RePortersNoteBook.com: Goyland: Where the Wild Things Are

Feb 3, 2010

Goyland: Where the Wild Things Are

Edmund Connelly

January 10, 2010

"Living so long in exile and so often in danger, we have cultivated a defensive and apologetic account, a censored story, of Jewish religion and culture."

Michael Walzer, quoted in Kevin MacDonald. Separation and Its Discontents, p. 217

Excerpt:

Jewish historian Peter Novick describes the "the fortress-like mentality" of many American Jews, where the institutional imperative was to promote "a wary suspicion of gentiles." Consider three examples he provides from three "otherwise apparently sensible American Jews" to show how they had internalized these Jewish "collective memories — memories that suffuse group consciousness." First, a university teacher writes, "When I move to a new town, I give great thought to whom, among my gentile friends, I might entrust my children, should that ever become necessary." Next, a prominent Jewish feminist shares this thought: "Every conscious Jew longs to ask her or his non-Jewish friends, 'Would you hide me?' — and suppresses the question for fear of hearing sounds of silence." Finally, a professor of psychology reports:

Many Jews report that the unspoken question they ask themselves when interacting with a non-Jew is, "Would she or he have saved me from the Nazis?" I have asked myself this question innumerable times: sometimes I surprise myself by answering, "I don't know," when asking this question of a non-Jewish friend I had otherwise assumed was close to me. The answer is the ultimate standard by which to measure trust in a non-Jewish person.

Honestly, do you want to live with such irrationally suspicious people? Worse, do you want to live under such "fellow" Americans now that so many of them dominate the controlling heights of this country?

Take Harvard, for instance. A leading law professorship there is a powerful position. And that's precisely what Orthodox Jew Alan Dershowitz has held for years. Never mind that this fourth-generation America can write: "It was at Yale that I met and befriended my first Wasps, blacks, and even non-Orthodox Jews." Are we really living in the same universe?

Dershowitz admits he is so highly invested in the "Holocaust mentality" that the world in which he sometimes lives borders on the horrifically imaginary. Witness his feelings as he sat watching the accused concentration camp guard Ivan Demjanjuk on trial in Israel:

I kept looking at Demjanjuk for another reason. I imagined him as mykiller. At the time he was murdering babies, I was five years old. . . . I could have been one of the thousands of nameless and faceless babies he grabbed out of the hands of screaming mothers and shoved into gas chambers. I imagine him laughing with sadistic joy as he killed entire families, ending their seed forever, after taunting and torturing them gratuitously.

This vicarious sense of suffering is intense for Dershowitz and haunts not only his future but the future of Jewish children: "Every time I attend a gathering of Jewish children — at a family event, at a Bar Mitzvah, at Simchath Torah — I imagine SS guards lining up these children for the gas chambers." Isn't this evidence enough that Dershowitz needs, at a minimum, counseling?

How might such a mentality be constructed in a place where daily life never offers the chance to experience real persecution? Try this: Jewish American journalist Marjorie Miller relates a childhood story regarding her religious school. In addition to learning the Hebrew alphabet, she also learned about the Holocaust. One Sunday her teacher, "in a scared voice," called the students to attention and told them to listen carefully: "Had we heard the radio? The government was telling the Jews that we had to convert or leave the country." This, the teacher explained, "was the first step . . . maybe the beginning of another Holocaust." Not surprisingly, "Many children in the class began to cry."

This mentality is reminiscent of interviews done in the 1970s with noted Jewish men, where the question "Do you think it could happen here?" never needed "it" defined. Nearly unanimously, the reply was the same: "If you know history at all, you have to presume not that it could happen, but that it probably will," or "It's not a matter of if; it's a matter of when" [quoted in MacDonald, The Culture of Critique, p.245].

Reader, think about it: If you're an average American, you quietly pay your federal taxes, likely knowing that some goes to aid Israel. (On top of that, many of you Christian Zionists support Israel further through donations and political support.) Further, it's highly improbable that you've ever committed a crime against a Jew, let alone actually harmed one. The thought has probably never even crossed your mind.

Yet a good percentage of American-born Jews still consider you a lethal threat simply because you are not a Jew. At this stage in history, is there any excuse for that? Worse, such Jews are often able to translate their fantasy-based fears about goyim into cultural products such as films and TV shows—and books like Where the Wild Things Are. Through the activism of groups like the ADL, they are also able to affect legislation such as the new Hate Crimes Law that may well target people like you for potentially thinking the wrong thing. This is not good.

In any case, it will be interesting to see how the film has been adapted from Sendak's book. My guess is that the live action animation will not have a theme about dangerous non-Jews, but I should wait until I see it before saying more. Still, it's got the typical Jewish background of a Hollywood production. For instance, Spike Jonze, born Adam Spiegel in 1969, is the film's director, replacing earlier director Eric Goldberg. Let's just hope Jonze is not one of those paranoid Jewish Americans always wondering if "it" could happen here.

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An Ethnie without a sense of peoplehood will end up being used to achieve the goals of other ethnies. -- Michael Santomauro