Newspaper Page Text
Opinion
The cutting
by Edwin Black
The latest news is the so-called
“good news” of Charles Silberman,
whose recent book, “ A Certain
People,” is touted as the authoritative
word that anti-Semitism is radically
down in the United States. Implicit
is the message that Jews can now
relax.
Silberman is a valuable com
mentator of ourtimes who enjoys a
proven track record in many fields.
But this time, Silberman’s insights
seem to have gone awry, and they
couldn’t have gone public with
worse timing.
On one Chicago morning TV
show, for instance, Silberman
answered questions from an audience
literally seeded with Farrakhan-
style ideologues. Even as he was
spreading his gospel ot American
acceptance and tolerance, anti-
Semitic blacks and some whites
rose to mock the Holocaust, and
accuse Jews of running the media
in ways that would have been
unthinkable a year ago.
Silberman answered anxious Jews
in the audience with his own version
of numerology. Farrakhan’s Nation
of Islam enjoys a membership roll
of no more than 10,000, for example.
And at one point, he poo-pooed
the American Nazi Party as nothing
to worry about because it only has
six members.
In a telephone interview with
Silberman while he was in San
Francisco. Silberman confirmed his
reliance on numbers: “The size of
any group’s membership is indeed
one important indication of the
significance of the sympathies it
enjoys. It is certainly not the only
one. But yes it’s an important one.”
Think about that. Farrakhan’s
Nation of Islam membership roster
indeed records no more than about
10,000 members. But during his
recent speaking tour, Farrakhan
attracted nearly twice that many in
every city he visited, culminating
with 25,000 at Madison Square
Garden in New York.
And does anyone think there are
only six neo-Nazis in America?
These days neo-Nazis sometimes
wear brown shirts, and sometimes
white sheets, and sometimes purple
vestments. Small factional regional
groups such as the Posse Comitatus,
the Order and the Identity Church
function as a coalition. They thrive
on a larger community of sympa
thizers who don’t need dues paying
memberships to prove their support.
But let’s get more fundamental.
Silberman declares that a central
tenet of his book is that “Americans
are increasingly resistant to anti-
Semitism.” And in many ways,
Silberman is correct. Nathan
Perlmutter, national director of
the Anti-Defamation League, who
endorsed Silberman’s book, explains,
“By any standard, the Jewish
condition in the United States is
one where we have made extreme
progress—that is using the classic
criteria for anti-Semitism (anti-
Jewish laws, religious persecution,
and so forth). But, “Perlmutter
qualifies, “where we would take
difference is we say don’t relax. We
must remain vigilant to maintain
the condition we have achieved.
And Silberman doesn’t quite go
into this.”
Consider the growing Jew hatred
taking hold among farm belt com
munities whose economic crisis is
being exploited by white racists.
Even now, Jewish leaders are
wondering how sizable a threat
this growing problem really is. But
Silberman is especially unqualified
to analyze it. During our interview,
Silberman typically downplayed
the farm problem, but at the same
time admitted he did no personal
investigation of the subject, and
instead bases his impressions upon
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second and third hand information
from Jewish leaders.
Moreover, when asked, Silberman
said he had never even heard of
American Agriculture, the highly
publicized farm activist group that
sponsored all those Washington
tractorcades, and has lately been
infiltrated by white racist agitators.
Nor has he heard of the recent
special report to the governor of
Nebraska which likens the situation
to the pre-Reich stages of Hitlerism.
Please recall that during the late
1920s and early ’30s, Germany was
a democracy. Jews had risen to an
unparalleled assimilation throughout
German society—not unlike today’s
American Jewish accomplishment.
When economic hard times hit
Germany, Jews were blamed—not
unlike the situation in today’s farm
belt and urban ghettos. One day in
1933, Hitler was appointed interim
chancellor. Within a matter of weeks,
Jews were expelled from the economic
and cultural lifeblood of the nation—
not by force of arms, but by the
stroke of a pen.
1 have a bit of advice to authors
of books about contemporary social
trends and fads. Society is fickle. If
the nation’s mood changes, your
book can become obsolete.
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PAGE 7 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE November 8, 1985