A moral cockroach: the resiliency of anti-Semitism.

It is difficult to know what to make of the recent upsurge in anti-Semitism. On the national level Pat Buchanan's message contains liberal doses of what might be called genteel anti-Semitism--if it were not for the fact that Pat is so lacking in gentility that nothing he has to offer, not even his anti-Semitism, can be said to be truly genteel.

In my neck of the woods, on the campus of Brown University in Providence, there has been an outbreak of direct, explicit, and vulgar anti-Semitism. Crude and vicious graffiti (e.g., "No Jews" and "Kill the Yehud") have appeared on campus walls in the last few months. Elsewhere in Rhode Island college students are into other vices: two colleges have recently received a lot of press for their student bookmaking rings, while another (my alma mater, alas) features students who, in classic undergraduate fashion, spend the weekend getting drunk and urinating on neighborhood lawns. But at Brown, anti-Semitism is now the vice of choice.

(In fairness, it should be noted that Brown students have recently held rallies denouncing anti-Semitism, that only a handful of student bookies have been identified at the two other colleges, and that the majority of students at my alma mater know how to use a bathroom.)

The Anti-Defamation League says that in 1991 there were 1,879 anti-Semitic incidents in the United States, a record-breaking number for the thirteen years the league has been keeping count of these things.

What is happening here?

One possibility is that increasing public criticism of Israel in the United States has eroded the long-standing taboo against anti-Semitic expression. There is a profound difference of course between criticism of the government of Israel and anti-Semitism, but this difference is not apparent to everyone--especially not to the anti-Semite, who reasons that if criticism of Israel by the Bush administration is legitimate then his or her own anti-Semitism must be legitimate.

And of course some friends of Israel have reasoned in the same way, though with the signs changed. They have at times found it difficult to distinguish between anti-Semitism and legitimate criticism of the Israeli government; they have charged critics of Israel with the sin of anti-Semitism. By so doing they corroborate the views of the anti-Semite, who, like them, cannot distinguish between criticism and bigotry.

Another possible explanation (this is the one I favor) is that the moral subjectivism which has long been popular among Americans of the liberal persuasion is now finding radical right-wing expression. If moral values are nothing more than matters of personal preference, then what objection can anyone have if some folks prefer to be anti-Semites? If I object and say I don't approve of anti-Semitism, that I find it vile, abhorrent, etc., the anti-Semite schooled in contemporary liberal tolerance will respond: Fine. Then you are under no obligation to be anti-Semitic. You have every right in the world to be philo-Semitic, just as we have the right to be anti-Semitic. You respect our right to our views, and we'll respect your right to your views. That's how it should be in a liberal society."

And if our anti-Semite is sufficiently au courant he or she might speak about the merits of "cultural diversity," explaining how anti-Semitism adds another yet colorful thread to the rich fabric of American multiculturalism.

But wait. The contemporary liberal, though broadly tolerant, does not believe that quite everything is permitted. Picking pockets is not permitted, nor is breaking legs. And why not? Because they cause direct and tangible injury to others. No matter how tolerant society may be, it cannot tolerate violation of the fundamental rules of public order; otherwise society will simply cease to exist.

But this only proves that anti-Semitic action would be wrong--for instance, beating up a Jew because he or she is a Jew or setting fire to a synagogue. But on what grounds can the moral relativist/subjectivist object to anti-Semitic sentiment or even the verbal expression of anti-Semitic sentiment?

Sociologists have a name for the deterioration of moral rules and values;, they call it anomie. How odd that cultural liberals have long felt, and continue to feel, that the growth of anomie will somehow produce a world in which individuals will be free, creative, and benevolent. Consider Weimar Germany, which was an experiment in anomie. True, it produced a certain quantity of free, creative, and benevolent individuals. It also produced the Nazis.

In the nineteenth century, anarchists of the Bakunin school were criticized for having no constructive program, only a program of destruction, which was to tear down all the institutions of church and state. The anarchists responded that destruction was the only program needed. Once the ground was cleared of the ancient evils of church and state, beauty, truth, and goodness would spring spontaneously from the soil.

Our contemporary cultural liberals are genteel and moderate anarchists. They are not so foolish as to want to destroy the state; indeed, many of them make a living working for the state. And though they have scant enthusiasm for religion, only the angry ex-Catholics among them have any objection to the continued existence of churches. Still, they are the true descendants of the old anarchists. They believe that the destruction of the idea that moral values have an objective character will somehow, as though by an invisible hand, lead to the triumph of beauty, truth, and goodness.

For many centuries anti-Semitism has demonstrated itself to be a remarkably persistent parasite, capable of hitching a ride on diametrically opposed forms of culture. It made itself completely at home in the Christian Middle Ages. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--especially in Germany, but not only in Germany--it married the modern religion of nationalism. Why should we be surprised if so durable a bug (the cockroach of the moral world) adapts itself to contemporary individualism?