Russia as the only salvation for their co-religionists in that unhappy land.” They quote another statement that “two and a half million men and women are placed between an appalling present and an even more appalling future, placed by the choice between a Red and White dictatorship, between dying out and dying a violent death.” The readers are not only deprived of the information that the Soviet Union is the only country in which there is practically no anti-Semitism and in which Jewish life is flourishing on the basis of equality and freedom, but they are given the false information that Jews are dying out in the Soviet Union.
What is wrong with this line of argument? It is placed on a Red-baiting and not on a democratic foundation.
An adherent of democracy, in arguing against anti-Semitism, should point out that the principle of democracy implies equality of all nationalities, whether the individual citizen likes individuals of other nationalities or the doings of certain groups among them or not. The principle of democracy takes it for granted that any nationality or “race” is entitled to have its own bankers, clergy, manufacturers, workers, reactionaries, Communists. The principle of democracy forbids blaming a whole nationality for the doings of some of its members or to blame one single nationality for the evils of the whole world. The principle of democracy demands that all the oppressed of all nationalities should unite against their oppressors.
Another basic element in an argument against anti-Semitism is the explanation of the purpose for which anti-Semitism is being fostered.
In the present case it is possible to expose Coughlin, showing his connection with the open shop employers, with the attacks on unemployment relief. In other words, Coughlin’s anti-Semitism must be exposed as a link in the chain of reaction with which the economic royalists wish to strangle the people of the United States. No argument against anti-Semitism will be convincing enough unless it shows that anti-Semitism tends to spread mistrust between Jewish workers and non-Jewish workers to the benefit of the open shop manufacturers and to the detriment of the labor movement which is the bulwark of democracy in our country. He who argues against anti-Semitism must show that the spread of anti-Semitism is in the interests of those who would lower the standards of living of the people and make them pay the bill for economic crisis — which is exactly what fascism is forcing the people to suffer in totalitarian states.
All this is missing in the General Jewish Council’s pamphlet. The non-Jew who will read that pamphlet will not learn either the nature of anti-Semitism or the means to combat it. He may learn that on certain occasions Coughlin made incorrect statements, but he will also learn to hate and despise the only country in the world in which the Jews are perfectly free and in which anti-Semitism is a curse of the past.
There are some Jews who think that you can approach a non-Jew with your propaganda against anti-Semitism while leaving him a prey to other prejudices. This line of thought even assumes that one may agree with a Dies, a Hague or a Harvey, if only one shows them that anti-Semitism is wrong. In reality you cannot show that anti-Semitism is wrong unless you show that reaction is wrong and that fascism is a menace.
And this is exactly where the present pamphlet falls flat.
1. Issued by the General Jewish Council.