Tea at Trianon: Anti-Semitism and the Soul of the Left

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, March 25, 2019

Anti-Semitism and the Soul of the Left

From The Tablet:

Last year in New York City, there were four times as many bias crimes against Jews then there were against blacks—though there are twice as many blacks than Jews living in the city—and 20 times as many bias crimes against Jews as against transgender people. The main targets of these crimes were not Jews with dark skin but Jews of any race who were readily identifiable as Jews.

Inconveniently, the perpetrators of these specific crimes do not appear to be die-hard supporters of Donald Trump. “During the past 22 months, not one person caught or identified as the aggressor in an anti-Semitic hate crime has been associated with a far right-wing group,” wrote Ginia Bellafante of The New York Times. In most recent cases, the perpetrators of anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York City have been people of color.

Being “white” according to the arbitrary racial taxonomy that has been repurposed by American progressives has not saved Jews before, including from the greatest mass murder in human history. Nor today does it protect their descendants from demonstrably being the most frequently targeted victims of religiously based hate crimes.

So whence the clamor about “white Jews?” They are not Trump supporters—at least not yet. In 2016, after African-Americans, Jews as a constituency delivered the most lopsided vote against Trump. Among the president’s conservative critics in the media, such as myself, Jews constitute such a visibly disproportionate share that it regularly draws the unwelcome attention of neo-Nazis and alt-right internet trolls. (Read more.)