01.01. Anti-Semitic Propaganda
Anti-Semitic Propaganda
Chapter One
There is an organized effort in the world today to destroy the Jew. The anti-Semitic campaign is confined no longer to the German Reich. At an accelerated pace it is being spread to all sections of the world, and there are evidences of it throughout the United States. This anti-Semitic campaign uses the radio, leaflets, weekly and monthly publications, street meetings and the like, to promote religious and racial hatred. The propagandists make numerous accusations against the Jews. It is charged that they have inspired religious and racial conflicts; that they possess an unlimited amount of gold which they use to control the press, governments, universities and the economic life of the world; that they are behind anarchy, socialism, communism; that their aim is to set up a dictatorship under a Jewish king, and many other similar charges that are equally ridiculous and contradictory. The propagandists maintain that the Jew is at the bottom of the world’s troubles, and that only when the Jew is destroyed will the world be a happy place in which to live.
Professor Alvin Johnson, president of the New School of Social Research, estimated that there are eight hundred anti-Semitic organizations in the United States. Since a great deal of the propaganda originates in Germany, * it is well for one to remember that Hitler approves lies and calumnies as effective and formidable weapons for attaining his goal.
* Many of these organizations have been forced out of existence upon discovery by the F. B. I. that they were in league with the enemy, and some of their leaders are at present under indictment; others are already serving sentences and their publications have been confiscated. But no doubt many of them will continue their insidious propaganda following the war. In Mein Kampf, he says: The Task of propaganda is not to weigh the rights of each side but to emphasize exclusively the one thing that is to take the place of the other through the medium of propaganda. Propaganda does not have to state the truth objectively, insofar as it is favorable to the others, nor to place the truth before the masses in doctrinary candor, but must serve its own interests uninterruptedly. It was basically wrong to discuss the war guilt from the point of view that Germany alone could not be made responsible for the outbreak of this catastrophe. The right way would have been to place the entire blame on the enemy, even if this did not really correspond to the true course of events, as actually was the case.
Although every non-Aryan group in Germany has felt to an extent the bitter lash of the Nazi whip, it has been upon the Jews that the severest blows have fallen. To Hitler, the Jew is the basest of all humanity, a miserable creature, weak in body and in soul. By some mysterious means, the Jew has acquired power, and by placing in positions of leadership those men whom he, the Jews, can control, he dictates the policies of the democracies. Therefore, Hitler argues, the Jew must be destroyed and, one might add, the democracies as well. The unprecedented onslaught of Nazi propaganda has perplexed the average American. He should be informed, therefore, that the Jew is not an enemy of the United States but, on the contrary, that the Jew has been and can continue to be a blessing.
There is an old saying, “Every country has the Jews it deserves.” This adage can be verified by the history of every people among whom the Jews sojourn. No country which has dealt justly with the Jews has ever had cause to regret its justice. On the other hand, every country which has dealt unjustly with the Jews has always regretted its injustice. The Bible and the history of nations will support this thesis. Every nation that has raised its sword against the Jew has paid the penalty. “I will curse him that curseth thee” (Genesis 12:3). “And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine: and all flesh shall know that I the Lord am thy Saviour and the Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob” (Isaiah 49:26). “Therefore all they that devour thee shall be devoured; and all thine adversaries, every one of them, shall go into captivity; and they that spoil thee shall be a spoil, and all that prey upon thee will I give for a prey” (Jeremiah 30:16).
It is true, of course, that many times God has permitted Israel to suffer at the hands of her enemies. Yet, in the final analysis, it has been the persecutor who has borne the curse of the attack. A heathen king once offered large bribes to his prophet, Baalam, to curse the Jews, and the prophet replied to the king of Moab: “How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? Or how shall I defy, whom the Lord hath not defied? . . . God is not a man, that he should lie . . . hath he said, and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?” (Numbers 23:8; Numbers 23:19). The American Jewish poetess, Emma Lazarus, expresses the deep emotions of millions of immigrants in the following poem, “The New Colossus,” which is inscribed upon a bronze tablet, in her honor, and placed inside the Bartholde Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor: Not like a brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows worldwide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send those, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”