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January 13th, 2015 | #1 |
The Epitome of Evil
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: The Unseen University of New York
Posts: 3,130
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Goldwin Smith: A Nineteenth Century anti-Semitic Literary Giant
Goldwin Smith: A Nineteenth Century anti-Semitic Literary Giant I have written on and off about Professor Goldwin Smith for a few years now ever since I checked up on a quotation doing the rounds in the nationalist movement, which proclaimed that he was a jew and alive in 1984. In reality of course he wasn't a jew and in 1884 (when the [deliberately misquoted] remark was actually made) was at the the end of his life (he died on 7th June 1910 near Toronto): (1) not only that Smith was actually one of the leading Anglophone anti-Semitic writers and thinkers of his time! (2) Now I just wanted to provide a bit of a updated summary as to what I know about him thus far. Firstly he was born 13th August 1823 on Friar Street in the industrial town of Reading in southern England. He was the son a doctor of medicine named R. Prichard Smith (3) and by all accounts was something of a rebellious youth. (4) He got a double first at University College, Oxford: winning the Hertford and Ireland Scholarships, the Chancellor's Prize for Latin Verse and the English Essay prize in the process. (5) He was then called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn and was part of the Popular Education Committee in 1858. (6) Leading on from this Smith became Regis Professor of Modern History at Oxford from 1858 to 1866. (7) During his time as an Oxford Don: he was closely involved with the work of Oxford University Press (8) and sat on the Oxford Royal Commission for the Reform of the Universities. (9) Smith was also a noted and radical British abolitionist in regard to the slave trade and a die-hard supporter of the Union in the American Civil War. (10) However Smith also courted controversy with his radical abolitionist views given that he was (in effect) an atheist and argued that the Torah's teachings on the subject of human slavery (which I have commented on elsewhere) (11) were, and are, completely immoral. (12) In fact because Smith regarded the axiom of scriptural belief to be that the Torah (as God's law) has been established for all time then it cannot be revoked (or interpreted away) then it in turn made the Torah completely immoral because of its very explicit views on the subject of human bondage. (13) Smith held that this form of 'patriarchal bondage' had been established by the jews and their god for all time irrespective of whether Christians chose to believe that was the case. (14) Perhaps most notably: he also (correctly) noted that the Torah's rulings on the matter of slavery make an important distinction between jewish and non-jewish slaves. Since while a jewish slave should be released as soon as possible and at whatever cost: non-jewish slaves were not to be freed and held be treated as perpetual slaves according to its rulings. (15) Smith's radical views, which had already taken on a strident anti-Semitic hue by 1870, when the jewish writer and radical (as well as future British Prime Minister) Benjamin Disraeli portrayed Smith rather unfavourably in his novel 'Lothair' (the central character of the same name was modeled on Smith). (16) In a fiery exchange with Disraeli in the pages of the Express newspaper (beginning on 25th May, 1870): Smith publicly called Disraeli a cowardly (and insolent) jew after Disraeli had referred to Smith as a 'social parasite' and a dangerous radical out to undermine the British aristocracy (which is rather ironic considering Disraeli was both a political radical and a well-known and ruthless social climber). (17) Smith argued that because Disraeli was a jew: he was per force a Semite and as such held a strong bias in favour of his fellow Semites in the Ottoman Empire and a corresponding amount of anti-Greek bias. (18) Later in his life Smith was to argue that the pro-Ottoman and anti-Russian bias of the jews worldwide was because of the result of the same genetic loyalty between Semitic peoples against their Indo-European competitors. (19) Similarly Smith proposed that Disraeli's obsession with British policy and expansion in India was the result of Disraeli's own oriental racial origin. (20) Indeed Smith asserted (with significant justification as it happens) that Disraeli saw himself as the archetypal jew (21) and as such Smith regarded Disraeli as a 'contemptible trickster' and that as born jew: Disraeli was ipso facto evil. (22) These anti-Semitic views were only reinforced as time went on as Smith encountered numerous jews at universities in the United States, (23) which served to provide yet further evidence in Smith's mind that the jews were attempting to pass laws to gain political, social and intellectual ascendancy over non-jewish citizens. (24) In addition Smith regarded jews as inherently dangerous and devious in their methods. For instance his secretary Haultain records the following conversation with his friend: '”The Jews have even got hold of Christian religious periodicals and manipulated them to their own ends – primarily for pecuniary reasons, no doubt, but they never lose sight of ulterior objects. These Jews hang together. There is a tacit understanding amongst them. A real danger lurks beneath their efforts. I don't like to say too much on this subject. I don't like to appear to be ventilating a craze; but that it is a fact I am convinced... Milner they say is a German. I wonder... I shouldn't be surprised... There may be Jewish blood in Milner's veins,” and we pulled down several books to shed light on Lord Milner's pedigree, to no avail. “It is a real danger,” he went on, after a pause; “The Jews have one code of ethics for themselves, another for the Gentile. They never forgot the Levitical injunction which permits them to sell carion to the stranger but not to each other.”' (25) Indeed Smith saw the jews as encouraging imperialism [which he broadly opposed on his Greek philosophic principles] (26) and foolhardy and fratricidal wars such as those against the Boers in South Africa in order to benefit themselves and fill their pockets full of gold, while letting the non-jews take all the risks (such as being killed or maimed on the battlefield). (27) It was this sneaky, separate nature that really annoyed Smith: he occasionally railed against the refusal of the jews to assimilate within their host societies (28) and argued that non-jews should breed with jews in order to eliminate the latter by forced assimilation. (29) This belief in the sneaky, racially separate nature of the jew and his own love of all things Greek lead to Smith to argue (along lines first pioneered among early Christians by Marcion and in Smith's own time by German nationalist writers such as Theodor Fritsch) that the Old Testament was a lodestone around the neck of Christianity and the jew was an ipso facto inferior being, because he was only able to create superstition (the Old Testament) and not philosophy: unlike Smith's much beloved Greeks. (30) Smith expanded his argument to the effect that jews had never had any understanding of the concept of natural law (as enunciated in Greek philosophy) and instead were crude highly-superstitious goat-herders who were credulous believers in whatever 'prophecy' their tribal shamans (aka prophets) proclaimed at a given moment in time. (31) One such instance Smith used was the obsession the jews had with casting out 'devils' rather than attempting to use the (rather rudimentary) medicine of the day. (32) The Professor, as Haultain endearingly refers to him, repeatedly argued that the only reason Christianity succeeded in the West at all was because it was melded with Greek philosophy and the jewish element to it had only ever impeded its progress in gaining sincere converts. (33) As an expansion of this point Smith noted that whatever good had come from Christianity had only been because of Greek and Roman religious ideas that were melded with it and not because of the 'jewish spirit'. (34) Further Smith argued that Jesus wasn't a jew, but rather a Galilean peasant, (35) as well as laying out an academic case that the Virgin Mary probably wasn't Jesus' mother and was by contrast a deluded or mentally-ill jewess. (36) Smith, in a delightful flight of viciousness, additionally pointed out the abject lunacy of the notion that the omnipresent, omnipotent creator of the universe specifically 'chose' the jews to be his 'special people' and further that the saviour of mankind would be specifically born to a jewess as well. (37) Smith also attacked the notion that the New Testament was in the fulfillment of any so-called 'jewish prophecy' in the Old Testament, (38) while referring to the fact that the death of Jesus was the responsibility of the jews who had committed, what Smith called, 'judicial murder' of a non-jew who threatened everything they stood for (and none of it positive in Smith's view). (39) From the foregoing description then it isn't difficult to see why Smith, who remember contributed numerous articles to the 8th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, (40) was repeatedly called an 'infidel' by his opponents (41) as well as accused of subversive unbelief. (42) It is however clear that by ruffling a lot of feathers (as well as tarring and feathering quite a few jewish interlocutors in various debates in popular mid-brow publications) that Smith was a regular Goebbels in his effectiveness in promoting anti-jewish ideas and spread the awareness of the importance of the jewish question to the chattering classes. References (1) Jonathan Jason Cooper, 1912, 'Goldwin Smith D.C.L.: A Brief Account of His Life and Writings', 1st Edition, Holybrook Press: Reading, p. 6 (2) See http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...quotation.html (3) Cooper, Op. Cit., p. 4 (4) Ibid, p. 9 (5) Ibid, p. 6 (6) Anon., 1874, 'The Public School Candidates: Professor Goldwin Smith and Dr. Sangster', 1st Edition, Hunter and Rose: Toronto, p. 3 (7) Cooper, Op. Cit., p. 6 (8) Anon., 1874, Op. Cit., p. 4 (9) Ibid, p. 3; Cooper, Op. Cit., p. 6 (10) Daniel Lucas, 1885, 'The Twins', 1st Edition, Witness Publishing House: Montreal, pp. 24-25; cf. Goldwin Smith, 1865, 'England and America: A Lecture', 1st Edition, A. Ireland: Manchester, pp. v-vi; Goldwin Smith, 1905, 'Irish History and the Irish Question', 1st Edition, McClure and Phillips: New York, pp. 4-5; 194-196 (11) See http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...rew-bible.html (12) Anon., 1863, 'A Brief Reply to an Important Question', 1st Edition, Saunders and Otley: London, p. 5 (13) Ibid, pp. 5-6; 9; 18 (14) Ibid, pp. 11; 20-21 (15) Ibid, p. 16 (16) Arnold Haultain, 1914, 'Goldwin Smith: His Life and Opinions', 1st Edition, Duffield: New York, pp. 65-66 (17) Ibid. (18) Ibid, p. 65 (19) Ibid, p. 205 (20) Ibid, p. 79 (21) Ibid, p. 200 (22) Ibid, p. 146 (23) Ibid, p. 282 (24) Ibid, p. 211 (25) Ibid, pp. 125-126 (26) Cf. Goldwin Smith, 1878, 'The Political Destiny of Canada', 1st Edition, Willing & Williamson: Toronto, pp. 16-19; 100-103 (27) Haultain, Op. Cit., p. 68 (28) Ibid, p. 248 (29) Ibid, pp. 248-249 (30) George Coulson Workman, n.d., 'The Old Testament not a Millstone', North American Review, p. 584 (31) William Fenton, 1889, 'The Riddle of Existence Solved', 1st Edition, Henderson: Toronto, pp. 118-119; 138 (32) Haultain, Op. Cit., pp. 223; 225 (33) Fenton, Op. Cit., p. 273 (34) Ibid, p. 257 (35) Ibid, p. 48; Haultain, Op. Cit., p. 93 (36) Ibid, p. 98 (37) Fenton, Op. Cit., p. 79 (38) Ibid, p. 111 (39) Ibid, pp. 115; 222 (40) Cooper, Op. Cit., p. 14 (41) Fenton, Op. Cit., pp. 59; 79 (42) Anon., 1874, Op. Cit., p. 11 -------------------------------------------- This was originally published at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...ineteenth.html
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