ANTI-SEMITISM: "SNOBBERY OF THE POOR"

...It Is too early to sound the alarm, but too late to dismiss the possibility...

...They too divide the world according to a single criterion, but it is tho criterion of function rather than race (in accordance with their own function in society as handlers of things rather than men), and their division truly reflects the real world...

...True, the situstion in France and in Europe may be different: but we suspect that the massive bulk of Marxist theory, overshadowing even a trend as distant from it as existentialism, was more influential in causing Sartre to make this statement (and the still more remarkable statement' that englneera are less antiSemitic than the bourgeois I) than his own perceptions...

...New York: Partisan...

...SaRTRE must go further than the relatively simple clasa analysis of 10thcentury Marxism if he is to explain antlSemltism as well as he portrays its carriert, if he Is really to prove that antlBemltlsm points to a certain type of per* sonallty and Is central In that psrsonallty...

...More, he seems intuitively to have grasped some points essential to the understanding of the anti-Semite...

...tlKE «o much else that comet from France these days, Sartre's essay on the antiSemite is not an easily classifiable piece of literature...

...Review Series, Number 1. 27 pages...

...What kind of people are they who have chosen to allow such a ¦passion to dominate them...

...Yet, Sartre does not seem to have filled in the ground that should support and connect the different parts of his analysis...

...While in form it seems ¦J to be a speculative construction of the essential character of the anti-Semite, • based, one assumes, on only ordinary observation and common sense, albeit the observation and common sense of a wellknown novelist, it nevertheless contains within it statements that are by no means to be reached by common sense alone...

...The phrase 'a beautiful Jewess' has a kind of flavor of rape and massacre...

...The portrait standi completed...

...But such concessions mean nothing to them...

...For the characteristics he describes—the hatred of truth and change, the theological view of the world, the attraction to mobs and hatred of solitude, the pride in mediocrity, and the sadism and projected lust—are, at only one point explained causally, lit the section that in our summary we labelled "Marxist," Satre attempts to grasp the dynamics of anti-Semitism, and holds that it is the petty-bourgeois position of the anti-Semite that explains him...

...Ills presence or absence explains every phenomenon, and determines whether it Is good or evil...

...We would see how tha inevitable failure to achieve the high hopes of success gives rise to rage and fury, and how this emotional storm finds a sanctioned outlet in anti-Semitism, or can easily be led into this outlet to serva a variety of interests...

...In their inevitable frustration, do they, too, find antiSemitism congenial...

...One fact stands in our favor: between the anti-Semitism that we know to lie in the hearts of so mapy men, and Its apotheosis in Nssl Germany, there stretches a wide gift and thst gap has only been bridged when society and economy have come to a truly desperate pass...

...Evil comes to the world through him...

...And while the worker may caricature the bourgeois just as the anti-Semite caricatures the Jew, it is clear to the worker that the bourgeois is made by his situation, while to the anti-Semite it is innate Jewishness, "an element analogous to phlogiston," that makes the Jew...

...AntiSemitism is a kind of snobbery^!' the poor...

...it gives, him the pleasure of rebellion while running none of the risk involved in opposing the powerful, and maintains his illusion that he and the upper classes together form the fundamental homogeneous fabric of society...

...Anti-Semitism per-> mits the petty-bourgeois to attribute all his ills to the Jews, and thus deflect his resentment from the real centers of power...

...For then he would have been forced to aik the question whether what he was describing was the anti-Semite or tbe common man of our century and our culture...

...And though he writes now primarily as a literary man, Sartre haa managed to make use, with apparently equal ease and no obvious strain, of the terminology and concepts of social psychology, Marxist sociology, theology and psychoanalysis, to mention just a lew of the disciplines which, ordinarily kept apart, are here combined to produce a brilliant result...

...October 1945: Journal of Psychology...

...We have auly ' hinted at what might be discovered in exploring the relationships between social status, personality, and anti-Semitism...

...Why, asks Sartre, Is anti-Semitic literature so lewd...

...See "Some Personality Factors in AntiSemitism," by Else Frenkel-Brunswik and R. Nevitt Sanford...

...Yet had he gone further into the background of the antiSemite, his subject would have emerged more terrifying than despicable...

...And it is just st this point, too, that Sartre's felicity in accurate description seems to leave him...

...of everything except the Jews...

...tha bourgeola...

...Its devastating strokes should delight every lover of reason and democracy and arouse self-questioning in every heart in which there is even a trace of antiSemitism...

...This sentence 'I hate the Jews' is a sentence which is said in chorus," in which animal heat destroys inhibitions and one can loot and kill without responsibility...

...Our salvation lies In the fact that politics is the specifls for mass psychological ills...

...The Jew is Satan...

...In contrast with the proletariat—to whom man is good and only society is bad— for the anti-Semite "there is no question of building a society, only of purifying the one that exists...

...Not only lust, but sadism can be found behind the antiSemite's hate of the Jaw...

...But while we can see how some of these traits may well flow from that position, others — the hatred of solitude, sadism—are harder to connect with it...

...It is a "synthetic" rather than an "analytic" view, and the Jew plays tha synthesizing role...

...And he also perceives that anti-Semitism is the keystone of that structure, rather than a peripheral element of it...

...Wa can now understand him," concludes Sartre...

...There Is an nnexplored gap In Sartre's essay between the domains of Marxism and psychoanalysis, and In consequence the parts of his portrait He scattered, like limbs without a torso...

...in ahort everything but a man...

...He Is a man who ia afraid: Not of the Jews or course, but of himself, of his conscience, his freedom, of his Instincts, of hi* responsibilities, of solitude, of change, of society and the world...

...For example, he sees at the outset that there are not numerous types of antiSemitism, but that in the modern world anti-Semitism overwhelmingly points to a certain character structure...

...They have chosen to be "massive and Impenetrable," . people who cannot be moved by reason, truth, experience...

...Even though he is the poorest shopkeeper, by virtue of his blood, that soil, and his anti-Semitism, he can consider himself in the same class with the greatest aristocrat...

...The workers, who are not antiSemitic, alia have a synthetic view of the world...

...Yet standing off a bit, one remarks that, despite the excellence of every part, the background ia incomplete...

...They may admit that the Jew is more intelligent or virtuous than themselves, or that they themselves are mediocrities...

...It is in this area, only recently explored in any detail, that we can see now the specific class and cultural position of a group is subtly translated into the personalities of the members of that group...

...The anti-Semite ia the man Who wants to be pitiless atone, ferocious torrent, devastating lightning...

...It is rather an overwhelming passion, one which is yet completely unrelated to one's actual experience with the objects to which it is directed...

...We see, says Sartre, * shifting from Durkhclmian to Marxian sociology, that the anti-Semite has a picture of tha world characteristic of a certain class...

...The anti-Semite's vision of society, we can see, is one in which only the "mechanical" solidarity of blood and kin prevails...

...We note that, for the most part, he has really concentrated on description: it is brilliant and perceptive, it grasps what is essential, yet withal it is description...

...Sartre has shown an excellent understanding of the various disciplines of which be has made use...

...As for the rich and mighty themselves, Sartre observes that they "make use of this passion more than they abandon themselves to it...

...We would sea how the decline of secure and unconditional personal relationship reduces society to a collection of atoms, which can easily be rallied around any slogan, such as anti-Semitism, that promises tha restoration of fraternity, even though it is the absurd fraternity of a mythical blood-community...

...We can now, perhaps, illuminate- ths mystery of the workers, who are said to be non-anti-Semitic in Europe and whom we know to be anti-Semitic in America...

...and we would see how this anxiety and aggression is characteristically expressed in hatred of the Negroes and the Jews...

...They believe thst they can make their way upwards within society (aa against the belief that they atand outside society, and must change it...

...This Is the brink before which he stop* ped, and over which those of us to whom the anatomy of the anti-Semite is a matter of Hie and death must And enough courage to peer...

...The Jew, to the anti-Semite, is a being who has freely chosen to do evil—one who despite his freedom (and therefore responsibility) can do no other than evil...

...the real end desired by the antiSemite—can therefore only express sadism...

...First of all, we see that they hate truth, "that thing of indefinite approximation...

...Now here in America all our atudies have shown that the workers are as anti-Semitic as the other strata of the population...

...We are told that the workera are not anti-Semitic...

...Wa are often strikingly-reminded in this essay of tho conclusions reached by scientific work on anti-Semitism, work so recent that Sartre could not have known of its existence when he was writing it...

...In America, the workers are middle class in their wsy of life, their hopes for the future, their attitudes toward society— in all respects except their origin and their actual position and prospects...

...And this deflection serves the petty-bourgeois as well as the upper clstses...

...There we would see, for example, how the training of middle-class children for success —involving as it does learning how to control one's impulses, how to manipulate people for one's ends, how rigidly to organize one's life for the battle for status—how all thia develops enormous anxiety that one will fail and enormous aggression against those who have imposed such a burden...

...Sartre's portrait, as far as it goes, is both accurate and real, and his sharp intelligence has ferreted out characteristics in the enemy of which we were never quite aware...

...But a view of the world as the arena of a mortal struggle between good and evil masks a profound attraction to evil...

...Anti-Semitism, says Sartre, it not an opinion, capable of being combined indifferently with other opinions to form the sum of a man's beliefs...

...his ideal Is the mob society...

...We may consider, in explanation, the esse of the vice-crusader whose zeal raises just suspicions that he is unduly attracted to vice...

...Sartre completes his portrait with the darker hues of theology "and psychoanalysis...

...For we must never forget that the Jew himself ia weak and harmless, and the desire to beat, torture, and kill him—and murder is...

...For the anti-Semite, by his blood alone, by bit centuries-old propinquity to the soil of France, feels himself infinitely superior to any Jew...

...Of Jthe modern form of society in which organisation by blood gives way to organisation by function, and "mechanical" solidarity gives way to "organic" solidarity, he knows nothing...

...We must face up to the •possibility that the anti-Semite and "modern man" are one, that history, playing a joke on the Pope, has declared that "we are all anti-Semites...