Ben Eliezer's Jewish Supremacism

[Karl Radl]

Ben Eliezer's Jewish Supremacism

Ben Eliezer was, as far as I can ascertain, a fairly ordinary jew who lived in Britain during the early twentieth century. What makes him unusual was that he wrote a book containing his thoughts that he wished to pass along to his son: 'Letters from a Jewish Father to his Son'. (1)

These provide us with a valuable insight into the thinking of a ordinary jewish member of society in Great Britain before the advent of National Socialism in Germany in 1933. The thought expressed is in itself quite startling in how candid it is.

Eliezer, as you might expect, extols what he views as the virtues of the jewish people. For example he tells us that:

‘In all spheres of life, in every branch of art, literature, or science, they are to be found, these sons and daughters of ours, helping to build structures of glory for strangers. How rich, vigorous, and productive could we be, were all these children of ours to return to us, labouring with and for us, as in the days of our national independence.

And it is not only of great spirits like those of Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Bergson and Einstein, Meyerbeer, Rubinstein and Offenbach, Heine, Disraeli, and Zangwill, that I am thinking, but also of the thousands of our brethren and sisters from amongst the rank and file of our people, who are drawn into the vortex of the dominant culture, which they constantly enrich and invigorate.’ (2)

This is a variant of the 'look what we contributed' style of argument that is often used to stress alleged jewish over-achievement with the implied sense of superiority that goes along with that line of reasoning. (3)

Eliezer is informing us by implication that many of the greatest scientists, inventors and creative thinkers who have ever lived were jewish. Thus the power and creativity of the Western world has rested for decades if not centuries on the contributions of the jews subsumed within it.

Therefore if the genius of those same individuals was brought together under the aegis of a jewish state. Then that state would be extremely rich, vigorous and productive, because of the racial superiority of the jews over non-jews.

This is confirmed when we read Eliezer's describing his people in very purple prose thus:

‘But there is another Judaism that is perennial, virile, robust, nay, eternal, like the Jewish race itself.’ (4)

From this we can glean that the jewish people are without fault and are, as Eliezer says, eternal, because they are the unique, chosen people hand-picked for the role by the creator of the universe.

However being a superior people comes with consequences and burdens.

Eliezer writes that:

‘”The Mare” is the Jew, for ever pestered by divers gnats and flies, for ever driven from pillar to post by the very scum of the humanity, for ever ridden upon by friend and foe.’ (5)

According to this narrative then the superior jewish people who would, and do, offer so much to humanity as a whole are continually besieged by irrational critics and lunatics who are jealous of them or do not want their many contributions to humanity.

However while Judaism itself can be split into the 'fossil religion' of laws and observances (6) in contrast to a secular nationalistic Judaism that is very much alive. (7) To convert to Christianity (i.e. to assimilate into non-jewish society) is something that a jew will rue their whole life and to even set foot in a church is a crime against the jewish people. (8)

This is because assimilation is impossible as jewishness is a form of a racial identity not of religious observance. (9) Not having the desire to learn and speak Yiddish is also adjudged to be a form of assimilationist treason to Judaism by Eliezer. (10)

It is this in-group (jews) versus out-group (non-jews) ideological system that allows Eliezer to claim that:

‘Judaism has been dissociated from the rest of the world, and Israel has regarded himself throughout the ages as the contrast of all other nations.’ (11)

In other words: jews are special and different to non-jews, while also being a kind of a noble group of people to whom non-jews should aspire to be like.

This allows Eliezer to claim, as before stated, that non-jewish criticism and objections to jewish behaviour are irrational and based on hatred rather than any rational cause, because what is jewish cannot be inferior to that which is not.

To wit:

‘And not only to civilization in general, but to the Jewish individual in his thousands, it was the power and silent sacred influence of home which enabled him, a weather-beaten, storm-tossed exile, to resist the hurricanes of hate that constantly raged about him in his wanderings.’ (12)

So in effect Eliezer has removed any and all agency in causing the 'storm-tossed exile' or 'the hurricanes of hate' that have 'constantly raged' about them from the jewish people and placed it squarely on the shoulders on the critics and opponents of the jews.

Meanwhile he has gathered all the agency possible under the aegis of the jewish people when it is something he regards as a positive development.

This is seemingly the height of hypocrisy (or chutzpah), but yet Eliezer does not view it as such.

He is simply applying the standard trope of jewishness: they are the chosen people.

The chosen people must be uniquely gifted and able to specially contribute to mankind as a form of higher being. Yet they meet opposition which because they are the chosen people and incapable of error as such; it necessitates that such criticism and opposition is completely irrational or even pathological in nature.

We can see this when he describes the contribution of Mark Antokolsky in the Russian Empire.

I quote:

‘He not only made the greatest contribution to Russian art by leaving behind him a gallery of the most striking figures in Russian history, but he also revolutionized Russian art, in which he opened up a new epoch. The ideal aimed at in his day was the expression of linear beauty. His introduction of the Hebraic element transferred this shallower ideal into the deeper one striving to express the intensity of truth and deep sentiment.’ (13)

Put another way: Antokolsky changed the face of Russian art by injecting what you might call his jewish essence into it. This can only happen if Antokolsky was inherently superior because he had the 'Hebraic element' when compared to the 'shallower ideals' of all the non-jewish Russian artists.

Similarly that Eliezer viewed non-jews as inherently inferior as well as extremely dangerous is evinced from his commentary on the work of jewish poet Saul Tchernichovsky.

He writes thus:

'The poet himself is but a mighty primitive force, come to earth again. It is the extreme pantheism of the poet which accounts for his exceeding love of power, whether in Nature or in history. And this accounts, too, for his admiration of the great Jewish hero, Bar-Kochba (the son of the star), the terror of the Romans, on the one hand; and his secret delight in the ferocious genius, Mahomed.’ (14)

Describing the bloodthirsty Simon Bar Kochba as a 'great Jewish hero' is a bit of a tell-tale sign that a jew has supremacist beliefs. In large part because Bar Kochba wasn't a 'terror to the Romans'. Well at least not the Roman army anyway, but rather he was a terror to non-jewish civilians around the Mediterranean basin who he sought to (and sometimes succeeded) massacre because they weren't jewish.

Eliezer continues:

‘He cries again: “The blood of Canaan’s conquerors is in my blood, flowing, never resting. Once more invokes me the mighty song, the song of blood and fire: scale the mount, destroy the meadow; whatever thou seest, possess!’ (15)

In other words: the very blood of the jewish people cries out that they must destroy and conquer all that they perceive. This made even more odious and links back to the in-group/out-group logic that Eliezer is using when we read:

‘How stirring it is, then, to hear our poet singing great hymn to revenge, describing the passion as a beautiful and necessary feeling, in his pathetic and heart-rending poetic narrative: “Baruch of Mayence,” where a Jewish father, after killing his beloved daughter so as to save the honour of his house, derives a diabolical enjoyment from the spectacle of the terrible fire, which he has kindled in the city of his hate. What strength in his love, and what power in his hate!

By his heroic temperament, by all his qualities of mind and soul, Tchernichovsky proclaims his kinship with Palestine, and particularly with the now rising and reviving Judea.’ (16)

What we are being told here by Eliezer's ecstatic tribute to Tchernichovsky's views is that if a jew feels humiliated and/or dishonoured. They will then develop a deep-seated hatred of those who they feel have humiliated and/or dishonoured them then scheme and plot their downfall. Then watch in endless delight and glee when those they feel have humiliated and/or dishonoured them burn in the fire that is the creation of their blazing hatred.

Therefore we can see that Eliezer – by all accounts an ordinary jew – held views that both nationalistic and supremacist in the extreme. Where the jews are a people of extraordinary honour, talent and virtue who merely seek to guide the unenlightened world. Non-jews who give offence to jews however are scum who are less than human and deserve to be purged with fire and sword from their abodes wherever they may be.

Scary: huh?

References

(1) Ben Eliezer, 1928, 'Letters of a Jewish Father to his Son', 1st Edition, John Murray: London
(2) Ibid, p. 88
(3) I have pointed out the folly of this type of argument, as well as the intellectual dishonesty of those who make it, in the following article: http://www.semiticcontroversies.blog...lists-are.html
(4) Eliezer, Op. Cit., p. 14
(5) Ibid, p. 34
(6) Ibid, p. 13
(7) Ibid pp. 14-16
(8) Ibid, p. 97
(9) Ibid, pp. 13; 235-236
(10) Ibid, p. 138
(11) Ibid, p. 235
(12) Ibid, p. 199
(13) Ibid, p. 89
(14) Ibid, p. 189
(15) Ibid.
(16) Ibid, p. 190

-------------------------------------------

This was originally published at the following address: http://www.semiticcontroversies.blog...premacism.html