WANDERING JEWS

For almost 2000 years, Jews were stateless. Hannah Arendt suggested statelessness made them vulnerable to hatred, persecution and scapegoating. The Israelis were right when they said Jews needed a state to be fully integrated into the world community, but they did not adequately address how to avoid creating another stateless people-the Palestinians, with whom they should identify as allies rather than adversaries.  

Many Zionists accepted much of the Nazi image of the Jew and consciously tried to reverse it. Modern Israel may among the most militaristic small countries in the world today. It adopted that style largely as an attempt to show the world that they are no longer the mooshy wimps, schlemiels, who could be pushed around for 2000 years, only to march into the gas chambers.  There is a sense that if old Jews were too weak or peace-loving to fight back, they deserved their fate. New Jews are now tough. No one better mess with them.  Israeli tourist pollsters show soldiers with machine guns praying at Western Wall, the surviving relic of the old Jerusalem temple

It can be argued Hitler succeeded in destroying Yiddishkeit culture and replacing it with a new Jew who shared his militarism. This may be an overstatement- Yiddishkeit persists, at least in the United States, where Jews remain the most liberal of all white ethnic groups. Consider when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke before the US Congress and implied the US must prepare to invade Iran. The only presidential candidate who boycotted the speech was the Jew - Bernie Sanders. 

A theme which pervades our book Glorious Causes is the conflict between people whom we call cosmopolitans and traditionalists. In the United States, it can be characterized with the metonymy of Bible Belt vs Borsch Belt, making Jews the embodiment of cosmopolitanism. The Yiddishkeit Jews certainly valued their traditions and the Shtetl community but they were excluded from the land which made them urban when the rest of Europe was rural. They were considered wanderers who had to engage in commerce and finance at a time when the Church looked down on trade and money-lending. 

They were perennial outsiders, held responsible for all the disruptions of modernity. Their mere existence provoked hostility on both sides of the Atlantic pond, with the Klan and other movements within the American right convinced that Blacks would have happily sung in the fields until riled up by Jews. Hitler saw Jews as manipulating other inferior races as part of their conspiracy to rule the world. The Nazis believed Jews infected Berlin and Paris with decadent Negro music. The Jews hoped to Infiltrate other peoples through decadence which makes them easier to conquer since Jews themselves were too weak to fight with arms. 

The Nazis conceptualized themselves in opposition to Jewish cosmopolitanism, with the German nation or “volk” viewed as a single interconnected organism and the individual existing as a cell, a piece which exists for the sake of the whole. Cells are supposed to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the body; individuals are supposed to die for the sake of the nation. Cancer occurs when cells refuse to die. Individuals achieve their ultimate destiny when they die for the nation. This ideology is hardly uniquely German. It was expressed by American General George Patton who led the army at the Battle of the Bulge: the real man never lets his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood…Kill off the goddamn cowards and we’ll have a nation of brave men.  Later as military commander of Bavaria during the American occupation, he added this applies particularly to the Jews, who are lower than animals.

Cosmopolitans can strive to create community where everyone looks out for each other -including themselves, their local and global neighbors, trying to build the best world for everyone, without sacrificing their individual identity. Judaism does not consider sacrifice a virtue. Jews may have waited at the train stations and marched into the gas chambers, but they did not consider Jesus on the cross a role model. Jesus’ contemporary Hillel, one of the founders of post-biblical Judaism, asked: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I?”  Cosmopolitans might live cooperatively but not blindly obey their bosses and generals, certainly not die for them. As the carriers of modernity, they found themselves waging a culture war against traditionalists which has raged for centuries.

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GLORIOUS CAUSES: The Irrationality of Capitalism, War & Politics, Yale R Magrass & Charles Derber

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Introduction: Not Such A Wonderful Life

Chapter 1: An Irrational Cultural Divide: Cosmopolitans and Traditionalists Battling Over the Real and The Ideal

Chapter 2: The South Shall Rise Again: Finding Glory in the Defeat of an Indefensible Cause

Chapter 3: Stabbed in the Back: The Master Race Shall Be the Master

Chapter 4: America Becomes Exceptional But Europe Prospers

Chapter 5: Weimar America: Vietnam, the Left, the Right & Reagan

Chapter 6: Make America Great Again:  The Reagan in Trump and the Failures of Anti-Trumpism

Chapter 7: We Can’t Afford Glory: Turning Toward Equality and Human Survival

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 "Yale Magrass and Charles Derber’s study of 'glorious causes' is an in-depth discussion of why people act against their interests. They provide readers with a comprehensive, multidisciplinary analysis of a subject which has been frequently overlooked. Their chapters on the rise of the right, with popular support, and the failure of the left to come to terms with it, is particularly relevant to politics today. It is a book to be read and debated in classrooms and public meetings throughout the US and abroad."- James Petras, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Binghamton University.

"In an era of upheaval and political confusion, how can we understand the emerging world and still have hope for the future? Glorious Causes provides insightful answers. It not only explains the roots of America's deep trouble, but points to ways that we can re-imagine our country and make it once again a beacon for humanity." - Stephen Kinzer, Author of Overthrow, All the Shah's Men and Poisoner in Chief

"Another way of looking at history -- provocative, original, progressive." - Oliver Stone, Hollywood director of Platoon, JFK, and Born on the Fourth of July.

"Fascinating, provocative and very timely! I found it very hard to stop reading, and when I had to momentarily, I was eager to get back to it. On every page, there's something startling to be learned about the past that is crucial to understanding our vertigo-inducing present. Highly recommended!" - Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower and author of The Doomsday Machine