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October 22, 2004/Cheshvan 7 5765, Vol. 57, No. 8
Anti-Semitism in the '44 election - and todayRAFAEL MEDOFFJewish government officials secretly manipulating the president? That accu-sation, heard recently in connection with the decision to go to war against Iraq, was also raised 60 years ago, in the heat of the 1944 presidential race.The lightning rod for criticism then was Sidney Hillman, a prominent aide to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A rumor that summer claimed that in considering the choice of Sen. Harry Truman as his running mate, FDR had told his advisers to "clear it with Sidney." Some opponents of the administration seized upon that phrase to make it appear that Hillman, a Lithuanian-born Jewish socialist, had secret veto power over all of Roosevelt's policies. Democratic National Committee chairman Robert Hannegan protested what he called a pattern of Republican campaign speakers singling out Hillman and emphasizing that he was "foreign born." Hannegan called the tactic "a clear injection of racial prejudice" into the election campaign. The tactic was revived this year, just in time for the 2004 presidential election season. Some opponents of the current administration began singling out Jewish government officials and accusing them of tricking America into war against Saddam Hussein in order to help Israel. Although these critics typically labeled their targets "neocons" rather than Jews, their message seemed clear enough. As New York Times columnist David Brooks commented, "con is short for 'conservative' and neo is short for 'Jewish.'" Surprisingly, such a statement was recently made by former U.S. senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart. He described these villainous Bush advisers as "ideologues" who are unable to distinguish between their loyalty "to their original homelands" (guess which one) and loyalty "to America and its national interests." Not everyone settles for using code words. Earlier this year, the Vancouver-based radical journal Adbusters ran an editorial titled "Why Won't Anyone Say They're Jewish?" Alongside the editorial was a list of 50 "influential neocons," with a black dot in the margin next to those whom the editors believe are Jewish. There is cause to be concerned about these kinds of statements. The notion of Jews secretly controlling governments is the theme of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery from Czarist Russia that featured prominently in Nazi propaganda (and is a mainstay of Arab and Muslim incitement against Jews today). Not everyone who criticized Sidney Hillman in 1944 was anti-Semitic, nor is everyone who criticizes President Bush's Jewish advisers today. But there is good reason to suspect anti-Semitism when someone focuses on an adviser named Hillman (then) or Wolfowitz (now) and ignores equally influential advisers whose names do not sound Jewish. The major political parties must condemn such incendiary statements and clearly disown the authors. Failure to call anti-Semitism by its name wrongly treats the culprits as legitimate participants in the mainstream political culture, a status they surely do not deserve. Rafael Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which focuses on issues related to America's response to the Holocaust - www.WymanInstitute.org. |
