Hearing all the news reports about the wave of anti-semitic
attacks in Britain, I can’t help wondering what it is that causes people to
hate other people, and hate them so viciously and relentlessly.
Is it how they were brought up? Are they copying their
friends’ attitudes? Are they influenced by social media posts? Do they somehow
blame Jews for their difficult lives?
And they think the best way of expressing their hatred is to
burn down a synagogue or stab a few Jews. What do they think that’s achieving?
All they’re doing is spreading fear and alarm and despair.
Such all-consuming hatred has to be fuelled by a view of
other people as objects rather than human beings. If you see other people as
human then you’re not able to inflict
casual violence on them.
And then again there’s an intolerance of difference. They
find difference threatening rather than intriguing. Instead of asking what
Jewishness and Judaism is all about and enjoying adding to their knowledge,
they see only something peculiar and unfamiliar that needs to be got rid of.
Meanwhile Jews are fearful of further horrific attacks on
their community.
I think a lot of it has to do with how you're brought up. If your family is racist then most likely you will be too. But there could be other reasons as well.
ReplyDeleteMary: I think family influence has a lot to do with it. You spend so much time with them that their views are highly likely to be passed on.
DeleteI would argue that this is not anything new. Jews have been viciously persecuted all over Europe and the Middle East for the last thousand years or so. Even with the coming of the Enlightenment, very strong bigotry remained. The Holocaust made really extreme anti-Semitism disreputable in the West, but now that the Holocaust is passing out of living memory, anti-Semitism in the West is simply reverting to its historic norm, bolstered in Europe by the presence of large numbers of immigrants from Muslim cultures where hatred of Jews never became disreputable.
ReplyDeleteAs for how it originally started, I suspect it (in Europe) was rooted in the fact that in the Middle Ages the Jews were a highly visible group which retained a non-Christian religion after the older native paganism had disappeared or gone underground. Religion was still a huge part of identity back then. At any rate, however it started, it seems deeply entrenched now.
Infidel: As you say, anti-semitism is deeply entrenched and has been for very many years. And yes, as the Holocaust passes out of living memory it isn't the restraining influence it used to be. Also I wasn't aware that hatred of Jews isn't so disreputable among Muslims.
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