The Real Jewish Problem

What Anti-Semites Miss

Blame Game

When it comes to apportioning blame, one particular group of people in the world appear to be carrying a disproportionately large burden. Members of this group are regarded as puppet masters, controlling just about every major political leader and movement. They are viewed almost as super-human, endowed with uniquely enhanced abilities of control and power.

They are supposed to have the power to control entire countries, shifting economic and political policies in a direction that favors them. They are accused of being duplicitous, causing wars, and being greedy and conniving; as icing on the cake, they are supposed to be controlling minds and social behavior through the mass media, creating moral and social decadence.

I am talking, of course, about the Jews.

The Problem of Minorities

In a world where many people unfortunately see life as a zero-sum game, one person’s success is often seen to have occurred at the expense of someone else, and this resentment is easy to extend to an entire group if that group is both ethnically different and economically dominant; so, the basis for antisemitism in Europe, though it was unjustified, is easy to understand.

Much the same has happened, though on a smaller scale, with equivalent minorities such as the Chinese in Indonesia, Indians in East Africa, and Lebanese in West Africa.

For the sake of argument, let us assume for a moment that all these beliefs about the Jews are true, and then take a look at both history as well as at the current world we live in.

A Historical Perspective

Firstly, no one, not even the most die-hard conspiracy theorist, would suggest that the Jews have always been in “control” of the world. If there is any control implied or imputed, it would have to start somewhere in the last four centuries or so, and even then, mostly in the western world — after all, there were Arab or Sephardic Jews living in the Middle East for centuries, and they never generated the same kind of resentment, at least until events from the early twentieth century inverted the situation.

In fact, notwithstanding contemporary attempts to re-write history, Jewish minorities in Muslim countries, until the early twentieth century, generally fared better than their counterparts in the western world, though of course there will always be plenty of specific examples from history that can be used to prove the opposite viewpoint.

Likewise, very few people would suggest that China or Japan or India are being “controlled” by the Jews. If we have to start naming countries, the names that crop up are likely to be the West European and North American countries, as well as Russia, and perhaps including the European offshoots of Australia and New Zealand.

Human Progress

Now it just so happens that the last few centuries, in spite of all the wars and catastrophes that occupy so much of our historical attention, have actually been among the least destructive and the most progressive in human history, speaking in materialistic terms. This may come as a surprise to most people; after all, even a cursory look at the history of the twentieth century will show nothing but a long line of wars and genocidal exterminations.

However, as discovered by researchers such as Manuel Eisner, where population data exists that goes back several centuries, for example in England, the chance of a person dying a violent death was significantly less in the twentieth century than it was in any century before that, and this is after factoring in all the wars that England was involved in.

The twentieth century simply seems extremely violent because the human population was far larger, so even a smaller percentage dying violently showed up as a much larger absolute number than in the preceding centuries.

And if you look at the other side of the coin, in terms of progress, then the picture becomes even more starkly clear and one-sided. Just think of all the human scientific and technological progress that has occurred over the last three centuries, and is continuing at an ever-increasing pace — does anyone seriously want to go back even to the nineteenth century, with no antibiotics, automobiles, electrical power grids, and so on?

To be sure, this progress has magnified both the creative as well as the destructive potentials of humanity — but on the whole, very few people would seriously argue that the overall effect has been more bad than good. In fact, given a choice, hardly anyone would want to go back even fifty years in time, because that would involve too many sacrifices.

The Present

What if we now look at the present, and make a comparative assessment of living conditions in different countries and areas of the world? There are many criteria we can use, but let’s take the findings of the Human Development Index, compiled annually by the United Nations, as an example. This Index uses specific quality of life factors in each country, such as life expectancy, as a proxy for deciding which countries are the most desirable places to live in.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that of the top twenty countries in this list, sixteen are western or western-derived (like Australia) — the very countries, we are told, that are being “controlled” by the Jews. This is reflected in almost every other proxy that we may use to create an index of desirability, whether it is preferences for higher education, immigration, or innovative business ventures.

Now this situation has already started to change, as economic development flows outwards from the countries that industrialized first, creating more opportunities in other countries, such as the industrialized nations in Asia, but it is still a general and prevalent fact of life for now.

The Real Problem

So, let’s put all this together. If some people truly believe that the Jews “control” these parts of the world, and have “controlled” them for the last few centuries, then they have a serious problem. For if the Jews are so bad, then why is it that the countries they “control” are such desirable places to live in? If they are devious and duplicitous, why have the centuries since they took over “control” of the world been the best centuries in terms of human progress?