CommentaryJUNE 2018 My ‘Black Lives Matter’ Problem BY JASON D. HILL African Americans The Campus Intersectionality Craze vs. BY ELLIOT KAUFMAN

Commentary American The Rise of Black Anti-Semitism BY JAMES KIRCHICK

MAY 2018 : VOLUME 145 NUMBER 6

JTheews 1968 New York Schools Strike Revisited BY VINCENT J. CANNATO AND JERALD PODAIR

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for inquiries please contact stephanie roberts at 212-891-6729 or by email: [email protected]. June 2018 Vol. 145 : No. 6

Articles

Jason D. My ‘Black Lives Matter’ Problem 14 Hill

James The Rise of Black Anti-Semitism 19 Kirchick Vincent J. Cannato The 1968 New York Schools 25 and Jerald Strike Revisited Podair

Elliot The Campus Intersectionality Craze 35 Kaufman

Joseph Wit, Exile, Jew, Convert, Genius 40 Epstein The life and art of Heinrich Heine

Politics & Ideas

Daniel The Not-So-Great-Chase 47 Halper Chasing Hillary, by Amy Chozick

Mark HUAC-a-Mole 49 Horowitz Show Trial, by Thomas Doherty

Fred A Man of His Century 51 Siegel Roads Not Taken, by Alexander Etkind

Culture & Civilization

Terry Title 00 Text

Monthly Commentaries

Politics & Ideas

Claire The War on Dignity 53 Lehmann The Rise of Victimhood Culture, by Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning

Andrew Churchill: Retorts and All 55 Roberts Normandy and Beyond, May-December 1944, Edited by Sir Martin Gilbert and Larry Arnn

Naomi Schaefer Small-Town Clues 57 Riley The Left Behind, By Robert Wuthnow

Culture & Civilization

Terry How Do You Solve a Problem Like 59 Teachout Oscar Hammerstein? The enduring legacy of an underpraised man.

Monthly Commentaries

Reader Commentary Washington Commentary 4 Letters Andrew Ferguson 10 on the April issue Shall I Eat an Impeach?

Social Commentary Jewish Commentary 8 Christine Rosen Meir Y. Soloveichik 12 The Slap in the Progressive Face The Full Measure of Devotion

Media Commentary Matthew Continetti Desperately Seeking Trumpslayer 64 READER COMMENTARY Treatment and the Trans Movement

To the Editor: the treatment of gender-dysphoric/ wait-listed control groups. It bears OHRAB AHMARI’S article on gender-incongruent persons. The emphasizing that all of these hor- S the transgender movement guidelines were co-sponsored by monal and surgical interventions raises an important issue: how several other national and inter- come with side effects. best to treat transgender patients national medical societies. Unfor- I recently raised several of these (“The Disappearance of Desire: The tunately, nearly all of their recom- points in a well-attended medical transgender movement’s missing mendations are labeled as based on forum given by an openly trans- element,” April). Modern medical “low-quality” or “very low-quality” woman (male-to-female) physician practice incorporates the principle evidence. Many recommendations who holds a prominent position that ethical treatment of patients are “ungraded,” which is an even in one of the state departments of requires an evidence base—that is, it weaker evidential designation. health. In response, the speaker requires factual information that a Transgender patients are at high scoffed at my suggestion of clinical medical or surgical intervention will risk for substance abuse, suicide at- trials—and then misrepresented help more than it harms. Prospec- tempts and suicide, sexually trans- the evidence behind the Endo- tive, randomized, controlled clinical mitted diseases, depression, low crine Society guidelines as “very trials provide the highest-quality quality of life, and other problems. strong”—which of course it cannot evidence. Expert consensus or opin- Without a high-quality evidence be in the absence of clinical trials. ion is considered the lowest qual- base, we cannot know how best to Transgender patients, like all ity, simply because experts without help them. One might think the patients, deserve safe and effective objective data have so often turned opposite from the proliferation of evidence-based treatments. It re- out to be wrong. Significantly, when transgender clinics at academic mains to be seen if we can conduct medical or surgical societies com- medical centers, where lots of essential clinical investigation in pile practice guidelines, they now medical and surgical treatments the dogmatic, activist environment state the quality of evidence behind are administered, but little actual described by Sohrab Ahmari. As the each of their recommendations. prospective controlled research is recent Endocrine Society guidelines The Endocrine Society—special- done. Such research is feasible, show, the record to date is poor. ists in hormonal management— ethical, and could attract commu- Kevin Jon Williams, m.d. just issued its 2017 guidelines on nity buy-in, e.g., through the use of Wynnewood, Pennsylvania

4 June 2018 1

To the Editor: OHRAB AHMARI’S article on Sthe transgender movement was elucidating, informative, and well- June 2018 Vol. 145 : No. 6 researched. I applaud Ahmari’s meticulous and scholarly approach to a highly delicate and controver- John Podhoretz, Editor sial social issue. I did learn a lot by Abe Greenwald, Senior Editor reading his essay. Noah C. Rothman, Associate Editor I do, however, take exception to � something that Ahmari wrote in Carol Moskot, Publisher the very last paragraph. Why did Kejda Gjermani, Digital Publisher he bring up , who, as Leah Rahmani, Publishing Associate Ahmari wrote, “has little regard for � the facts”? Why take a shot at our Ilya Leyzerzon, Business Director president? Stephanie Roberts, Business Manager Juan Gilberto Quezada � San Antonio, Texas Sohrab Ahmari, Senior Writer Terry Teachout, Critic-at-Large 1 � Board of Directors Sohrab Ahmari writes: Daniel R. Benson, Chairman THANK Kevin Jon Williams for Meredith Berkman, Paul J. Isaac, I his thoughtful and informative letter. Unfortunately, the bullying, Michael J. Leffell, Jay P. Lefkowitz, the assault on basic scientific meth- Steven Price, Gary L. Rosenthal, ods, and the flight from reason and Michael W. Schwartz, Paul E. Singer evidence that he describes pervade all clinical disciplines that deal with the gender question, and not Cover Design: Carol Moskot just endocrinology. The willing- ness of researchers and clinicians To send us a letter to the editor: [email protected] to go along—to allow activists to We will edit letters for length and content. subvert the usual truth procedures To make a tax-deductible donation: [email protected] of medicine and psychology—is a For advertising inquiries: [email protected] testament to the power of ideology For customer service: [email protected] to put highly trained experts under its spell. As Dr. Williams rightly notes, the first victims of this ideological Commentary (ISSN 0010-2601) is published monthly (except for a combined July/ onslaught are transgender pa- August issue) by Commentary, Inc., a 501(c)(3) organization. Editorial and business offices: 561 Seventh Avenue, 16th Floor, New York, NY, 10018. Telephone: (212) 891-1400. Fax: (212) tients. The only solution on the 891-6700. Customer Service: [email protected] or (212) 891-1400. horizon, as far as I can tell, is for Subscriptions: One year $45, two years $79, three years $109, USA only. To subscribe please go more experts to find the courage to www.commentarymagazine.com/subscribe-digital-print. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, to ask difficult questions and to and additional mailing offices. Subscribers will receive electronic announcements of forthcoming issues. Single copy: U.S. is $5.95; Canada is $7.00. All back issues are available in electronic speak scientific truth at these form at commentarymagazine.com. Postmaster: Send address changes to Commentary, P.O. Box forums, as my correspondent com- 420235, Palm Coast, FL, 32142. Unsolicited manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped, mendably does. self-addressed envelope. Letters intended for publication may be edited. Indexed in Reader’s Guide, Juan Gilberto Quezada misun- Book Review Digest, and elsewhere. U.S. Newsstand Distribution by COMAG Marketing Group, 155 Village Blvd, Princeton, NJ, 08540. Printed in the USA. Commentary was established in derstands my purpose in alluding 1945 by the American Jewish Committee, which was the magazine’s publisher through 2006 and continues to support its role as an independent journal of thought and opinion. Copyright © 2018 by Commentary, Inc.; all rights reserved under International and Pan American Copyright Conventions. to Donald Trump’s penchant for American elites and the prestige transforming not only the techni- post-truth discourse (that the pres- press, who constantly warn us cal basis of production but also ident has such a penchant is be- about the dangers of a post-truth the functions of the workers and yond dispute; my mind won’t soon world, even as they insist that there the social combinations of the forget then-candidate Trump’s rav- is no biological basis to gender. labor process. At the same time, ings about Senator Cruz’s father’s it thereby also revolutionizes the role in the JFK assassination). But division of labor in society, and my larger point was to underscore 1 incessantly hurls masses of capital the hypocrisy and bad faith of and of workers from one branch of production to another....[It] does away with all repose, all fixity and security as far as the worker’s life- situation is concerned.” Marx and the That is no conspiracy theory. And for all that Marx got wrong, he got some things right enough to be Jews worth remembering, including by those who, like me, find many ele- To the Editor: ster anti-Semitism but to blacken ments of his thought unsound. N HIS ARTICLE “’s the moral standing of bourgeois so- Jerry Z. Muller I Jew-Hating Conspiracy Theory” ciety.... Marx embraces all the tradi- Silver Spring, Maryland (April), Jonah Goldberg makes con- tional negative characterizations of siderable use—with full acknowl- the Jew that were repeated by Bau- 1 edgment—of my book, The Mind er, and for good measure he adds and the Market: Capitalism in West- a few of his own. But he does so in ern Thought, especially the chapter order to stigmatize market activity. Jonah Goldberg writes: on Marx. There I argue, as Goldberg For Marx’s strategy is to endorse HAVE learned a great deal from notes, that in many respects Marx’s every negative characterization of IJerry Z. Muller. Thus, my first critique and analysis of capitalism, market activity that Christians as- instinct in any disagreement with premised upon the labor theory of sociated with Jews, but to insist him is to assume I am in error, as value, reflected a much older belief that those qualities have now come I consider him an authority on a that commerce in general and mon- to characterize society as a whole, great many things. eylending in particular were unpro- very much including Christians. But upon reflection, and with ductive and parasitic, qualities that The Christian tradition of stig- no diminution of my respect and were often attributed to the Jews matizing Jews and the economic admiration for Muller, I think we’ll because of their association with activities in which they engaged have to agree to disagree. I don’t usury (money-lending). by virtue of their marginality now think anyone can read Marx’s “On What I do not argue, but Gold- became a stick with which to beat the Question of the Jews” in good berg does, is that “Karl Marx hated bourgeois society.” faith and not come away from the capitalism in no small part because Goldberg’s notion that Marx’s effort thinking it is anything other he hated Jews.” Marx didn’t, and his theory was fundamentally a con- than an anti-Semitic piece of work. most apposite work, “On the Ques- spiracy theory is also misleading. Muller does not actually deny this. tion of the Jews,” was a critique of As Marx put it in Capital (in a pas- Rather, he concedes it in the process the notion put forward by fellow sage quoted in my book): of arguing that Marx uses anti- radicals such as Bruno Bauer that “Modern industry never views Semitic language and concepts as Jews should be denied equality or treats the existing form of a pro- a convenient way to attack capital- of civil rights. To be sure, Marx’s duction process as the definitive ism. Even if I were to concede the purpose was less the defense of one. Its technical basis is therefore point, this strikes me as a meager the Jews than the condemnation revolutionary, whereas all earlier defense. According to Muller’s own of capitalism. As my book notes, modes of production were essen- account, Marx “endorsed” and rein- “Marx combined his moral critique tially conservative. By means of forced anti-Semitic slurs merely as of capitalism with traditional anti- machinery, chemical processes and a “strategy,” but he wasn’t himself Jewish images, not in order to bol- other methods, it is continually an anti-Semite? If Marx was not an

6 Letters : June 2018 anti-Semite, this explanation would a conspiracy theorist, a point I il- much from reading Marx (though still find Marx guilty of a grotesque lustrate in my essay. Nor does he even more that is of use, I would ar- cynicism: exploiting and endorsing dispute that Marxist theory lends gue, from reading Muller), but I re- anti-Semitic stereotypes as a means itself to conspiracy theories about main convinced that the “science” to throw mud on capitalism. the way the ruling classes manipu- of Marx’s theories is downstream The problem is that there is late society to their own benefit, of more human drives. Many intel- ample evidence that Marx’s anti- because, I suspect he would agree, lectuals insist, though few as pas- Semitism was more than merely that is irrefutable. Where we seem sionately as Marx did, that their ar- strategic. To cite just one of many to disagree is on whether or not guments are devoid of petty biases examples, he referred to the Ger- Marx’s explanation of the prog- and agendas. In the case of Marx, man Jewish intellectual Ferdinand ress of history stands apart from I find those denials unpersuasive. Lassalle as “Baron Izzy,” describing the psychological dispositions and him as a “Jewish nigger.” Indeed, if temptations that characterized anything, it was Marx’s occasional Marx’s views and motivations away 1 support for Jewish causes that was from the page. I agree we can learn strategic. In 1843, while in Cologne, he wrote a letter to Arnold Ruge recounting how, “Just now the president of the Israelites here has The Altalena paid me a visit and asked me to help with a parliamentary petition on behalf of the Jews; and I agreed. To the Editor: his avoidance of killing Jews. Nor However obnoxious I find the Isra- ABBI Meir Y. Soloveichik jus- does the tale of Moses slaying 3,000 elite beliefs Bauer’s view seems to Rtifiably praises Menachem Be- Jews refute that principle, since me nevertheless to be too abstract. gin for his refusal to permit Irgun that exception regarded idolatry. The point is to punch as many holes fighters to respond to targeted gun- Nevertheless, there is something of as possible in the Christian state.” fire from Israeli soldiers during the even greater import about Begin’s It is surely true that Marx wasn’t disastrous Altalena confrontation naiveté, namely his support of the a practitioner of biological anti- (“The Moment That Made Israel a Camp David Accords. Israel’s inter- Semitism, and that the temptation Nation,” April). While noting that est in the pretense of peace through to impose Nazi notions of “the Jew- “a firefight did break out,” he avoids negotiations can spell her doom. Yet ish Question” onto Marx retroac- assigning responsibility to the man Jews have repeatedly denied their tively is unfair. After all, Marx was who ordered it: Prime Minister enemy’s commitment to the de- the descendant of rabbis on both David Ben-Gurion. Dismissing the struction of Israel. And this denial sides of his family. But there are Irgun as “a gang of terrorists” who has repeatedly been a detriment to other kinds of anti-Semitism, and “usurped” state power by landing the well-being of the Jewish state. I’m convinced that Marx came to the Altalena (with his prior con- Until Israelis acknowledge that the his hatred of capitalism, at least in sent), Ben-Gurion was determined issue has never been peace but sur- part, via his hatred—or shame—of to stifle political opposition and (as vival, all else falls to the wayside. Jews. William Blanchard makes a Palmach commander Yigal Allon Allen Weingarten powerful case in this regard in his recounted) to “get Begin.” That pre- Monroe Township, New Jersey essay “Karl Marx and the Jewish cipitated the tragedy of the Altalena Question.” Blanchard states that confrontation, which cost the lives To the Editor: the “very origin of his antagonism of 16 Irgun fighters devoted to the MEIR Y. Soloveichik’s article brought to capitalism emerged from an ear- fledgling State of Israel. tears to my eyes. I was reminded of lier distaste for what he described Jerold S. Auerbach how happy I was when Menachem as ‘Jewish money-grubbing.’” Newton, Massachusetts Begin became the prime minister of As for Muller’s objection to the the state he loved so much. He had phrase “conspiracy theory,” I take To The Editor: deserved more recognition from Da- his point. But I do not think cit- EIR Y. Soloveichik’s column vid Ben-Gurion. But the Israeli people ing a single passage from Capital Mabout the Altalena resonated showed how they felt by electing him. lets Marx off the hook. He does with me. Begin’s naiveté regarding Murray Rubin not dispute that Marx was indeed Ben-Gurion is of less moment than Toronto, Canada

Commentary 7 SOCIAL COMMENTARY The Slap in the Progressive Face

CHRISTINE ROSEN

HERE is a deceptively familiar arc to the Eric all while he was swanning around with progressive Schneiderman story. The attorney general of leaders and accepting awards like the National Insti- T the state of New York, an ambitious and ambi- tute for Reproductive Health’s “Champion of Choice.” tiously liberal crusader who supported women’s rights “His hypocrisy is epic,” one of his accusers, Michelle and the #MeToo movement early and often, stood so Manning Barish, told the New Yorker. credibly accused of behaving like a predator in his But it’s not just his hypocrisy that’s epic. His tribe private life that he was compelled to resign his office of progressively woke liberals is implicated, too. In an a mere three hours after the article featuring these ac- echo of the previous century’s Clinton scandals, many cusations appeared online. fellow liberals advised women like Barish to keep their As that New Yorker piece noted, Schneiderman stories about Schneiderman—who nurtured national was the kind of guy who was quick to tweet praise of political ambitions—to themselves, arguing that he “the brave women and men who speak up about the was “too valuable a politician for the Democrats to sexual harassment they had endured at the hands of lose.” Feminists have long argued that the personal is powerful men.” But like Bill Clinton and Anthony Wie- political. Will Schneiderman’s denouement prove it? ner and before him, Schneiderman It’s become fashionable to talk about the dan- appears to have been one of those powerful men. And gerous era of tribal politics in which we live—how it he used the social access his power and progressive creates echo chambers and fuels a fake-news epidemic values provided to select his victims and later to bully and undermines democratic debate. And there is truth and threaten them into silence. in this. But in our haste to rout Russian trolls and out Schneiderman engaged in frequent bouts of “non- the alt-right, another feature of tribal behavior has consensual sexual violence” with his intimate partners— been overlooked, in part because it hits uncomfortably violence often delivered with weirdly un-woke pillow close to home: how a tribe’s ritualistic social signaling talk. His former girlfriend, Tanya Selvaratnam, who was can provide cover for a range of sins. born in Sri Lanka and is dark-skinned, told theNew York- For example, treating women disrespectfully er, “Sometimes, he’d tell me to call him Master, and he’d isn’t supposed to happen in the progressive tribe, even slap me until I did.” He also called her his “brown slave” though it often does. Schneiderman never publicly and demanded that she declare herself “his property.” broke these rules. In fact, he was a professional cham- He slapped and choked them and, they claim, pion of them—he brought lawsuits against Harvey threatened to kill them if they ended the relationship— Weinstein, for example. Schneiderman “has long been a liberal Democratic champion of women’s rights,” Christine Rosen is managing editor of the Weekly the New Yorker notes, something that his girlfriends Standard. acknowledge as part of his appeal. He also attended

8 June 2018 the right schools and was invited to the right parties, president’s many flaws). And the behavior is unlikely which is where he met his victims. Indeed, he bonded to have stayed confined to the bedroom. If the women’s with one of them over the fact that they had both at- stories are true, Schneiderman’s pathological sense of tended Harvard and shared an enthusiasm for the entitlement no doubt infected his professional judgment enlightening effects of Buddhist meditation. as well as his personal life. It’s why he believed that he Hence the liberal confusion over revelations of could bully these women and get away with it. It’s why he Schneiderman’s seemingly bizarre bedroom behavior. thought he was immune to the effects of self-medicating It’s supposed to be uneducated men in flyover country with alcohol and drugs even after he injured himself and who do terrible things like demean and batter their lost control on numerous occasions. It’s why he didn’t women; that’s why there is no upper-class equivalent hesitate to threaten to break the laws he was entrusted to of the derogatory phrase “wife-beater,” which refers enforce in order to bully his girlfriends. to an item of clothing (a cheap undershirt) associated Tribes are reassuring, especially when they exact with the working classes. Schneiderman seems to have swift justice on outsiders. They give their members viewed himself as akin to the successful and dashing a sense of purpose and meaning. But they are bad rough-play enthusiast Christian from Fifty Shades of at policing their own. Discussing his study of tradi- Grey, but his ex-girlfriends say he was more like the tional societies with Smithsonian magazine, historian abusive, controlling husband in the Julia Roberts mov- Jared Diamond once noted: “Traditional societies are ie Sleeping with the Enemy. The cognitive dissonance small.… Their membership is based particularly on re- is difficult for many liberal activists to process. “It lationships.” He surmised that this insularity and scale hurts the most when it’s one of the was one of the reasons they often ‘good’ ones,” Jill Filipovic lamented Tribes are reassuring, failed to develop strong political in . especially when they exact leaders. It’s also a good formula for But the tendency to speak allowing abusers to hide in plain of all men as either “good ones” or swift justice on outsiders. sight. “bad ones” is precisely the problem. They give their members We can justly punish those The kind of behavior Schneiderman a sense of purpose who abuse and assault others. We is accused of (and the entitlement can teach women to defend them- that fuels it) can be found in every and meaning. selves, something too often over- social class and among both women looked in these stories of abuse. A and men. The tribal instinct to avoid acknowledging it woman who knows basic self-defense skills could have leads to embarrassing intellectual acrobatics. “It cuts inflicted some damage on predators like Weinstein or to the heart of the incongruities of being a progressive Schneiderman; self-defense also teaches a mental tough- woman in 2018,” Filipovic argued, “Donald Trump, ness and awareness that is far more useful as a preven- who boasted about sexually assaulting and degrading tive measure than doling out rape whistles and lecturing women, is the president; the rage and dismay brought women about toxic masculinity. But none of this will on by his election has also meant that powerful men change the fact that people of weak character and cor- are finally being called to account. And yet that ac- rupt values can be found everywhere—in the most iso- counting has made clear that even the men we thought lated and uneducated populations of rural America, in we could trust—especially, perhaps, the ostentatiously churches and synagogues, in the Ivy League, even in the good ones—may not be quite what they seem.” White House. We know this to be true, but we don’t want Filipovic here engages in a frantic attempt to it to be true, and so, again and again, we profess shock push Schneiderman into another tribe (toxic, Trump- when the truth slaps us in the face. era brutes!) rather than taking a clear-eyed look at One of Schneiderman’s accusers, the impeccably why her own tribe was such a comfortable place liberal M. Manning Barish, found the tribal demand for yet another predator-in-progressive’s-clothing to too difficult to sustain. She had watched a Trump thrive. It’s easier to reconcile the behavior of someone White House aide come undone after he was accused like Schneiderman if he can be called a misogynist of violent misbehavior toward women. “After Rob confidence man rather than what he was: the logical Porter,” Barish told the New Yorker, “I was struggling conclusion of a woke that values saying about whether to come forward. I felt guilt and shame the right things more than doing them. that I was encouraging other women to speak out but This is precisely what blinded so many people wasn’t doing the same. I was a hypocrite.” to the behavior of these progressive men for so long She is a hypocrite no longer, and her brave ex- (and what blinds many avid Trump supporters to their ample is worthy of study and emulation. q

Commentary 9 WASHINGTON COMMENTARY Shall I Eat an Impeach?

ANDREW FERGUSON

HERE ARE GOOD reasons to be wary of im- marginal figures (Did George Papadopoulus meet with peachment talk,” wrote the New York Times Joseph Misfud in London before or after Sam Clovis T columnist David Leonhardt earlier this year. recruited Carter Page for the Trump campaign???). The sentence was his way of introducing 800 words The convoluted narratives compensate for the fact that of impeachment talk, an entire column’s worth of the none of us has so far uncovered anything that might stuff. He couldn’t help himself. carry a hint of a whisper of an offense that could in- Many people in Washington these days pretend criminate Trump—none of us, that is, but Robert Muel- to be wary of the subject of Donald Trump’s possible ler and his band of Javerts. And maybe not even them. impeachment before they call for it. We all agree the Leonhardt, like his colleagues at the Times, is odds of the House of Representatives impeaching the impatient with this uncertain state of affairs. His col- president are, at the moment, negligible. This makes umn was meant to demonstrate that even our meager impeachment talk fanciful at best. Among Democrats, collection of undisputed facts is enough to put the views range from a Beach Boys–like “maybe if we think president in the dock. The particular crime or misde- and wish and hope and pray, it might come true” to meanor he has in mind is obstruction of justice—the “we have to wait till next year.” As for Republicans, they very same charge used to impeach Bill Clinton. In his have repackaged a phrase from an earlier era: You can bill of particulars, Leonhardt notes that Trump had have our president when you pry him from our cold asked the FBI director, James Comey, to lighten up in dead fingers…. his pursuit of Trump’s former adviser Michael Flynn. Impeachment talk flames up whenever news He asked two other advisers to make the same request. from the chattering class’s number-one topic—the After Trump fired Comey, he tweeted about it trium- legal difficulties of the president, from Stormy Daniels phantly and a few days later told an interviewer on to Russian conspirators—briefly runs dry. The thought television that he’d fired Comey because of “the Russia of impeachment is much more stimulating to a Wash- thing.” Several times he publicly berated his attorney ingtonian than trying to figure out why Obamacare general, Jeff Sessions, for letting the investigation premiums are rising or whether the preliminary rev- proceed. Then, again taking to twitter, Trump angrily enue projections from tax reform are likely to prove ac- denounced Andrew McCabe, another G-man involved curate. Scandal junkies construct timelines of obscure, in the investigation. unrelated events of unknown importance involving “Obstruction of justice involves intent,” Leon- hardt instructed his readers. And plainly these actions Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor at the Weekly reveal Trump’s intent. Standard and the author of Crazy U and Land of Lin- You can say that again, David! (Just wait—I bet coln. he does.) How can anyone doubt Trump’s intent? He

10 June 2018 wants the investigation to end, says so repeatedly, and fenders leapt into action. They were building fund- will do anything to make this happen, short of shut- raising campaigns around McCarthy’s book a month ting it down himself. During the hyperbolic Trump before the publication date. A more consequential era, I have grown leery of intensifiers, from both the example: The legally impeccable but widely unpopular president and his critics, but even I must admit that if impeachment of Clinton killed Republicans’ hoped-for Trump’s behavior constitutes obstruction of justice, it gains in the 1998 midterm elections. is surely the most ostentatious display of obstruction These lessons are not lost on professional in the history of…okay, the universe. Democrats and soberer activists. When six Democratic Even the behind-scenes actions Leonhardt in- congressmen formally introduced articles of impeach- cludes in his indictment, such as Trump’s telling the ment late last year, party leaders, including Nancy White House counsel to fire Mueller, would in effect Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, treated them like overenthu- have been carried out in the full light of day. At least siastic children tracking mud all over the nice new Richard Nixon tried to keep his obstruction on the QT. A carpet. Even Adam Schiff, the president’s most vocal man who brags publicly about what congressional critic, took to the he’s doing as he’s doing it, and then New York Times op-ed page to stifle loudly complains when it doesn’t The thinness of the impeachment talk. have the desired effect, probably isn’t case against Trump, It’s the smart move. Party intending to commit a crime. Such leaders had much the same reac- a man may be a sociopath—but not as it stands now, is tion when Democrats last suc- necessarily a criminal. really beside the point. cumbed to impeachment fever, The thinness of the case Impeachment fever has in the election year 2006, under against Trump, as it stands now, is President Bush. Not coincidentally, really beside the point. Impeach- become a permanent 2006 was also the year of a Demo- ment fever has become a perma- condition in the cratic landslide in congressional nent condition in the body politic. races—the same result Democrats Nearly every president in the last body politic. hope for this fall. A serious bid half century has faced calls for im- for impeachment that year would peachment, and not just from lunatics. When Ronald likely have rallied the Republicans and stemmed the Reagan appeared (incorrectly) to be deeply involved in Democratic tide. the Iran Contra affair, many of his opponents called for But that was a long time ago, and between then impeachment. Bill Clinton, as we know, was well and and now a different Democratic Party has emerged be- truly impeached. The idea of impeaching George W. neath the feet of leaders like Pelosi and Hoyer, whose Bush was catnip for left-wing Democrats from the mo- establishmentarian realism annoys their base just as ment the Iraq adventure went sour. Even the usually Paul Ryan’s relative moderation rankled Trump vot- level-headed legal commentator Andrew McCarthy ers. Schiff may have been right to call impeachment wrote a book with the subtitle “Building the Political talk “bait,” a trap waiting to be sprung by cunning Re- Case for Obama’s Impeachment.” publicans. Ordinary Democrats are eager to chomp. A At least McCarthy’s effort was best viewed as recent Quinnipiac poll showed that 71 percent of Dem- a thought experiment: Can a legal case for impeach- ocrats favor impeachment proceedings if their party ment, even one that’s airtight, survive without popular takes the House of Representatives in November. Over support? The latter is as crucial as the former. Recall the last six months the Democratic activist/billionaire that Nixon’s public reason for stepping down was Tom Steyer has collected 5.2 million signatures for his that his political base on Capitol Hill had eroded to impeachment petition. the point where the president would be essentially Republicans react with mock horror, begging powerless for the rest of his term. (Of course, the loss the Democrats not to throw them in the impeach- of his political power also made his impeachment ment briar patch. Trump has even made it a riff in inevitable.) In the laws of political thermodynamics, the frequent “campaign style” speeches he can’t resist any bold action can create an opposite and equal reac- making to Republicans out in cow country. He singles tion, and it doesn’t get much bolder than presidential out Pelosi, of course, but also Maxine Waters, who has impeachment. been calling for Trump’s removal since his inaugura- To cite a small example: Once Republicans tion. “She’s a low-IQ individual,” the president says, raised the possibility of impeachment, Obama’s de- gallantly, as his audiences cheer. q

Commentary 11 JEWISH COMMENTARY The Full Measure of Devotion

MEIR Y. SOLOVEICHIK

N JULY 4, 1863, Rabbi Sabato Morais of resentatives assembled and declared as a self-evident Philadelphia’s Mikveh Israel congregation truth that ‘all men are created equal.’” Only several Oascended the pulpit to deliver the Sabbath months later, at the dedication of the Gettysburg cem- sermon. Those assembled in the synagogue knew that etery, would Lincoln refer to the birth of our nation in over the previous few days, Union and Confederate Morais’s manner, making “four score and seven years forces had been engaged in an epic engagement at Get- ago” one of the most famous phrases in the English tysburg, but they had no idea who had won or whether language and thereby endowing his address with a Confederate forces would continue onward to Wash- prophetic tenor and scriptural quality. ington or Philadelphia. That year, July 4 coincided This has led historians, including Jonathan with the 17th of Tammuz, when Jews commemorate Sarna and Marc Saperstein, to suggest that Lincoln the Roman breach of the walls of Jerusalem. Morais may have read Morais’s sermon, which had been prayed that God not allow Jerusalem’s fate to befall the widely circulated. Whether or not this was so, the American capital and assured his audience that he had Gettysburg address parallels Morais’s remarks in not forgotten the joyous date on which he spoke: “I am that it, too, joins mourning for the fallen with a rec- not indifferent, my dear friends, to the event, which, ognition of American independence, allowing those four score and seven years ago, brought to this new who had died to define our appreciation for the day world light and joy.” that our “forefathers brought forth a new nation An immigrant from Italy, Morais had taught conceived in liberty.” Lincoln’s words stressed that a himself English utilizing the King James Bible. Few nation must always link civic celebration of its inde- Americans spoke in this manner, including Abra- pendence with the lives given on its behalf. Visiting ham Lincoln. Three days later, the president himself the cemetery at Gettysburg, he argued, requires us reflected before an audience: “How long ago is it?— to dedicate ourselves to the unfinished work that eighty-odd years—since on the Fourth of July for the “they who fought here have thus far so nobly ad- first time in the history of the world a nation by its rep- vanced.” He went on: “From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they Meir Y. Soloveichik is the rabbi of Congregation gave the last full measure of devotion,” thereby en- Shearith Israel in New York City and the director of suring that “these dead shall not have died in vain.” the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at The literary link between Morais’s recalling of University. Jerusalem and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address makes it

12 June 2018 all the more striking that it is the Jews of today’s Judea unconnected to the Fourth of July, which takes place who make manifest the lessons of Lincoln’s words. Just five weeks later. Both holidays are observed by many as the battle of Gettysburg concluded on July 3, Israe- (though not all) Americans as escapes from work, and lis hold their Memorial Day commemorations on the too few ponder the link between the sacrifice of Ameri- day before their Inde- can dead and the free- pendence Day celebra- dom that we the living tions. On the morning enjoy. There is thus no of the Fourth of Iyar, a denying that the Israe- siren sounds through- lis’ insistence on linking out the land, with all their Independence Day pausing their everyday celebration with their activities in reverent Memorial Day is not only memory of those who more appropriate; it is had died. There are few more American, a truer more stunning images fulfillment of Lincoln’s of Israel today than message at Gettysburg. those of highways on In studying the which thousands of Hebrew calendar of cars grind to a halt, 1776, I was struck by the all travelers standing fact that the original at the roadside, and all Fourth of July, like that heads bowing in com- of 1863, fell on the 17th memoration. Through- of Tammuz. It is, per- out the day, cemeteries haps, another reminder are visited by the family that Gettysburg and members of those lost. America’s birth must al- Only in the evening ways be joined in our does the somber Yom minds, and linked in our Hazikaron give way to There is thus no denying that the Israelis’ civic observance. It is, of the joy of the Fifth of course, beyond unlikely Iyar’s Yom Ha’atzmaut, insistence on linking their Independence that Memorial Day will Independence Day. For Day celebration with their Memorial Day be moved to adjoin the anyone who has ex- fourth of July. Yet that perienced it, the two is not only more appropriate; it is more should not prevent us days define each other. American, a truer fulfillment of Lincoln’s from learning from the Those assembled in Is- message at Gettysburg. Israeli example. Imagine rael’s cemeteries facing if the third of July were the unbearable loss of dedicated to remember- loved ones do so in the knowledge that it is the sac- ing the battle that concluded on that date. Imagine rifice of their beloved family members that make the if “Gettysburg Day” involved a brief moment of com- next day’s celebration of independence possible. And memoration by “us, the living” for those who gave the celebration of independence is begun with the the last full measure of devotion. Imagine if tens— acknowledgement by millions of citizens that those perhaps hundreds—of millions of Americans paused who lie in those cemeteries, who gave “their last full in unison from their leisure activities for a minute measure of devotion,” obligate the living to ensure that or two to reflect on the sacrifice of generations past. the dead did not die in vain. Surely our observance of the Independence Day The American version of Memorial Day, like the that followed could not fail to be affected; surely the Gettysburg Address itself, began as a means of deco- Fourth of July would be marked in a manner more rating and honoring the graves of Civil War dead. It is worthy of a great nation. q

Commentary 13 My ‘black lives matter' Problem BY JASON D. HILL

HAD LUNCH RECENTLY with a colleague of losophy and French literature. Although he and I are on mine named Allan. He’s a retired professor who opposite ends of the political spectrum, I still enjoy the once taught at a university in New York and sharpness of Allan’s mind and his compassionate spirit; now teaches inside prisons. Allan was talking but I resist, as best as I can, his extreme pessimism. He in despairing tones about America and wanted believes mankind is going to be felled soon by an apoca- to know my thoughts on the matter. When I lyptic revolutionary blow, courtesy of the international asked him to be more specific, he was taken working class. Until such time comes, however, he will aback at the idea that further clarification was remain in a state of despair about the . needed. He couldn’t understand my failure “Jason, black men are being killed in this coun- to see the utter hopelessness of the society all try,” he said. around me. “Oh, I know that,” I said. “They are being exter- Allan is 68 years old and a self-proclaimed Marx- minated.” I went on: “We both live in Chicago, where ist. Both of his parents were surgeons from New York, they are being massacred on a weekly and daily basis, Iand he attended private schools all his life. He gradu- but who is killing them? Huh? Are white cops going ated from Harvard and Princeton with degrees in phi- in and slaughtering them? Are white people from the

Jason D. Hill is a professor of philosophy at DePaul University. This essay is adapted from his forthcoming book We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People, which will be published by Bombardier Books in July and is available for pre-publication sale on Amazon.

14 June 2018 African Americans vs. 15 This form of racial profiling is profiling racial of form This When some black folks com- worse than police racial profiling, and not because it is an in-group phenomenon. Rather, it’s because perpetrators its of intent deadly the leaves a trail of tragic, irrevocable consequences. It is neither white authority nor white apathy that so black many so of lives the threatens Americans. Thewhite per- average insti- or policies created not has son oppression of forms systemic tuted on criminals of hands the force that streets. the plain that white people don’t - val ue black lives, I often ask: What exactly do you mean? In fact, too many black Americans are reluc- tant to hold other black people ac- countable for the horrific crimes they are committing against one another. Members of Black esteem to Lives people white want Matter humanity the value and lives black I explained to Allan that there was a more deadly more a was there that Allan to explained I killings police of spate recent the with Compared embarrassing and painful to an innocent person, is not is person, innocent an to painful and embarrassing harmful. irrevocably and insidious form of racial profiling that was taking place in this our profiling nation. fails Yet to provoke univer- for care who those of indignation righteous the sal justice. I was speaking of the racial profiling done by blacks against other blacks, which manifests itself tar- particular, in men, Black crime. black-on-black in annihilated. be to prey as people black other get of black people when they themselves can’t condemn kill and maim who those at outrage moral express and senseless warfare, gang of course the in children black white do Why shootings. drive-by and streetviolence, about care to responsibility moral larger a have people their about care to have people black than people black white special of need in blacks are why And lives? own nurturance? tanta- is crime black-on-black men, black unarmed of mount to Thea national-security moral disaster. - hys the in brutality police of incidents few a by raised teria face of this larger national tragedy is reckless - hyper bole. It hides from the nation a deep malaise at work form a community: black the in some of psyche the in rage homicidal a in itself manifests that self-hatred of not fundamentally against white people, but against people. black other tar- IN THIS THIS IN STANCE STANCE JEWS IN IN JEWS TOWARD TOWARD BETRAYS BETRAYS NOT ONLY ONLY NOT MATTER IS IS MATTER INDEBTED. INDEBTED. ISRAEL; ITS ITS ISRAEL; arbitrarily ANTI-ISRAEL ANTI-ISRAEL BLACK LIVES LIVES BLACK AMERICA, TO TO AMERICA, ENORMOUSLY ENORMOUSLY COUNTRY ARE ARE COUNTRY BEING UNJUST UNJUST BEING WHOM BLACKS BLACKS WHOM

“If the cops he kill said, them,” “what incentive un- of killings of spate “the him, told I “Listen,” place, in concession that With Allan shifted in his chair. He asked what I Commentary suburbs gunning them down? Is the military going in military going the Is down? them gunning suburbs men?” black these killing and and—?” law the obey to have they do armed black men by small police officers ina recentyears of is work the believe, I is, It disgrace. a and tragic minority of rogue police officers, or ordinary officers - reasoning—giv statistical of form a by down weighed en the disproportionate homicide rates among black men—that breeds a pervasive fear popu- general the among blacks of blight a is it and sad, is This lation. against the humanity of all per- sons.” I continued: against “However, the heroic commitment of the giv- and entire country, this in force police en the enormous contribution that police officers—black, white, and Hispanic—are making every day by going into black and Hispanic communities overrun by murder- the protecting and gangs street ous lives of innocent residents living in these tragic neighborhoods, we need to keep things in perspective said is all when officers, Police here. and done, overworked as they are, underpaid as they are, and suf- they given that image public poor the to trying of job good a doing are fer, protect black lives in the inner cit- and thugs where country, this of ies of extensions either are neighborhoods think hooligans where fiefdoms private own their or rooms, living their please.” they as do can they him with agreed I Here, profiling. racial about thought that the practice is unjust because it

gets members of a law-abiding majority at any given coercive a have agents enforcement law Because time. helpless virtually against force of use the on monopoly citizens, profiling is a legally problematic affair that, given the broad discretionary powers of the officers who exercise it, can lead to disastrous consequences. the in rationality for possibility some still is there But who officer an is, That itself. profiling racial of exercise has made an error of judgment in singling out a per- son for suspicious activity based on race could revise his actions before stripping the person of his or her dignity. The act of profiling by police officers, while

My matter' Problem ‘black lives ‘black African Americans vs. American jews 16 of Jews and whose leaders portray Jews as pigs, ver- pigs, as Jews portray leaders whose and Jews of ments whose charters have called for the annihilation govern- elected have Palestinians Jews, Israeli with side by side Knesset the in serve Israelis Arab While conquer.to failed they territory a to return to right a by a war that their leaders started and lost, they claim Displaced warfare. of history the in demand edented Authority. And the Palestinians have made an unprec- zations such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Palestinian sought to do the same with the help of terrorist organi- have Palestinians the among Israel’senemies region. ist, and tried to eliminate her and Jewry itself from the parties have invaded Israel, threatened her right to - ex the Jordanians, the and Egyptians, the Syrians. These of likes the in marauders fought has Israel founding, its Since reciprocity. religious of meaning the know nations that treat women worse than cattle and don’t gion of illiberal, primitive, and human-rights-abusing nologically advancednologically guered state of Israel. The Jewish state is the only tech- belea- the is it East, Middle the in victim a is there If tude of the inepti- Black Lives moral Matter the movement on condemn this point. categorically I grounds, posedly genocidal massacre of the Palestinian people. Black Lives Matter, makes the U.S. complicit in a sup- to according This, Israel. with alliances its via terror United States justifies and advances the global war on education of black Americans. second pertains to its immoral demands regarding the the Israel; on position outrageous its with do to has able sins of the Black Lives Matter movement. The first thought about two other transgressive and unpardon- I dark, grew street the as window my out looked and of Black Lives hypocrisy Matter. moral As I the sat at about my thoughts desk late with that evening racing agreed to disagree, as we do on most things. pathologies in some black communities. In the end, we consider I what for responsible sociologically is cans Ameri- black against discrimination unfair which in rations for blacks based on this privilege and the ways our lunch conversation, he veered into a case for repa- In privilege. white so-called on self-hatred black this T

s sanh eedr f sal n moral on Israel of defender staunch a As Our conversation, however, had left my mind mind my left had however, conversation, Our Allan, like others on the left, places the blame for movement and takes the view that the the that view the takes and movement “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions” (BDS) and “apartheid.” “genocide” The manifesto endorses of the Israel accuse they (and anti-American) manifesto anti-Israel in which profoundly a written Matter have Lives Black of LEADERS HE democratic country in a re- a in democraticand country pation. Jews made up half of the young people who par- ber of whites involved in the struggle for black emanci- num- disproportionate a represented activists Jewish of these institutions. During the civil-rights movement, educatedatwere one blacks Southern of percent 40 ly of enrollment at the so-called Rosenwald schools, near- height JewishJuliusthe At philanthropist Rosenwald. from contributions by part in or whole in established leges (including Howard, Dillard, and Fisk Universities) 2,000 primary and secondary schools and 20 black col- than more were there 1940, to From1910 Conference. Leadership the found to Wilkins Roy and Randolph from 1966 to 1975. NAACP Arnie Aronson the worked of with A. president Philip national the as served plan, Ka- Kivie Judaism), Reform for Union the (now tions chairman of the Union of American Hebrew Congrega- other civil-rights leaders to create the NAACP. The vice and Bois W.E.B.Du joined Moscowitz Henry 1909, In (SNCC). Committee Coordinating Nonviolent Student (SCLC), Conference Leadership Christian ern the (NAACP), People Colored the of Advancement for Association National the include These U.S. the in organizations civil-rights important most the of some fund and found to efforts monumental took oppression. racial from blacks of liberation the in role unacknowledged largely but enormous an played who Jews those is it movement, debted. If there are any unsung heroes of the civil-rights ica, to whom blacks in this are country enormously in- ward Israel; its anti-Israel stance betrays Jews in Amer- personally initiate are spared as much harm as possible. not did they war a in caught those that ensure to and nal altruism, take great pains to limit civilian casualties inflict on Jews, the Israelis, in a spirit of almost irratio- the daily onslaughts of war and terror that Palestinians cide and apartheid. We must remember that even amid such Jews are Israel, complicit of in the support unproven their crimes in of geno- that suggests Matter Lives a daily showering of rockets into Israeli land. government Hamas and was, and still is, rewarded by erally handed over its territory in Gaza to the terrorist Jews—occupy the land of Israel. In 2005, Israel unilat- Jews—any as long so made be will deal no that tion zens. Palestinian intransigence is forged in the convic- intifada and the indiscriminate murder of Israeli citi- second the with repaid but down turned repeatedly only not was and Abbas Mahmoud and YassirArafat enemies. What’s avowed more, Israel offered a Palestinian state its to both to rights land and citizenship min, and an evil to be eradicated. Black Lives Matter is not only being unjust to- unjust being only not is Matter Lives Black Black Jews, Israeli against accusations its With grants that of know I country only the is Israel My ‘Black Lives Matter’ American Jews under- Jews American Problem : June and the the and South- 2018 African

ticipated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964. or racial groups such that blacks deserve to be exempt Leaders of the Jewish Reform Movement were arrested from paying college tuition? with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in St. Au- Could it be that the spokespersons for the move- gustine, Florida, in 1964, after mounting a challenge to ment are failing here to recognize another cultural racial segregation in public accommodations. The Civil pathology blacks face? I have in mind the problem of Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 single-parent families—in which 70 percent of African- were drafted in the conference room of the Religious American children now live. This is a financially un- Action Center (RAC) of , under the ae- tenable situation for a massive swath of black America. gis of the Leadership Conference, which for decades And it is certainly an issue over which blacks have con- was in the RAC’s building. trol. This crisis is not a consequence or inheritance of Americans vs. The hard, cold, and unsen- slavery or Jim Crow. Indeed the Jim timental fact of the matter is that Crow period saw significantly low- without Jewish financial backing THE JEWS er single-parent birth rates among and moral contributions, there ENTREATED blacks. The downward spiral of the may never have been a civil-rights black family, the marked absence movement. What I consider to be THEIR FELLOW of fathers, cannot be the respon- our country’s heroic Third Found- AMERICANS sibility of white Americans. Nor ing (the Second Founding being should white Americans ever be Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg), TO CONSIDER asked what they intend to do about which culminated in the passage of BLACKS AND that problem, as the problem is not the Civil Rights Acts, would have at theirs. What we have here is a wide- least been severely postponed. ALL PERSONS spread failure among black Ameri- Charged by God with a duty OF COLOR AS cans to exercise free will in a judi- to repair the world and to remedy cious and wise manner—a failure to injustice wherever they find it, the POSSESSING appreciate that free will comes with Jews have maintained a civilization DIGNITY a moral obligation to be fiscally ma- for more than 3,000 years. They car- ture. The question that the Black ried their duty into the 20th century AND MORAL Lives Matter movement should be by playing a pivotal role in wideningWORTH EQUAL addressing here is as follows: What the pantheon of the human commu- do you intend to do about these nity in America. The Jews tweaked TO THAT OF problems and issues, which are en- the moral consciences of their fel- ANY OTHER demic to your communities?

low Americans and entreated them Realizing, of course, that not American jews to consider blacks and all persons HUMAN BEING. every single parent can afford to of color as possessing dignity and send her children to college, per- moral worth equal to that of any other human being. The haps the movement is simply attempting to pass that anti-Israeli platform of Black Lives Matters has under- responsibility on to society. This leads us to some sig- standably alienated some progressive Jews in America nificant philosophical questions: Are the procreative who had initially aligned themselves with the move- choices that we make in life the responsibility of others, ment. And it has alienated this black American as well. or are they our own? Is it a form of child neglect to bring more children into the world than you can afford to sup- HERE IS ANOTHER morally irrespon- port? When you have children, is it fair to expect your sible claim made by the Black Lives neighbors to bear the financial responsibility of raising Matter movement—a claim that should them when they may have decided not to have any, or to offend any self-respecting black Ameri- have just one, or two, or just the exact number that their can citizen. I refer to the movement’s budget can accommodate over the course of a lifetime? demand that the United States provide If someone has sacrificed and planned his life carefully free college education to blacks. On and has already incurred debt by sending his own chil- what grounds is this organization making such a de- dren to school, by what moral right would anyone dare mand? Why free college education for blacks but not tell him that because of racial disparities he is obligated forT poor whites or for Latino, Asian, or Native-Ameri- to finance the college education of someone else’s child? can college students? What special sociopolitical con- Those on the far left will say that free college for ditions exist for blacks that do not hold for other ethnic blacks is a social good. I have heard this repeatedly, and I

Commentary 17 have often asked for clarification. By social good, people on the far left. A sizable number of well-meaning but, in often mean “.” When asked to define the end, racist progressives need black people to beblack . the public interest, leftists tend to fumble and speak It’s the darndest thing, but an African colleague of mine, convolutedly about assorted moral conundrums. But dressed in a formal Chanel suit, was met with disap- society is nothing more than the sum of each individual. pointment by her department chair. Why, she was asked, Therefore, any reference to the public good would logi- didn’t she wear something more ethnic like an African cally first have to refer to the good that each individual dress, and how come she was losing her accent? person can do. How do we know what that good is? One Some on the activist left heed the call of black of the glorious achievements of this country is that here dependence with glee because it places them in a per- we get to choose a conception of the good for ourselves. manent position of power as part of a managerial class For some, it is having a family; for others, it is pursuing lording it over a needy set of entitled subjects whose a career or devoting one’s life to a specialized hobby, ser- interests they represent. The neediness and depen- vice to others, traveling—you name it. There are as many dence of their charges simply reinforce how indepen- conceptions of the good as there are persons to imagine dent, privileged, and powerful those in the managerial them. And in the United States of America, the state has class are in relation to their socioeconomic inferiors. no business imposing its conception—or any concep- Finally, when you demand anything for free, you tion—of the good on you or deciding a priori what your are claiming a status of such impoverishment that you conception of the good is. It leaves you free to choose for hold yourself up as an object of pity. But, unlike compas- yourself so long as you do not violate the individual rights sion and mercy, pity is not characteristically American. of others. If a notion of the public good is foisted on you, Pity denotes contemptuous sorrow for the misery or it means that a group of people has decided that its in- distress of another person. And the contempt one feels terests and conception of the good should override your is linked to a moral vice the other harbors: an unwilling- American jews American conscience. This is an act akin to tyranny, as it takes away ness to exercise one’s agency in the relief of that suffering. your capacity to decide for yourself. To present oneself as a lifelong socioeconomic supplicant The cardinal sin of asking for anything for free in is morally repugnant because it requires that one be- this life is that you abnegate your responsibility not just come an active participant in one’s own infantilization. It for maintaining your existence but, more important, permits that one’s own agency be expropriated by others, for achieving your humanity. For we achieve our hu- and it requires the surrender of one’s capabilities. manity in several ways. One is by exchanging goods and Such ideas assume a malevolence about the services with others. We affirm the worth of the other, American polis that is untenable and empirically false. and we respect the other by rewarding him or her for It’s only natural, therefore, that many Americans re- such services, and, in so doing, our agency is implicated ject this type of victimhood. No doors are closed forev- in affirming our self-worth and dignity in the beautiful er to anyone in this great country of ours. If your ethos act of reciprocity. In reciprocity, there is a recognition of and character disposition are set for achievement, if equality among us as individuals. your will is wedded to a resilience and tenacity, and The demand for a free education, along with the you rid yourself of the idea that you are entitled to demand for race-based reparations by Black Lives Mat- the financial earnings of other people, you will find ter and others, is symptomatic of another problem in a way to make it here. On the other hand, the kind of race relations. There are those on the left who see self-re- dependency that Black Lives Matter promotes lays the liance, initiative, and a commitment to one’s own life as, groundwork for personal failure. at best, hopelessly naive. This skepticism doesn’t apply to My friend Allan would disagree angrily with their own lives—oh, no, they have gotten where they are all this. But I thank him just the same for helping me by the exercise of their own virtues. But the state appa- clarify my thoughts on Black Lives Matter, a move- ratus and its system are so corrupt and stacked against ment that stands to set back the moral progress of our blacks, they believe, that while the application of those nation and the progress of American blacks. I’d also vs. Americans virtues will always be possible for a Condoleezza Rice note that perhaps I don’t see hopelessness at every or a Colin Powell or an Oprah Winfrey, it’s not an option turn or find despair in every corner of America be- for most blacks in America. Such people see grit, honor, cause I ignore those who preach helplessness where hard work, and self-reliance as “white” ideals that are opportunity abounds. And I reject their nurturance of being imposed on others. Those traits reinforce white- scapegoating and dependency. Israel is good. So, too, ness, in their minds, and there is a gnawing resentment is America. And the achievements of both countries of those blacks who wish to appropriate such virtues for demonstrate, above all, the virtues of self-realization themselves. They cease being black in the minds of some and persistence. ’Til we lunch again.q

18 My ‘Black Lives Matter’ Problem : June 2018 African the rise of bl ack anti- semitism BY JAMES KIRCHICK

HE YEAR 2018 has thus far been ered a characteristic anti-Semitic tirade. “When you toxic for black-Jewish relations. want something in this world, the Jew holds the door,” In February, Women’s March co- Farrakhan declared. “White folks are going down, and president Tamika Mallory attended Satan is going down, and Farrakhan by God’s grace has the Nation of Islam’s (NOI) annual pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew—and I’m here to “Saviours’ Day” gathering, where say, your time is up.” For good measure, Farrakhan also sect leader Louis Farrakhan deliv- claimed that Jews control the FBI as well as Mexico,

James Kirchick, a visiting fellow at the , is the author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age. CommentaryT 19 and he repeated a relatively new conspiracy theory, the black political figures associating with Farrakhan to “Pot Plot,” alleging that Jews promote homosexuality emerge in the early months of 2018. In January, a long- among black men through the distribution of a special hidden photograph was published showing Barack form of marijuana. Obama smiling with Farrakhan at a 2005 Congressio- When it was revealed that Mallory had sat in nal Black Caucus reception. A member of the CBC, An- the audience for this rant, she not only refused to dis- dre Carson, later admitted to holding a meeting with tance herself from the anti-Semitic cult but boasted the Nation of Islam leader in 2015. Farrakhan claimed of her three-decade long relationship with it. “I was that Keith Ellison—current deputy chairman of the raised in activism and believe that as historically op- Democratic National Committee—was also present at pressed people, blacks, Jews, Muslims and all people the meeting, a claim Ellison denies. But given Ellison’s must stand together to fight racism, anti-Semitism, record of misleading statements on his relationship and Islamophobia,” she said in a statement. Declaring with Farrakhan and the NOI, there is no reason to trust that she is “guided by the loving principles of Dr. Mar- him on this question. tin Luther King, Jr.,” who dedicated his entire career It’s hard to imagine that left-wing activists or to opposing the very sort of racial separatism, hatred, Democratic politicians would keep their careers after and conspiracy promoted by the likes of Farrakhan associating with a figure who spouts hatred against and others of his ilk, Mallory made clear that she had any other minority group the way Farrakhan does with no intention of ever disassociating herself from the Jews. Having attained a certain level of political power NOI. or social capital, however, Mallory, Jarret, Obama, and While some black leaders and writers criticized the CBC have apparently insulated themselves from Mallory, her stubbornness found support in high plac- criticism on this point, at least among their fellow pro- es. “Now you work with people all the time with whom gressives and much of the elite media. American jews American you disagree,” said Valerie Jarrett, former senior ad- Such invulnerability to public condemnation viser to President Barack Obama, to the ladies of The has not been the experience of Trayon White, a Wash- View. Jarrett spoke as if America’s foremost anti-Sem- ington, D.C., city councillor representing the capitol’s ite were just some recalcitrant House Republican in poorest neighborhood of Anacostia. During a brief need of a stern, Oval Office arm-twist. To this day, Mal- snow flurry in March, White published a video on his lory (along with her Women’s March sisters-in-arms official Facebook page blaming the adverse weather and Carmen Perez) proudly considers on the Rothschild family. “Man, it just started snowing Farrakhan an ally, and there is no indication that she out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay at- or the organization she leads has suffered serious rep- tention to this climate control, man, this climate ma- utational damage because of her association with him. nipulation,” the 34-year-old, college-educated, elected On the contrary, Mallory has successfully ex- official told his constituents. “And D.C. keep talking acted revenge on at least one prominent Jewish or- about, ‘We a resilient city.’ And that’s a model based off ganization that criticized her for associating with the the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natu- NOI. In April, following national outrage sparked by ral disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. the arrest of two black men at a Philadelphia Star- Be careful.” bucks, the coffee giant announced that the Anti- White seemed genuinely perplexed when it was Defamation League would be one of four civil-rights explained to him that assertions about a European organizations to participate in diversity-training ex- Jewish banking family manipulating the weather had ercises for its employees across the country. Mallory anti-Semitic undertones. And those inclined to give loudly objected, accusing the ADL of “constantly at- White the benefit of the doubt, presuming his words tacking black and brown people,” by which she seems came more from ignorance than malice, were forced to have meant Tamika Mallory and Louis Farrakhan. to reconsider when it emerged that he had donated Joining her in protest was —a $500 to the very same “Saviours’ Day” event attended vs. Americans fringe group advocating the Boycott, Sanctions, and by Mallory. Nor did White do himself any favors when, Divestment campaign against Israel—and other left- invited by local Jewish leaders to the United States ist groups that oppose the ADL over its engagement Holocaust Memorial and Museum, he abruptly left in with police departments for racial-sensitivity train- the middle of a personally guided tour. At a rally called ing. A little over a week after Mallory launched her to defend White, organized by a mayoral appointee, a social-media campaign demanding that Starbucks Nation of Islam representative blasted one of White’s drop the ADL, the company caved. Jewish fellow council members as a “fake Jew” and re- This was not the only instance of prominent ferred to Jews as “termites.”

20 The Rise of Black Anti-Semitism : June 2018 African African Americans vs. American jews 21 IfTimes. Newsday . Strangers of Closest The There is nothing particularlynothing is There and Italians largely controlling the controlling largely Italians and were - usu unions, Jews trade city’s ally the people with whom blacks came into contact at school, the store, in the courtroom, the or apartment, wel- an rent to office, fare Irish getthe walls to the “If credit. and Italians had put up themselves around were largely ken, that unbro- only made Jewish liber- als the most accessible apologists and beneficiaries of an oppressive the strangers, of closest the system, easiest targets,” former his in wrote Sleeper Jim columnist rela- race York New of history 1990 tions, unique or special about this type of anti-Semitism, the sort of petty bigotry that afflicts any group liv- ing in close quarters with anoth- er, whether the communities are Irish–Italian, black–Irish, or - Hin du–Muslim. In the American con- to expected be can bigotry this text, dissipate with time as populations crime decreases, living intermarry, Black anti-Semitism typically takes one of two This “neighborhood” anti-Semitism is a neces- higher than the general population (23 percent and 14 14 and percent (23 population general the than higher 2016). in respectively percent forms: “neighborhood” or conspiratorial. The former mi- postwar the after’60s 1950s and the in developed Jews put cities northern to blacks southern of gration and African Americans in close proximity to one an- described Gates York. New in prominently most other, this variety of anti-Semitism as “a familiar of pattern clientelistic hostility toward the neighborhood ven- dor or landlord.” With Irish dominating the police, “Negroes diversify. neighborhoods and rise, standards are anti-Semitic because they’re anti-White,” James the for piece 1967 a in simply it put Baldwin an added there’s layer of resentment to black–Jewish - black–Ital or black–Irish afflict doesn’t that relations mi- a being as perceived are Jews that it’s relations, ian economically, advanced having that, population nority has abandoned the trappings of the ghetto and today white. as “passes” successfully sary the for conspiratorial. the predicate second type, This is embodied by Farrakhan and either endorsed what It’s White. and Mallory of likes the by echoed or top-down, the from “anti-Semitism as to referred Gates TRADE TRADE LARGELY LARGELY THE CITY’S CITY’S THE WITH IRISH IRISH WITH AND IN THE THE IN AND THE STORE, STORE, THE AT SCHOOL, SCHOOL, AT THE PEOPLE PEOPLE THE THE POLICE, POLICE, THE WITH WHOM WHOM WITH DOMINATING DOMINATING COURTROOM. COURTROOM. BLACKS CAME CAME BLACKS AND ITALIANS ITALIANS AND CONTROLLING CONTROLLING UNIONS, JEWS JEWS UNIONS, INTO CONTACT CONTACT INTO WERE USUALLY USUALLY WERE

Times, Harvard New New York Finally, in April, New York AssemblywomanDi- York New April, in Finally, All these episodes follow the ana Richardson publicly accused Jews of gentrifying considering accusation strange a district, her that it includes Flatbush and Crown Heights, neigh- borhoods that have long had sizeable Jewish - popula tions. Responding to a member of a local community doorbell her ringing people of complained who board Rich- house, her selling in interested was she if ask to ardson replied, “It must be Jewish people.” in Earlier the same meeting, she gratuitously - south referred from senator to Jewish “the as a legislator Brooklyn Brooklyn.” ern familiar pattern for black–Jewish controversies, which have erupted periodically since the late 1960s: A black figure of some (often neg- ligible) prominence will make statement a offending Jews, Jewish self- both with respond will leaders flagellating concern and righteous outrage, and both feeling the resent- fracas will leave communities essay 1992 a In other. the toward ful for the Commentary * The same, of course, can and must be said of the white Ameri- white the of said be must and can course, of same, The * cans who, if not motivated by racism it. or for tolerance xenophobia high veryin a voting had nonetheless Trump, Donald for scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. de- scribed anti-Semitism among Af- rican Americans as “a weapon in of who will speak battle the raging for black America: those who have others, with cause common sought or those who preach a barricaded withdrawal into racial - authentic words, other in Anti-Semitism, ity.” is a tool used by political preneurs entre- in a continuation of the internecine fight for black author- This fight initially main- pitted ity. stream, philo-Semitic, consensus- seeking leaders such as Bayard Martin Rustin Luther against radical, King separatist, and black-na- tionalist figures ofvarying ideological (and religious) stripes. While it may be accurate to blame individual controver- these for leaders would-be opportunistsor the on commentary dispiriting a nonetheless is it sies, political potency of anti-Semitism within black com- the (justwitness work often tactics such that munities career of Sharpton).* Attitudinal surveys conducted Americans African that show consistently ADL the by significantly rate a at proclivities” “anti-Semitic harbor engineered and promoted by leaders who affect to be Howard Beach attacks, the Central Park Five), along speaking for a larger resentment.” Included among the with a stridently Jewish mayor () who often NOI’s outlandish repertoire are narratives of Jewish found himself at odds with equally strident black ac- slave owners and tales about how African Americans tivists (Al Sharpton et. al.), all contributed to a wors- are the true ancient Hebrews of the Old Testament, ening of black–white relations more generally. This in the latter being the origin of today’s claims of “fake turn had an adverse effect on black–Jewish relations Jews.” Facilitating the spread of anti-Semitism within specifically. black communities is a penchant for conspiracy theo- By contrast, today’s contretemps come at a pe- ry, not hard to understand given the historical experi- culiar time. The great political questions of the day ence of black people in America. Kidnapped, shipped all revolve around Donald Trump and the national- to this country in slave ships, tortured, experimented ist platform on which he was elected. And no two on, and subject to legal discrimination, black people ethnic groups were more opposed to Trump’s presi- have more reason to be skeptical dential campaign than the blacks of America, its institutions, and and the Jews. Even among those promises than any other popula- THE conservatives and Republicans op- tion. If one already believes that posed to Trump, Jewish writers, the CIA invented the crack-cocaine PREVALENCE intellectuals, and philanthropists epidemic, or that the government OF, AND are vastly overrepresented, a point blew up the levees of New Orleans that has not gone unnoticed by so that Hurricane Katrina would INSOUCIANCE the president’s white-supremacist destroy poor black neighborhoods, TOWARDS, backers.* Prior to the rise of Trump, then how far of a leap is it to be- Jewish voters overwhelmingly gave American jews American lieve that Jews control the banks, ANTI- their money and support to Barack never mind the weather? SEMITISM IN Obama, the nation’s first black president, in both of his campaigns. ENSIONS between THE AFRICAN- While his administration’s policies African-Americans AMERICAN toward Israel and his Iranian nucle- and Jewish Ameri- ar agreement may have divided the cans have not been COMMUNITY Jewish community internally, oppo- this bad since 1991. MIRRORS A sition to the latter waged by much In that single, fate- of organized Jewry did not result ful year, the Crown TREND WITHIN in serious conflict with American Heights riot resulted in the death THE BROADER blacks. (The only friction in this re- of an Australian Jewish student, gard surfaced in the spring of 2015 Tthe Nation of Islam released a PROGRESSIVE when Israeli Prime Minister Benja- libelous tract (The Secret Relation- COMMUNITY. min Netanyahu accepted an invita- ship Between Blacks and Jews) tion from Capitol Hill Republicans alleging an exceptionally invidious to criticize the pending Iran deal Jewish role in the slave trade, and City University of before a joint session of Congress. Some Congressional New York black studies professor Leonard Jeffries Black Caucus leaders portrayed this move as a racial made national headlines with his denunciations of “a slight.) conspiracy, planned and plotted and programmed out While African Americans have overwhelmingly of Hollywood” by “people called Greenberg and Weis- voted against every Republican presidential nominee berg and Trigliani.” since Barry Goldwater, there are considerable and en- Disturbing as they were, the black–Jewish quar- tirely valid reasons why they would harbor special ani- vs. Americans rels of the early ’90s seemed to follow a peculiar logic. mosity toward the current president. That a white man The exodus of Jews into the suburbs and their subse- who is so extravagantly flawed would immediately fol- quent assimilation into “white” America, along with low a black man who carried himself with the dignity the rise of a Jewishly inflected neoconservative move- and comportment appropriate to the presidency—and ment opposed to affirmative action, inevitably contrib- that the white man’s campaign was jump-started with uted to a weakening of the black–Jewish civil-rights racially charged innuendo about the location of his coalition of yore. Moreover, the racial dramas of 1980s * See my “Trump’s Terrifying Online Brigades,” Commentary, New York (Bernie Goetz, the Tawana Brawley case, the June 2016.

22 The Rise of Black Anti-Semitism : June 2018 African African

black predecessor’s birth—has convinced many blacks publicans included, are right there with blacks in op- that the election of Donald Trump was ultimately the posing this president and the type of American politics result of racial backlash, or “white-lash,” against the he embodies. The persistence of anti-Semitism in the nation’s first African-American president. African black community worries Jews who feel that their in- Americans daily witness a white man saying and do- terests have not been so clearly aligned with those of ing things that a black man would never get away with black Americans since the high-water mark of black– (covering up an affair with a porn star, likening the Jewish collaboration in the 1960s. nation’s intelligence services to Nazi Germany, etc.) The prevalence of, and insouciance toward, anti- and reasonably ask whether the election of an African- Semitism in the African-American community mirrors American president was a bizarre one-off owing to the a trend within the broader progressive community. Americans vs. unique charisma, eloquence, and biracial background On the left, anti-Semitism is increasingly downplayed of Barack Obama. because it supposedly afflicts people who are “white” Of course, there are many reasons that Donald and therefore in possession of “power.” Writing in the Trump is president, and the extent to which racial ani- Atlantic, John Paul-Pagano recently identified the for- mus played a role is debatable. But such a question is mula by which the progressive left analyzes bigotry: beyond the scope of this essay. Needless to say, blacks “Racism equals prejudice plus power.” Because blacks have reason to feel embittered and disappointed by lack power, they cannot be racist, and because Jews the election of Donald Trump. And these feelings have possess power, they cannot be victims of racism. Noam led to a heightened racial consciousness among many Chomsky elaborated on this theme in 2002: black writers, politicians, and activists. What’s signifi- cant in this respect is that these black Americans are By now Jews in the U.S. are the most privileged ardently joined in this sentiment by the overwhelming and influential part of the population. You majority of their fellow Jewish citizens, who also see in find occasional instances of anti-Semitism the 2016 election not just a racially tinged repudiation but they are marginal. There’s plenty of rac- of the country’s first black president, but a recrudes- ism, but it’s directed against blacks, Latinos, cence of the nativism and xenophobia that, wherever [and] Arabs are targets of enormous racism, and whenever they rear their ugly heads, have never and those problems are real. Anti-Semitism been good for the Jews. is no longer a problem, fortunately. It’s raised, In this way, the current nadir in black–Jewish but it’s raised because privileged people want relations resembles the initial eruption of black–Jew- to make sure they have total control, not just ish conflict in the late 1960s, which similarly followed 98 percent control. That’s why anti-Semitism a period of political collaboration and therefore struck is becoming an issue. Not because of the

Jews as a tragic blow. Almost from the beginning of threat of anti-Semitism; they want to make American jews their mass settlement in the United States, Jews played sure there’s no critical look at the policies an important role in advancing the civil rights of, the U.S. (and they themselves) support in the and furthering opportunities for, African Americans, Middle East. whose fate Jews considered intertwined with their own as fellow minorities in a WASP-dominated coun- Operating under the equation that “racism try. Jews were instrumental in founding the National equals prejudice plus power,” some on the left choose Association for the Advancement of Colored People in to ignore, rationalize, or entirely excuse black anti- 1909 and in the civil-rights movement decades later. Semitism as a function of unfair power dynamics in a Nearly two-thirds of the white participants in the 1964 capitalist society. According to this analysis, because Freedom Summer were Jews, including Andrew Good- blacks supposedly lack political power, or have less man and Michael Schwerner, who were both mur- of it than Jews, it is either not possible for them to be dered, alongside African-American James Chaney, by anti-Semitic, or their anti-Semitism is not worth wor- white supremacists in Mississippi. rying about compared with that of traditional, right- Later in that decade, the rise of black separatist wing anti-Semitism. “But of course, he did not say that movements such as the Nation of Islam and the Black Jews controlled the weather,” a board member of Jews Panthers, each of which adopted a Third Worldist ide- for Racial and Economic Justice wrote in the Forward ology and espoused anti-Israel (and often anti-Semitic) regarding Trayon White. “He said that the Rothschilds rhetoric, thus came as a shock to Jews. What likewise did.” There’s a word for this kind of condescension, makes this current political moment so perplexing and which progressives would never display if the person painful is that most Jews, many conservatives and Re- in question were white: racist.

Commentary 23 Though Farrakhan regularly fills arenas for his at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” the former MSNBC harangues and earns audiences with congressmen, host said. “And to have any concern about Louis Farra- liberals have been at pains to minimize his influence. khan’s anti-Semitism is weird.” She continued: When progressive Jewish female activists asked Tami- ka Mallory to distance herself from Farrakhan, Jor- Like, Louis f---ing Farrakhan? Are you serious? dan Weissmann, a Jewish writer for Slate, rhetorically Because Louis Farrakhan is empowered to do asked, “Is there a single Jew in America who is actu- what? He runs an organization that controls ally worried about Louis Farrakhan or the Nation of what resources? And creates what policy? Islam?” He explained further with a non sequitur: “I’m And owns property where? I mean, it’s weird. not worried about anti-Semitism from the black left The president of the United States has ques- because I see zero evidence that it is significantly moti- tioned the humanity—like are they human—of vated by anti-Semitism (I seem to recall a lot of young Jewish people. The president of the United black progressives supporting a guy named Sand- States. So I’m super-duper focused on that. ers).”* Weissmann later retracted his tweet, but only And that various people walking around the when it was made apparent to him that Farrakhan planet are racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, is, like, posed a “very clear threat to LGBTQ people of color.” shrug-my-shoulders true. Jews, presumably, will just have to get used to hearing Louis Farrakhan call Adolf Hitler “a very great man.” For all his many faults, Donald Trump has never At a panel organized by Jewish Voice for Peace “questioned the humanity,” either metaphysically or (JVP) that convened at the New School last December, biologically, “of Jewish people.” But the purpose of JVP activist Lina Morales readily conceded: “Louis Harris-Perry’s interjection was not judicious analysis Farrakhan — I think he’s an anti-Semite — but materi- of anti-Semitism. It was to redraw the boundaries of American jews American ally, how has he put Jews in danger? Not really, be- the left’s new political coalition, which is set to include cause he only really affects the black community. But ever-more-extreme voices opposed to the president people in Chicago, white Jews, love to talk about him and his agenda. and love to paint him as the ultimate anti-Semite. Why Writing nearly 30 years ago, Shelby Steele recog- is that?” The history of the 20th century should dis- nized the “fundamental irony” of “black–Jewish bick- pel any notion that anti-Semitic maniacs with follow- ering” that guarantees these periodic outbursts will ings in the tens of thousands are harmless oddities to always generate headlines: “the irony of there being be ignored. But even if we were to validate Morales’s conflict where we presume there should be harmony.” assumptions— that Farrakhan “only really affects the Most blacks seek no conflict with Jews, and vice versa. black community”— it would consign his followers to Which is why it is all the more important for respon- a sort of unofficial second-class citizenship, as people sible black leaders to draw a line in the sand when it who adopt the Nation of Islam’s view of the world are comes to toxic figures such as Farrakhan, and to reject condemning themselves to wallow in ignorance. For the excuses of their enablers. A political coalition all the talk about how the NOI helps poor black com- that makes room for the likes of such individuals is munities, one will not make it very far in this world if one that will inherently be unwelcoming to Jews, and he believes that crafty Jews are trying to keep the black one that all decent people should reject. man down with gay weed. (And lest Morales truly be- The recent controversies are reflective not so lieve that Farrakhan’s praise of Hitler doesn’t affect much of a major, growing rift between blacks and Jews the physical security of Jews, in April, a Jewish man as they are indications of two competing visions for in Crown Heights was attacked by an African-Ameri- America. On one side stands an increasingly fatalistic can assailant screaming, “You fake Jews, who are you progressivism, which maintains a “no enemies to the saying hello to? You’re fake Jews, and you stole all my left” strategy in fighting a twighlight struggle against money and robbed me, and stole my mortgage and my what it considers to be an incipient fascist dictator- vs. Americans house. I want to kill you!’) ship. It is willing to make common cause with all man- Asked about the Mallory controversy by Yahoo ner of illiberal and regressive political forces provided News, Melissa Harris-Perry went so far as to impugn they hew to the party line. And on the other side sits Jews for even raising the issue of Farrakhan. “The most the postwar American liberal tradition of pluralistic dangerous anti-Semite in the country currently lives patriotism to which Jews of all political stripes have so faithfully pledged allegiance. All Americans, not just * was actually deeply unpopular among black voters, a phenomenon that likely had at least something to do blacks and Jews, have an interest in the outcome of with the higher rate of anti-Semitism among blacks. this conflict.q

24 The Rise of Black Anti-Semitism : June 2018 African the 1968 New York Cit y school strike revisited BY VINCENT J. CANNATO AND JERALD PODAIR

N THE FALL OF 1968, more than 50,000 New York about more than just a labor battle over salary City teachers went on strike for a total of 37 days or working conditions. They turned into a bit- in three separate walkouts that kept more than ter conflict about who would control the city. a million students out of the classroom. They They exposed and exacerbated tense relations sprang from a controversy in an experimental between blacks and whites and inflamed an anti- school district located in an obscure Brooklyn Semitism that had always existed just under the neighborhood called Ocean Hill–Brownsville. In surface of interethnic and interracial relations. the tumultuous year of 1968, these strikes were They tore at the heart of the liberal political

Vincent J. Cannato, associate professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Boston, is the author of, among other works, The Ungovernable City: and His Struggle to Save New York. Jerald Podair is iprofessor of history and Robert S. French professor of American studies at Lawrence University and the author of The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill–Brownsville Crisis.

Commentary 25 coalition, as the labor movement came into conflict T THE CENTER of the Ocean Hill– with the civil-rights movement. And they provided Brownsville controversy was Mayor another piece of evidence that something had gone Lindsay. The tall and handsome patri- seriously wrong in New York City and in American cian had been elected as a reform Re- cities in general. publican mayor of New York in 1965 on The strikes of 1968 helped diminish the standing the promise that he would hack away at of the city’s mayor, John Lindsay, a national figure with the influence of the various “power bro- great ambitions who had promised a more efficient kers” he believed were leading New York toward stagna- city government as well as a more just city for those liv- tion and preventing minority groups from gaining their ing at the margins of society. By the end of 1968, Time rightfulA place in the city. Education was one of those magazine put Lindsay on its cover under the ban- areas in which Lindsay was eager to make change. He ner “New York: The Break- believed deeply in the obliga- down of a City,” and its ac- tions owed by the privileged companying article talked to the most vulnerable. The about “John Lindsay’s ten WITH INTEGRATION governing philosophy of his plagues.” BECOMING administration, expressed by The Ocean Hill–Browns- one of his aides, was “those ville controversy would lead INCREASINGLY who have nothing or those to a political takeover of DIFFICULT who have the least should get the city’s schools by New the most even if it is every- York state. It effectively end- AND ‘BLACK thing you have.” But in many ed any meaningful discus- instances, those who bore

American jews American POWER’ GAINING sion of school reform for at the burden of Lindsay’s poli- least three decades, leaving INFLUENCE, SOME cies were not wealthy Man- millions of children stuck in IN THE AFRICAN- hattanites, but middle- and a system that would contin- working-class whites living ue to underperform. Ocean AMERICAN in the outer boroughs. Hill–Brownsville also helped COMMUNITY Black New Yorkers had transform the city’s politi- been protesting the condi- cal culture, weakening the BEGAN TO ARGUE tions in city schools since city’s liberal coalition and THAT THE WAY the early 1960s. But the be- strengthening the power of ginning of the actual Ocean outer-borough whites who FORWARD WAS Hill–Brownsville controver- would go on to elect Ed Koch NOT INTEGRATION sy was a more mundane in 1977 and in attempt on the part of the 1993. In the starkest terms, BUT ‘COMMUNITY Lindsay administration to the strikes pitted wealthy CONTROL’ OF get more state funding for whites and poor blacks city schools. If it could break against middle-class whites THE SCHOOLS. up the single mammoth city and caused massive cogni- school district and treat each tive dissonance for many lib- borough as the separate erals who found themselves condemning striking union- county that it actually was, the Lindsay administration ized workers for being reactionary and bigoted. believed, the entire city would be eligible for tens of mil- In this way, New York City would prove to be lions more dollars a year from Albany. a harbinger of national political trends that would In 1967, Lindsay created the Mayor’s Adviso- vs. Americans unfold after the 1960s all the way down to the pres- ry Panel on Decentralization of the New York City ent, when political pundits scratch their heads and Schools to recommend an administrative overhaul of try to understand the mysteries of the so-called the school system. In a move with deep significance, white working class. Revisiting New York of the late Lindsay named McGeorge Bundy to head the panel. 1960s, and specifically the Ocean Hill–Brownsville Bundy, a Boston Brahmin, had served as national- controversy, might help these pundits figure out security adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson how the national political landscape changed so before taking over the . There was no dramatically. representative of the teachers’ union on the panel, or

26 The 1968 New York City School Strike Revisited : June 2018 African African Americans vs. American jews 27 Brooklyn, cean Hill– EEP INSIDE Brownsville had been nantly Jewish well into predomi- the 1950s, - Podho Norman young the to home Roth, Henry and Kazin, Alfred retz, gang- notorious the mention to not sters of Murder, Inc. But the area One of these districts was in a predominately addition- provide not did Education of Board The Another such symbol was the cohort of mostly in arrivals recent often students, black their But school boards would hire an administrator to run the the run to administrator an hire would boards school schools in each district. But “the basic functional re- lationships would remain the same” in terms of how Education. of Board the to related districts these black and Puerto Rican neighborhood in . An- other was a lower- stu- district white some with and black, a Hispanic, mix Asian, low-income of dents. The third was Ocean Hill–Brownsville. Lindsay low-income, three choosing that recognized later aides mostly minority districts was a mistake. ing “In three of choos- the most-deprived neighborhoods of the city, instead of selecting at least one against black pit middle-income not would experiment the where area Lindsay aide white,” Barry Gottehrer later wrote, “the inevitable.” was retrospect, in confrontation, Foundation Ford Bundy’s so districts, these for funds al 1 than more gave Ford 1968, and 1967 In gap. the filled experimen- three the to money grant in dollars million proj- control-related community other and districts tal ects, including $160,000 to the Reverend Galamison’s communities assist and inform to “programs for church schools.” NYC with relationships close establish to

changed rapidly, and by 1968, it was 95 percent black rapidly, changed often were remained that Jews The Rican. Puerto and the owners of small businesses unable to They aroused the ire of the newer relocate. residents who saw authority. white of symbols as them Jewish teachers in the Ocean Hill–Brownsville public of Federation United fledgling the of members schools, system’s school the become had (UFT),which Teachers their and teachers Jewish The 1961. in agent bargaining black Ocean Hill–Brownsville pupils represented both public- City York New the of failures and successes the school system. The teachers, themselves the product of that system, were the beneficiaries of a competitive Board of Examiners testing apparatus that op- offered gain. material and advancement career for portunities the neighborhood, appeared doomed. For them, the idea of the public schools as an escalator - Ju of upward Hill–Brownsville’s Ocean joke. cruel a was mobility worst-performing the of one was 271 School High nior D

Late in Bundy’s 1967, panel recommended that And while Lindsay and elite Bundy’s commission seg- more becoming were schools city anything, If difficult increasingly becoming integration With In April independent 1967, of the Bundy Panel, Commentary anyone to represent middle-class whites. middle-class represent to anyone the school system be broken up into a “community school system, consisting of a federation of districts and school a central education The agency.” prob- lems of inner-city schools, argued the Bundy Report, were the problems of an reaucracy. unresponsive Bringing school control over bu- education back to neighborhoods and communities would advisory an reform only was Report the Bundy The system. school document. The Lindsay administration needed to get went It it. implement to Albany in through legislation political the possess not did simply Lindsay nowhere. reform. dramatic a such secure to skills was debating the theoretical future of schools, city New closer to the ground were Yorkers also debating similar black community had ideas. become New deeplyYork’s frustrated with the condition Milton of Reverend the inner-city by schools. led leaders In civil-rights local 1964, to schools city of boycott one-day a organized Galamison Galamison1966, In integration. of pace slow the protest led a takeover of the Board of Education, with his allies Board.” “Peoples’ the themselves declaring regated in the 1960s. The percentage of African Ameri- cans in New York City had increased from 6 in 1940 to percentnearly 20 percent in 1968. By 1963, minority children represented 40 percent of all students in the public schools. Most African Americans were stuck becom- were in schools their and neighborhoods, inner-city awith schools of number The all-black. increasingly ing from grew percent 90 than more of population minority from flight White 1968. in percent 28 to 1955 in percent 8 the outer boroughs made the trends worse as the white student population declined between 1957 and 72from and Bronx the in percent 43 to percent 65 from 1964, percent to 54 percent in Brooklyn. Outer-borough high schools that had been integrated in 1960 found them- selves becoming overwhelmingly minority in just a few flight. white to due years Afri- the in some influence, gaining power” “black and way the that argue to began community can-American control” “community but integration not was forward the create would community black The schools. the of school curriculum, hire teachers and staff, and have budget. the over control the city’s Board of Education attempted to appease ex- three creating by control community of advocates perimental school districts where a limited version of community control could be tested. Local elected in the city, with 73 and 85 percent of its pupils testing and an admirer of Malcolm X’s, immediately clashed below grade level in reading and math, respectively. with white UFT representatives over the parameters of Only 2 percent of its graduates qualified for admission the local board’s powers, which had been vaguely de- to one of the city’s specialized high schools that sat at fined (probably deliberately so) by the Board of Educa- the top of the system’s meritocratic pyramid. Interac- tion. The union and McCoy squabbled throughout the tions between teachers and pupils at JHS 271 and the 1967–68 academic year: Who controlled the content of other Ocean Hill–Brownsville schools sometimes de- the school curriculum? Who controlled the selection generated into violence, with a rising level of assaults of administrators? Most important, who controlled against educational personnel there. the hiring and firing of teachers? McCoy argued that if Lindsay, whose personal experience with whites “community control” meant anything at all, it meant outside Manhattan was perfunctory and who, in the that the people of Ocean Hill–Brownsville, speaking words of a contemporary observer, “doesn’t under- through their elected local board and through him, stand the life of a mailman or a cop,” appeared to view could select the men and women who would teach municipal politics as a zero-sum game in which the their children. gains of the city’s middle class had come at the expense Shanker and the UFT had different views. The of the minority poor. To Lindsay, New York’s public- union membership was heavily invested in the Board sector unions and the white ethnic groups that pre- of Examiners system, which employed race-blind stan- dominated in them were self-interested impediments dards of merit to select and advance teachers. What to racial justice in the city. In contemporary lingo, McCoy and the local board proposed to do was a po- Lindsay saw these working-class whites as deeply lad- tential body blow, not just to their livelihoods but also en with “white privilege.” to the very value system by which they governed their Albert Shanker, the grim-visaged UFT president, professional lives. Shanker believed it was an existen- American jews American was the labor leader Lindsay liked least, a sentiment tial threat to his union. fully reciprocated by the -bred son of Rus- Founded in 1960, the UFT was struggling to es- sian-Jewish immigrants. Lindsay viewed the brusque tablish a voice in the management of the public-school Shanker as déclassé, vulgar, and worse; he was the only system after decades of teacher disempowerment. person whom Mary Lindsay, the city’s first lady, banned Shanker believed that if a local school board could de- from the private living quarters at Gracie Mansion, the cide unilaterally who would teach in its schools, the mayor’s official residence. At one point during nego- UFT would be a union in name only. He also worried tiations at City Hall, Shanker deeply offended Lindsay’s about the racial and ethnic implications of the UFT’s sense of decorum by putting his feet on the mayor’s desk dispute with McCoy and the Ocean Hill–Brownsville and revealing his sagging socks. To the Lindsay people, local board. The board was almost all nonwhite. The Shanker and his union failed their test of selflessness Ocean Hill–Brownsville teaching cohort was predomi- and concern for the public interest. They were simply nantly white and Jewish. JHS 271 was already becom- “power brokers” looking to put their own power ahead ing a racial powder keg. The school’s black teachers, of the public good. One mayoral aide called Shanker led by Leslie Campbell, later known as Jitu Weusi, had “a terrible, terrible person,” while another remembers begun to self-segregate from their white counterparts. Lindsay calling Shanker an “evil man.” The day following the assassination of Dr. Martin Lu- But to Shanker, Lindsay was the embodiment of ther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, pupils left their class- every upper-crust Protestant, reeking of moral sancti- rooms, attacked teachers, and destroyed school prop- mony and a whiff of genteel anti-Semitism, who had erty. Campbell, at a memorial service for King, told looked down at him and “his kind” for generations. students: “You’ve got to get your minds together. You Lindsay and Shanker’s incompatibilities would impart know who to steal from. If you steal, steal from those an ethnocultural sting to the events to come at Ocean who have it. Stop fighting among yourselves.” Hill–Brownsville and beyond. One month later, Shanker’s fears were realized. vs. Americans On May 7, the local board, along with McCoy, met and URING THE SUMMER of 1967, a local selected 19 Ocean Hill–Brownsville educators to re- board composed of local residents was ceive letters of “termination of employment.” All were elected, which in turn chose Rhody union members. All except one were white (one black McCoy, the principal of a special ser- teacher was mistakenly included on the list). All but a vice school for emotionally disturbed handful of the teachers were Jewish. children, as the experiment’s admin- The letters turned the simmering controversy istrator. McCoy, a black nationalist into a citywide crisis. It drew stark battle lines. Most of D28 The 1968 New York City School Strike Revisited : June 2018 African African

Manhattan supported the Ocean Hill–Brownsville lo- ly against anti-Semitism and discrimination and culti- cal board and the community-control experiment. For vated friends and allies in the Jewish community. More professional elites in business, media, academia, and significantly, in the early 1960s, Spellman would join politics, the opportunity to exhibit empathy for impov- other cardinals in crafting the Second Vatican Coun- erished African-American children in a distant neigh- cil’s revised teachings on the relationship of Catholics borhood in their battle against white middle-class civil toward Jews and other non-Christians. By 1968, the servants was an almost irresistible form of what to- teacher terminations ordered by the local board at day would be called “virtue signaling.” Their support Ocean Hill–Brownsville only furthered the rapproche- for African Americans at Ocean Hill–Brownsville an- ment between Catholics and Jews. nounced, in the parlance of the 1960s, that they “gave The Ocean Hill–Brownsville crisis also highlighted Americans vs. a damn,” without the necessity of personal sacrifice. the split within New York’s Jewish community. More af- The minority poor in Manhattan and elsewhere fluent Jews living in Manhattan increasingly came to in the city had a more per- identify with the interests sonal and immediate reason and ideology of non-Jewish to back McCoy and the local TO LINDSAY, NEW liberals. These more affluent board: racial solidarity. Out- Jews felt a growing distance er-borough whites aligned YORK’S PUBLIC- toward their less-well-to-do with Shanker and the UFT.SECTOR UNIONS AND co-religionists living in the This was in part an expres- outer boroughs, who were sion of support for other THE WHITE ETHNIC less concerned with theo- unionists, since Shanker ar- GROUPS THAT retical ideas of social justice gued that “a union is worth and more concerned about nothing if it fails to defend PREDOMINATED the actual conditions of their the rights of its members to IN THEM WERE neighborhoods and schools. their jobs.” These apprehensive out- But the more power- SELF-INTERESTED er-borough Jews looked for ful motivations were racial. IMPEDIMENTS TO help where they could find The terminations at Ocean it. With Mayor Lindsay and Hill–Brownsville set in mo- RACIAL JUSTICE Manhattan elites, not to men- tion forces that would even- IN THE CITY. IN tion virtually the entire black tually transform the politi- community, either actively cal and social landscape of CONTEMPORARY demanding the removal of the city. For decades, that LINGO, LINDSAY SAW the teachers or indifferent American jews landscape had been defined to their plight, it was clear by the rivalry between Jews THESE WORKING- that assistance would have to and white Catholics. Sepa- CLASS WHITES AS come from elsewhere. rated by ethnic, religious, It did. It came from and cultural chasms that DEEPLY LADEN WITH Italian, Irish, and East Euro- appeared unbridgeable, ‘WHITE PRIVILEGE.’ pean Catholics who identi- their New Yorks intersected, fied with Jews on the basis when they did at all, uncom- of growing concerns over fortably and awkwardly. rising crime rates, burgeoning welfare costs, deterio- “There is probably a wider gap between Jews rating neighborhoods, and educational anarchy—as and Catholics in New York today than in the days of Al symbolized by the Ocean Hill–Brownsville termina- Smith,” Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan tions themselves. Their differences over forms of reli- wrote in Beyond the Melting Pot in 1963. The compet- gious worship and the venality of machine politicians ing value systems they described—cosmopolitan and became much less significant. Where Jews saw Jewish rationalist for Jews, and traditional and religious for teachers victimized at Ocean Hill–Brownsville, white Catholics—had taken on sturdy lives of their own. Yet Catholics saw white ones. After May 1968, these per- even as Glazer and Moynihan were writing, the begin- spectives would meld into a powerful electoral force in nings of a thaw between Jews and Catholics in New city life. White Catholics and Jews were two-thirds of York and beyond could be detected. New York Arch- New York’s 1968 population. Together, they could elect bishop Francis Cardinal Spellman spoke out frequent- a mayor who would “give a damn”—about them.

Commentary 29 FTER THE TERMINATIONS were an- Ocean Hill–Brownsville “a conflict so intense that it nounced, both sides dug in their heels. was described in apocalyptic terms at the time.” With McCoy vowed that the fired teachers nearly a million students missing weeks of school and would never set foot in the Ocean Hill– working parents scrambling to make sure their chil- Brownsville schools again. Shanker dren were being supervised, the city was in chaos. But threatened a citywide strike if they there was a deeper ideological conflict that also drove were not reinstated. Over the sum- the crisis and inflamed tensions. mer, a trial examiner ruled that the teachers at the As the strikes intensified, Lindsay receded into heart of the dispute had not been given due-process the background and the controversy boiled down to protectionsA and had been dismissed without cause. He a battle between Shanker’s UFT against McCoy and ordered their return to the classrooms. McCoy and the the OHB governing board. It was a battle over politi- local board defied him. Lindsay, openly sympathetic cal power, but also over ideology. Shanker and the UFT to the community-control saw the world in universal- experiment, hesitated to put ist, color-blind terms. Most the full power of his office MONTHS AFTER teachers were traditional behind the trial examiner’s THE STRIKES liberals who believed in civ- ruling. When he could not il rights and integration. obtain ironclad assurances CONCLUDED, AN They believed in due pro- from Lindsay or the Board EXHIBIT ENTITLED cess, merit, and the promise of Education that the Ocean of equality of opportunity. Hill–Brownsville teachers ‘HARLEM ON MY They were proud of what would be reinstated with MIND’ OPENED AT their union had achieved for American jews American classroom assignments, its members. Shanker called a walkout THE METROPOLITAN McCoy and his sup- on September 9, 1968, the MUSEUM OF ART. porters saw the world opening day of the new through a completely dif- school year. This first strike ITS CATALOGUE, ferent lens. Imbued with lasted for only two days WRITTEN ideas of black nationalism, but was followed by a sec- they supported race-based ond strike on September BY HARLEM policies in the hiring of 13 that lasted another 17 RESIDENTS, teachers and pushed for a days, at which time Lindsay strongly Afrocentric curric- cut a deal with Shanker STATED, ulum. They were skeptical to bring the teachers back ‘OUR CONTEMPT of middle-class notions of to the classroom and in- merit and equal opportuni- stall neutral observers in FOR THE JEW ty and saw the mostly white Ocean Hill–Brownsville to MAKES US FEEL teachers as succeeding on prevent their harassment. the backs of the black com- The Ocean Hill–Brownsville MORE COMPLETELY munity. Concerns about vio- Board had been left out of AMERICAN.’ lence in schools and student the negotiations and felt misbehavior were not, they aggrieved as the decision appeared to weaken the believed, a matter of discipline but instead an issue of community-control experiment. Tensions between white teachers’ forcing middle-class values on black UFT teachers and the board, as well as the replace- students. Deeply suspicious of the white community ment teachers hired by the board (many of whom were and the city’s political establishment, community- vs. Americans young left-wing activists), increased and eventually control supporters could sometimes descend into ex- led to the third and longest strike, which lasted from tremist rhetoric and paranoia. While Shanker’s UFT October 14 to November 17. wanted to teach children “to make it within our so- The strikes were the most racially incendiary ciety,” McCoy and the African-American Teachers As- in the city’s history, filled with charges of bigotry and sociation (ATA) called for a “black value system” and anti-Semitism that swept through New York like a vi- racial separatism. This conflict in values could not be rus. It is hard to exaggerate the ill will that the strikes bridged in any meaningful way within the context of generated. The urban historian Fred Siegel has called city politics at the time, and it highlighted the shat-

30 The 1968 New York City School Strike Revisited : June 2018 African African

tering of the postwar ideological consensus after the of Colored People to Possibly Bring To This 1960s and the polarizing politics that has succeeded it. Important Task The Insight, The Concern, The Although the most militant community-control Exposing Of The Truth That is a Must If The supporters, including Campbell, McCoy, JHS 271 as- Years Of Brainwashing And Self-Hatred That sistant principal Albert Vann, and Brooklyn CORE Has Been Taught To Our Black Children By leader Robert “Sonny” Carson, insisted that their ani- Those Bloodsucking Exploiters and Murder- mus toward the terminated teachers was not a func- ers Is To Be Over Come. tion of their religion or ethnicity—they were merely whites who happened to be Jewish—they attacked the The source of this material was never defini- educators, or acquiesced in attacks on them, as Jews. tively established. Nonetheless, a furious Shanker had Americans vs. Advocates for the Ocean Hill–Brownsville local board hundreds of thousands of copies made and circulated among Manhattan elites either wished away expres- them citywide. Supporters of the Ocean Hill–Browns- sions of anti-Semitism or dismissed them as isolated ville local board sought to minimize the letter’s im- and exaggerated. Lindsay in particular viewed them portance and faulted Shanker for publicizing it. Their as red herrings, distractions from what was for him argument has lived on in subsequent accounts of the the “real” issue of community control. But his attitude Ocean Hill–Brownsville crisis written from a left-wing smacked of victim-blaming. Anti-Semitism before, perspective. They argue that Shanker overstated the during, and after the Ocean Hill–Brownsville strikes extent of anti-Semitism at Ocean Hill–Brownsville to was real and deeply disturbing. bolster the UFT’s cause in the city’s Jewish community. Equally so was the failure of most of the city’s Had the letter been an isolated instance, this ar- black leadership to denounce it. The stage had been set gument would have merit. But this was not the case. in December 1967 when John Hatchett, a public-school It was of a piece with the utterances and writings of teacher and a member of the African-American Teach- ATA members, as well as with the casual dismissal of ers Association, published an article entitled “The the anti-Semitism issue by most black leaders, includ- Phenomenon of the Anti-Black Jews and the Black ing McCoy, who said, “We have more important things Anglo-Saxon: A Study in Educational Perfidy” in the to be concerned about than making anti-Semitism organization’s newsletter. Hatchett charged that Jew- a priority.” It thus rises to the level of moral equiva- ish teachers were guilty of “horrendous abuse of the lence with articulations of anti-black racism during (black) family, associates and culture” and had “educa- the strikes, which were often expressed indirectly and tionally castrated” black students. The ATA would be a behind closed doors. A few weeks after the strikes thorn in the side of the UFT both during and after the concluded, ATA member and JHS 271 teacher Leslie Ocean Hill–Brownsville strikes. Its members appeared Campbell appeared on radio station WBAI and read a

fixated on the Jewishness of their adversaries in the poem composed by an Ocean Hill–Brownsville student American jews union. ATA officer and JHS 271 assistant principal Al- “dedicated” to Albert Shanker, which began: “Hey, Jew bert Vann argued that the Jewish teachers who had boy, with that yarmulke on your head / You pale faced received termination letters should be “responsible” Jew boy—I wish you were dead.” Campbell defended Jews and voluntarily leave their jobs. At the height of the poem at the time, and indeed for the rest of his life, the third and final strike in November, the ATA issued as an authentic expression of racial pain. a screed in its newsletter against “the Jew, our great A month after the WBAI broadcast, an exhibit en- liberal friend of yesteryear, whose cries of anguish still titled “Harlem on My Mind” opened at the Metropolitan resound from the steppes of Russia to the tennis courts Museum of Art. Its catalogue, written by Harlem resi- of Forest Hills…who keeps our children ignorant.” dents, stated, “Our contempt for the Jew makes us feel The most egregious instance of anti-Semitism more completely American in sharing a national preju- during the Ocean Hill–Brownsville crisis came in the dice,” and “Behind every hurdle that the Afro-American form of an unsigned letter placed in the mailboxes of has yet to jump, stands the Jew who has already cleared UFT teachers at JHS 271 during one of the brief peri- it.” The museum’s director, Thomas Hoving, an Upper ods they were back in the classroom. It read in part: East Side liberal and former Lindsay Parks Commis- sioner, defended the language as “anything but racist” If African American History and Culture is and “true.” “So be it,” he concluded grandly, as if to settle to be taught to our Black Children it Must the issue of anti-Semitism from above. While pressure be Done By African Americans who Identify from Jewish groups and presumably major Jewish With And Who Understand The Problem. It benefactors of his museum forced Hoving to withdraw is Impossible For The Middle East Murderers the catalogue, his words were emblematic of the use of

Commentary 31 both class and ethnocultural discriminations to secure during the crisis, the state legislature took control of racial peace in New York. the city’s education system away from City Hall. Lind- The existence of anti-Semitism at Ocean Hill– say went from appointing all members of the Board Brownsville was an embarrassment to Manhattan elite of Education to appointing only two. The Ocean Hill– supporters of the community-control experiment and Brownsville debacle thereby managed to kill any pos- the local board. Some of these supporters were them- sibility of education reform in the city for the next 30 selves Jewish, and it is not surprising that they sought years. During those decades, the city’s schools experi- to downplay its significance. But it was difficult to dis- enced a continued decline in quality. The real losers miss what a post-strike report issued by the Anti-Def- in the controversy were public-school children of all amation League termed “crisis level” anti-Semitism in races and ethnicities who were now condemned to New York City. Responsibility thus lies not with Albert continue their education in increasingly substandard Shanker and his mimeograph machines, but with John schools. This would begin to change when Rudolph Hatchett, Leslie Campbell, Albert Vann, and those in Giuliani successfully fought to regain mayoral control both the black and white communities who were silent over city schools and Michael Bloomberg began to use or indifferent in the face of it. that mayoral control to implement serious education reforms. FTER KEEPING HIS TEACHERS out The Ocean Hill–Brownsville crisis worked a sea for a total of 37 days between Septem- change in Jewish attitudes toward African Americans ber and November 1968, Shanker fi- and other ethnic whites in New York. A post-strike nally broke Lindsay’s will. On Novem- Harris Poll revealed sharp divisions between Jews and ber 17, the exhausted parties—which blacks and a convergence of views among Jews and did not include representatives of the white Catholics. By margins of 63 to 8, and 48 to 9 per- American jews American Ocean Hill–Brownsville local board— cent, respectively, Jews and white Catholics supported announced a settlement that gave the UFT most of the UFT during the strikes. Blacks favored the Ocean what it had sought. The terminated teachers were rein- Hill–Brownsville local board by 50 to 14 percent. Jews statedA and the local board placed under state supervi- believed blacks had engaged in anti-Semitism during sion. The sense of betrayal among community-control the crisis by 66 to 12 percent. White Catholics agreed, supporters was deep. Galamison would say that there 40 to 20 percent. Blacks, by a margin of 40 to 23 per- were times he thought Lindsay “would have gladly cent, denied the presence of anti-Semitism. By a mar- put every resident of Ocean Hill in a gunny sack and gin of 2 to 1, Jews believed that blacks and not Catho- dropped them in the East River.” Even more extreme, lics were the main sources of anti-Semitism in the city. one of the intellectual godfathers of community con- “Seven out of ten Jews, Italians, and Irish in New York trol, activist Preston Wilcox, called the final settlement have clearly joined cause,” the Harris Poll concluded. “an attempt to rape Black people of the opportunity “It is almost as if blacks and whites are living in differ- to control their own destinies.” So much of Lindsay’s ent worlds instead of the same city.” mayoralty had been based on the idea of expanding The new racial and cultural alignments had im- opportunities for minorities, as well as keeping the city mediate political effects. During the 1969 mayoral from erupting into chaos. When it came to the strikes election campaign, a desperate Lindsay, who had been and the community-control experiments, he failed on booed off the stage of a Brooklyn synagogue by angry both accounts. congregants during the crisis amid chants of “Lindsay Things only got worse in 1969 when New York’s must go,” sought to mend fences with outer-borough state legislature passed a school-decentralization Jews, admitting to vaguely defined “miscalculations” law, supported by the UFT, that effectively ended the and “mistakes.” It was not enough to sway them. In Ocean Hill–Brownsville community-control project. a result that would have been unthinkable even four The legislation created about 30 new, smaller com- years earlier, 55 percent of Jewish voters cast ballots vs. Americans munity districts within the city. Each district would be for one of the two Catholic Italian-American candi- governed by an elected community school board, but dates opposing Lindsay, Democrat Mario Procaccino within the overall structure and control of the Board of and Republican John Marchi. Both were social and Education. Afterward, turnout for community-board cultural conservatives. Lindsay, who ran on the Lib- elections would regularly run in the single digits, and eral Party ticket after losing the Republican primary many community boards became notorious for cor- to Marchi, drew enough votes from Manhattanites and ruption and incompetence. minorities to exploit the divisions among his rivals and Partially as punishment for Lindsay’s ineptitude win reelection by a plurality.

32 The 1968 New York City School Strike Revisited : June 2018 African African

His 1969 reelection was merely a temporary borough Jews sought a safe harbor with sympathetic victory for Lindsay, who would shortly after switch white Catholics. to the Democratic Party. His second term proved just For many contemporary historians, the Ocean as divisive as his first; crime and disorder continued Hill–Brownsville story is an example of the extension to take their toll, the city’s population continued to of the civil-rights movement to northern cities—and its decline, and a slowing economy put added pressure failures are cited as proof of the intransigence of north- on New York’s fragile fiscal situation, eventually lead- ern white racism in its unwillingness to deal with the ing to a massive budgetary crisis in 1975. Ocean Hill– discrimination and inequality faced by African Ameri- Brownsville was a perfect cans. That is a narrow and example of the failures of simplistic view that ignores Americans vs. Lindsay and modern liber- both the complexities of the alism: Promise a lot and de- THOSE IN THE community-control struggle liver little to nothing, while MANHATTAN as well as the many miscal- exacerbating deep-seated culations and strategic er- tensions. Lindsay was per- MANAGERIAL AND rors of both white liberals sonally committed to civil PROFESSIONAL and African-American com- rights and to improving the munity-control advocates. lives of minorities in New CLASSES WHO Modern liberalism believes York, but in reality, after DECRIED THE in the all-powerful explana- his eight years as mayor, tory power of “white racism,” the condition of most black CHOICES JEWS but while it explains many New Yorkers was substan- MADE DURING things, it does not explain all tially worse than it had been things. Ocean Hill–Browns- when he was first elected. THE OCEAN HILL– ville shows how real history Ocean Hill–Browns- BROWNSVILLE cannot be so neatly summed ville had shifted the tecton- CRISIS BELIEVED up by those two words. ic plates beneath the city’s The complexities do political landscape. Hence- THAT THEIR OWN not stop there. For John forth it would be race, rath- INTERESTS LAY Lindsay and McGeorge Bun- er than religion, ethnicity, dy were correct in many of or class, that would deter- WITH COMMUNITY their criticisms. The city’s mine outer-borough Jewish CONTROL AS education bureaucracy was

electoral allegiances. Many sclerotic and self-serving, American jews historians have oversimpli- A MEANS OF best revealed even today by fied this shift, dismissing MAINTAINING Bel Kaufman’s extraordinary it as a Jewish embrace of novel Up the Down Staircase. “white” identity, as well as SOCIAL STABILITY And black parents were also a rejection of what they as- AND RACIAL PEACE. correct that their children sume was a “natural” Jew- were not getting the quality ish racial liberalism. But it education they deserved and is more accurately viewed as a natural impulse toward that parents should demand more voice in their chil- self-preservation. The Jews of Brooklyn, Queens, and dren’s education. saw their co-religionists attacked not just as The UFT was also correct that the due-process whites but also as Jews, in base, crude language that rights of its members were being ignored under com- evoked painful memories of the Holocaust, then only munity control and that white, mostly Jewish, teach- two decades in the past. Manhattan elites and black ers were being scapegoated for the failures of urban community leaders whom they expected to speak out schools—often in anti-Semitic and anti-white lan- forcefully against this language did not do so.* Under guage. But Ocean Hill–Brownsville showed the ul- the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that outer- timate power of Shanker and the UFT, a power that would only grow. Today, teachers’ unions around the * Civil-rights and labor leaders Bayard Rustin and A. Philip country are the backbone of the Democratic Party and Randolph, who condemned expressions of anti-Semitism during the Ocean Hill–Brownsville strikes, were notable exceptions in contemporary liberalism. As in the 1960s, the teach- this regard. ers’ unions vehemently oppose attempts at education

Commentary 33 reform. But unlike the situation in the 1960s, many of during the Ocean Hill–Brownsville crisis believed that those reforms, such as charter schools, school choice, their own interests lay with community control as a education standards, and testing, are often pushed by means of maintaining social stability and racial peace. conservative and centrist politicians. While the teach- “What you have,” Shanker argued perceptively after ers’ unions of the 1960s foreshadowed some of the the strikes, “is people on the upper economic level who growth of neoconservative disillusionment with lib- are willing to make any change that does not affect eralism, today’s teachers’ unions are firmly on the left their own position. And so it is the middle-class inter- politically and ideologically. ests that are narrow and selfish and the civil-service Regardless of where the teachers’ unions are po- teacher who must be sacrificed. I’m not sure this is a litically today, the Ocean Hill–Brownsville controversy WASP attitude. I think it is only human. But what if does provide a window into our own tortured political you said give 20 percent of Time, Inc. or U.S. Steel to situation. The battle over community control and the blacks? Who would be narrow then?” subsequent teachers’ strikes show the pernicious and Liberal politics today is largely driven by a co- poisonous effects of a top-down political coalition. alition of elite white professionals, whether called The roots of those politics date back to Lindsay’s New the “coastal elites” or the gentry class. Their rheto- York and have come into full bloom in our own time. ric and virtue-posturing notwithstanding, they seem Neither Lindsay nor Bundy were products of public both disconnected from the minority poor they claim schools and would never send their own children to to represent and hostile to a middle-class America them. Yet they were willing to impose their agenda on that embarrasses them. The Ocean Hill–Browns- schools in an effort to protect their own interests. The ville crisis offers an early glimpse of what happens ultimate costs of their meddling would never be borne when a group becomes generous with the lives and by their friends and colleagues, but rather by those well-being of others but stingy with their own. This American jews American working and middle-class New Yorkers whom Lindsay is probably its most enduring legacy: a reminder and his allies held in barely concealed contempt. that whether it be a John Lindsay yesterday or a Bill Those in the Manhattan managerial and pro- de Blasio today, those who profess to “give a damn” fessional classes who decried the choices Jews made speak of thee, not of me.q vs. Americans

34 The 1968 New York City School Strike Revisited : June 2018 African the campus intersectionality Craze BY ELLIOT KAUFMAN

Y MY SECOND WEEK at Stanford, “hunt down undocumented migrants.” I knew only three things: I was un- The posters were the work of Stanford Out of able to drink alcohol responsibly, I Occupied Palestine, a rainbow coalition of 19 student didn’t really like my new friends, organizations, including the Black Student Union, and supporting Israel was going MEChA (a large, radical Latino student group), the to be a drag. I couldn’t escape the NAACP, Stanford Students for Queer Liberation, Stan- posters screaming about Israeli ford American Indian Association, the First Genera- settler colonialism and human- tion and/or Low-Income Partnership, and so on. Their rights abuses. They were plastered opposition was the Coalition for Peace. This was an on the backs of the bathroom stall doors, right at eye odd kind of coalition, consisting of only one group: B level for the seated occupant. Even in the safest of The Jewish Student Association. spaces, there was nowhere else to look. Fellow students explained the disparity as the BThe posters had five bullet points. The first natural result of the sympathy from the marginal- squarely connected Israel to American police violence. ized for the marginalized. No doubt that is partly true. “Israel trains U.S. police how to deal with black people But what I saw that year, in 2014, was a well-oiled ma- the way its occupation forces deal with Palestinians,” chine whose leaders were able to whip their constitu- it read. The second bullet point explained that Israeli ent groups into action and frame the issue as the weak airstrikes deliberately target Palestinian women and versus the strong, the weak versus the Jews. Defection children. The third accused Israel of systematically from the anti-Israel cause meant not only abandoning sterilizing African immigrants to reduce its black pop- one’s group and facing real personal costs, but also be- ulation. The fourth laid out religious discrimination coming a servant to power. I had just been introduced against gays in Israel. The fifth linked the technology to intersectionality and witnessed its grip on the Ameri- behind the Israeli “apartheid fence” to U.S. efforts to can campus.

Elliot Kaufman is a senior at Stanford University.

Commentary 35 NTERSECTIONALITY theory was formal- sive posture, parrying unprovoked attacks against ized in an academic paper. The critical race Israel. Often, they seek to debate the enemy they do theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw wrote in 1989 not want into deescalating hostilities. This is unlikely that a rigid separation of racism and sex- to succeed. ism blinded American antidiscrimination Intersectionality begins with identity über alles. law to the experiences of black women who Of course, a member of a marginalized group does had faced something more than the sum of not need to be told that she shares interests, histories, each bigotry. Yet treating intersectionality as an argu- and experiences with her fellow group members. ment gives it too little, and at the same time too much, But intersectionality tells her anyway, stressing the Icredit. Intersectionality needs to be understood first as integrity and community of the group and subgroup a model of political organizing, second as a conspiracy, again and again. Already swimming with the current, and only third as a theory. its practitioners use ethnic and racial student groups, Intersectionality is used to tear down an older community centers, courses, majors, events, freshmen model of political organizing, what Crenshaw calls the orientations, mentorship programs, and even themed “trickle-down approach to social justice.” The trickle- dormitories to sort incoming freshmen into their iden- down model rallied around feminism, promising that tity group. These students, many of whom feel quite its achievements would eventually empower black vulnerable, as they are 18 years old and away from women. It rallied around opposition to exploitation, their families and friends, are grateful for soft social assuming its victories would eventually reach poor landing spots with peers from similar backgrounds. people of color. The left that Crenshaw helped build Strict sorting positions each group as a cog in a considers these promises hopelessly broken. Fighting political machine. Shaped into cohesive units, identity prejudices separately misses the true “intersectional groups can be organized and led credibly from above American jews American experience.” That is, the racism and sexism that afflict by one of their own. On a campus where identity black women are suffered as a unified experience. In groupings have become primary elements in the over- this crucial but ineffable sense, racism and sexism can all social network, opposing the group position is then be said to merge into one. framed as siding with the same force of injustice that is As the International Socialist Review helpfully the group’s enemy. For this reason, defection becomes notes, this insight “has enormous significance at the nearly unthinkable, no matter how unrelated the issue very practical level of movement building.” Since seems (black queers for Palestine?). In this way, racial “oppressions work together in producing injustice,” and ethnic leaders are able to deliver votes and num- according to the summary of black feminist scholar bers to the coalition. Patricia Hill Collins, intersectionality has the effect of making solidarity a prerequisite of consciousness. In N MY FRESHMAN YEAR, the intersection- other words, one cannot be a full participant in the ef- al anti-Israel activists had plenty of ideas. fort to secure social justice if one is a mere feminist or The Native Americans, for example, cast Zi- anti-racist. In fact, the anti-racist who fails to consider onism as a continuation of the settler colo- the special suffering of people of color who are gay nialism that had ravaged their community. or Palestinian is hardly an anti-racist at all. He must We countered that Jews were indigenous to champion every left-wing cause as they all overlap. Dif- the land, but it didn’t matter. This was not a ferent types of bigotry combine to threaten vulnerable debate. It was simple coalition politics. people at their junctions. The Native American student group, along with Groups that can consistently mobilize their Ithose of the black, Latino, Muslim, and Asian com- members to rally and vote do not just win but domi- munities, is part of the Students of Color Coalition nate campus politics, imposing their will on the ambiv- (SOCC). This is Stanford’s dominant political machine. alent majority, most of whom will adopt whatever po- Every year, SOCC endorses a dozen candidates for vs. Americans litical view is least costly in their social circles. Though student council and, in exchange, requires them to the situation is not uniform across the country, on elite campaign as a slate. The effect is to stop candidates campuses, the only group able to achieve this level of from building independent political profiles, making mobilization is the intersectional coalition of minor- them entirely dependent on the larger machine. It’s ity groups. worth it for both sides: Every year since 2009, SOCC Jewish students, however, contest the intersec- candidates have won a majority of the student council, tional coalition’s exercise of power. Sensing that their and often a supermajority. Even in 2015, when it was interests are threatened, the students adopt a defen- dogged by allegations of anti-Semitism that were pub-

36 The Campus Intersectionality Craze : June 2018 African African Americans vs. American jews 37 Jewish Jewish students have it tainted and poisoned by it, despite it, by poisoned and tainted their best efforts. The ally must show he subordinates his identity - loy pledge must and interests and alty to the movement, its identi- ties, and its interests. In the end, the intersectional movement has little to tell these students other than to confess their sins. But for the guilt-drenched modern con- enough. than more is that science, White students line up for these coveted roles, eager identity. their with disgust their to profess tougher. To condemn to enough subordinate not is it selves, them- . whiteness They must also take on the “mainstream Jewish commu- nity” and Israel itself. What other way can a Jew demonstrate her allegiance? If she refuses another just to is she then for- Israel, sake hypocritical white liberal, happy - threat it until justice social tout to ens her this own way, privilege. In many otherwise progressive Jews reveal themselves to be bad allies. This lingering suspicion requires white allies The intersectional movement can interpret this Treating opposition as aggression from the lar website Black Girl Dangerous, explains, keyto the Dangerous, Girl Black website lar Articles about being an ally is to “shut up and listen.” say Theymay here. begin invariably ally an be to how literally, quite still, allies white but things, right the all to able privileged, They remain game. the in skin lack defect to the power structure at any time, and their it. know partners nonwhite to humble themselves publicly and repeatedly before people of they Accordingly, color. confess their privi- lege, how they benefit from it, and how it is so baked into American society that they are irredeemably By putting Israel before the coalition, they appear to put themselves before the coalition, clinging to their structure. power the in place Jewish intransigence in the way that it understands all opposition: as backlash from the power structure. oppres- the but oppressed the oppose would else Who sors? So when Jewish students organize against the not do they that confirm they coalition, intersectional by aided impression an marginalized, the among in fit wealth. and whiteness presumed or observable their power structure is a means of manufacturing con- ITSELF. ON THE THE ON JEWISH JEWISH JEWISH JEWISH HAVE IT IT HAVE FOR THEM THEM FOR STUDENTS STUDENTS ALSO TAKE TAKE ALSO THEY MUST MUST THEY AND ISRAEL ISRAEL AND TOUGH. IT IS IS IT TOUGH. WHITENESS. WHITENESS. ON CAMPUS, CAMPUS, ON COMMUNITY’ COMMUNITY’ NOT ENOUGH ENOUGH NOT TO CONDEMN CONDEMN TO ‘MAINSTREAM ‘MAINSTREAM

New York Times , SOCC still York New won nine of NTERSECTIONALITY does not by itself plain ex- the campus left’s hatred for Israel. De- cades ago, long before today’s intersectional coalitions existed, - Sovi

Second, the coalition defines itself as the collec- the as itself defines coalition the Second, As Mia , McKenzie the writer behind the - popu Remarkably, in 2014, the student council fell one fell council student the 2014, in Remarkably,

et and Arab anti-Zionist propagan- da were popular on the left. There are, however, two facts worth not- they First, groups. today’s about ing almost always include the Muslim Students and Association Students’ for Justice in (SJP), Palestine both of which push the coalition to undertake anti-Israel action. SJP is also an extremely well-organized national group that can make the rest of job the easy coalition’s by supplying campaign. divestment prepackaged its tion of marginalized groups. This leaves only two op- Jews: and whites as such groups, nonmember for tions They become either part of the power structure allies of the marginalized. The former or is assumed be- cause all whites benefit from skin-color privilege, but earned. be can latter the

Commentary

vote short of the two-thirds majority it needed to pass to needed it majority two-thirds the of short vote a resolution calling for divestment from Israel. Two student-council members, one left- ist Latina and one leftist hadJew, - res the against voted and abstained order, short In respectively. olution, the activist communities of which they were part made clear that the offending members had only one path to avoid social ostracism. A week later, a re-vote was and before anyone knew what was called, happening,switched students both their votes. Defection from the in- costly too was coalition tersectional bear. to them for 15 possible council races. after Year its year, member groups out-organize the opposition and corral votes of their racial and ethnic compatriots and their the left-wing supporters in translate wins sufficientThese numbersbody. student apathetic an to over- whelm into more diversity for calls and centers, community for administrators, money trainings, sexual-assault faculty. diverse a lished lished in the I cern for those who are opposed. Surely universities The intersectional coalition is vulnerable to this should not allow vulnerable minorities to be targeted sort of conspiracy theorizing for three reasons. The and attacked—which is how the coalition understands first is tactical. To engage their diverse coalition, in- the power structure’s political mobilization aimed tersectional movements must exaggerate the unity against it. This framing then justifies everything from and malevolence of its enemies. The unity helps show classroom callouts to speech codes to shouting down anti-sexual-assault activists, for example, that Israeli speakers, behavior that has escalated on the left and “apartheid” should be their issue, too, because of how collapsed on the right since 2013. it props up the same system of The campus left claims to be ex- domination that inflicts violence ercising its right to self-defense, on Palestinian and other women. responding to your aggression. WHEN JEWS The result is a picture of a unique- If the marginalized are con- ly wicked Jewish state lurking be- ceived as basically united, the ARE ALREADY hind the world’s evils. temptation is strong to see the THE PROXIMATE Second, on campus after marginalizers as similarly unit- campus, the intersectional coali- ed. Patricia Hill Collins writes, TACTICAL tion’s main opposition is com- “Regardless of the particular in- ENEMY, AND posed of Jewish students. And tersections involved, structural, when Jews are already the proxi- disciplinary, hegemonic, and in- CAMPUS mate tactical enemy, and the terpersonal domains of power MOVEMENTS movement already sees itself reappear across quite different as engaged in an epic struggle forms of oppression.” What the SEE against the powerful, it is all too American jews American marginalized are really fighting, THEMSELVES easy to conflate the Jews not only in this view, is power, and pow- with Israel but also with the en- er is fairly homogenous, even AS ENGAGED tire power structure, and blame when it goes under different IN A STRUGGLE them for all sorts of other things. names. The oppressors of the Pal- Just ask the Palestinians. estinians and the oppressors of AGAINST THE Third, there is the uncom- black Americans, therefore, canPOWERFUL, IT IS fortable fact that anti-Semitism in be joined in the same system of America is more common among power relations. ALL TOO EASY racial minorities than among This theory can be vulgar- TO CONFLATE whites. The Anti-Defamation ized quite readily into a conspir- League’s most recent data on an- acy. One need only conceive the THE JEWS NOT ti-Semitic attitudes confirm the power structure as a unit, under- ONLY WITH longstanding trend. Twenty-three taking coordinated action. It then percent of African Americans were appears to have many tentacles ISRAEL BUT found to hold anti-Semitic atti- striking all over the world, to be ALSO WITH THE tudes, compared with only 14 per- exceedingly powerful and orga- cent of the general population and nized. But it’s also secretive and ENTIRE POWER 10 percent of whites. U.S.-born His- denies it has any diabolical plans. STRUCTURE. panics clock in at 19 percent, but In other words, it starts to re- the number for foreign-born His- semble the House of Rothschild, panics, not an insignificant group Henry Ford’s International Jew, in America, is 31 percent. Even or the Elders of Zion of the anti-Semitic imagination. worse, the ADL Global 100 found that 34 percent of Mus- vs. Americans It is sadly axiomatic that those who perceive evil lim Americans hold anti-Semitic views. as residing in a single matrix or enemy will eventually All these challenges mean that intersectional blunder into anti-Semitism. At least some will eventu- movements should be extra vigilant in detecting the ally conflate that enemy with the Jews and that matrix development of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory within with their supposed lackeys. This is how remarkably their ranks. Unfortunately, intersectionality is endemi- diverse conspiracy theories converge. And this conver- cally blind to anti-Semitism. gence is always to the detriment of the Jews, who be- Consider Gabriel Knight, a Palestinian-Ameri- come synonymous with a power elite. can former member of Stanford’s student council. In

38 The Campus Intersectionality Craze : June 2018 African African

2016, he publicly defended talk of “Jews controlling S I walk on Stanford’s campus today, the media, economy, government, and other societal three years after the intersectional institutions” as mere “questioning [of] potential pow- divestment campaign of my freshman er dynamics.” It is notable that, despite intense pres- year, I pass SJP’s mock “apartheid sure, Stanford’s Students of Color Coalition refused to wall.” Placed right in the center of our rescind its endorsement of Knight for reelection, even main plaza, it too cannot be missed. after other organizations had done so, and even after On one side of the wall, in large Knight pulled out of the election. Since Knight techni- letters, someone has written, “Respeta mi EXISTEN- cally remained on the ballot, the powerful endorse- CIA o espera mi RESISTENCIA.” The Black Power fist ment brought him close to winning. hasA been drawn directly below it. Something else is Americans vs. Strict classification by identity makes Knight written next to it in Arabic. Farther over, “Corea for and other people of color members of the in-group, the Justice in Palestine” has been plastered across a draw- coalition of the marginalized, while the Jews calling ing of the map of both Koreas. Next is the slogan “From for him to step down are considered members of the Palestine to Mexico, Those Walls Got To Go,” with both out-group, the coalition of the dominant. This com- nations’ flags appended to the side. Below reads “APIs pletely reverses the polarity of the situation. Knight [Asian and Pacific Islanders] against APARTHEID” becomes the plucky underdog, daring to punch up and and “BORDERS—what’s up with that?” Back on the challenge the power, which immediately reacts by de- left, somebody wrote “End Gun Violence,” “Equality,” stroying him. By default, punching up appears to be and “Black Lives Matter.” resistance to domination; punching down is seen as As a piece of propaganda, this is pitiable stuff. dangerous oppression and bigotry. Actions by Jews, “Equality” is generic and lame; “End Gun Violence” who are considered to have power, can be interpreted seems totally unrelated; the Mexican connection is laid as threatening, but most actions against them cannot. on way too thick; and why exactly is Korea spelled in Consequently, the modern anti-Semite’s punching up English with a “C”? The whole thing is a hodgepodge, at the powerful Jews, whether those in Israel, America, the result of too many artists with too many markers. or Germany, is not seen as punching at all. But on closer inspection, there was just the right Comments by Tamika Mallory, co-founder of the number of markers at work: one for every group. ME- Women’s March and a defender of Louis Farrakhan, ChA, the Latino student group, wrote the Spanish and are illustrative of the intersectional blind spot. Mallo- drew the Mexican flag. The Black Student Union drew ry castigated Starbucks for hiring the ADL to conduct the fist. The Muslim Students’ Association contributed anti-bias training for its employees, since “the ADL the Arabic. Even the Asian American Student Asso- is CONSTANTLY attacking black and brown people.” ciation got in on the action. Each identity group had

This is how she sees it: the ADL—white, Jewish, re- added its own inward-directed slogan, signalling to its American jews spectable—versus poor Louis Farrakhan—black, Mus- members that they were being implicated in the fight. lim, marginalized. Recognizing anti-Semitism from Forget theory. It is on this basis—I’ll rally my people if below requires using a lens that the intersectional you’ll rally yours—that the intersectional machine co- movement simply lacks. operates and wins.q

Commentary 39 Wit, Exile, Jew, Convert, Genius The life and art of Heinrich Heine By Joseph Epstein

Friendship, Love, the Philosopher’s Stone, These three things are ranked alone; These I sought from sun to sun, And I found—not even one.

— Heinrich Heine

EINRICH HEINE was one of tophanes, Cervantes, Molière. Matthew Arnold called those writers, rare at any time, Heine “the most important German successor and con- welcome always, who found it tinuator of Goethe in Goethe’s most important line of ac- impossible to be dull. In every- tivity…as ‘a soldier in the war of liberation of humanity.’” thing he wrote, he captivated, George Eliot, that other great Victorian, wrote of sometimes infuriated, often Heinrich Heine that dazzled. Heine, who was born in 1797 and died in 1856, wrote poetry, plays, criticism, he was one of the most remarkable men of essays, Hfiction, travel books, and journalism. All of it was this age: no echo but a real voice…a surpass- marked by passion and wit, not a standard combina- ing poet, who has uttered our feelings for us tion. “I hate ambiguous words,” he noted, “hypocritical in delicious song; a humorist, who touches flowers, cowardly fig-leaves, from the depth of my soul.” leaden folly with the magic wand of the fine He thought himself, not incorrectly, in the line of Aris- gold of art—who sheds his sunny smile on human tears, and makes them a beauteous Joseph Epstein is the author of The Ideal of Culture. rainbow on the cloudy background of life; a

40 June 2018 Heine did nothing directly to change the politics of his time. His talent lay in satire and polemic. He did not mind making enemies, and, more difficult still, he found ways to keep them.

wit, who holds in his mighty hand the most would spend the last eight years of his life with a scorching of lightnings of satire; an artist wretched illness caused by degeneration of the spine, in prose literature, who has shown even which left him paralyzed from the chest down and more completely than Goethe the possibili- blind in one of his eyes. He could avail himself of the ties of German prose; and—in spite of all the other eye if were raised open by a finger. He suffered charges against him, true as well as false—a cramps and throbbing headaches and a wracking lover of freedom who has spoken wise and cough that only opium and morphine could relieve. brave words on behalf of his fellow men. Add in the tortures of 19th-century medicine. Through this wretched illness, Heine’s passion for writing never EINE SUFFERED the Chinese curse of hav- subsided, and his best volume of verse, Romanzero, ing lived in interesting times. He was born and much else was written from his mattress-grave. Hwhile Napoleon, whom he much admired as As a thinker, Heine was neither deep nor strik- a young man and once saw riding through the streets ingly original. He did not so much contribute to as of Dusseldorf, was setting out to acquire his empire. dabble in philosophical and theological debates. He He twice met Goethe. He knew Karl Marx, who ad- did nothing directly to change the politics of his time. mired his poetry more than Heine, in the end, admired In prose his talent lay in satire and polemic. He did Marx’s politics. He was a friend to Balzac’s, and prob- not mind making enemies, and, more difficult still, he ably a lover of George Sand. He lived through two found ways to keep them. His verse could be lyrical and revolutions, those of July 1830 and of February 1848. lilting but also coarse and profane. Yet even after one He was the victim of censorship under Metternich—a has said the worst about Heine, things that might de- warrant for his arrest in Prussia was issued in 1835— stroy the reputation of any other writer, he cannot be the beneficiary of French freedom of expression, and diminished or otherwise disqualified. His spirit, which a writer one of whose sidelines was informing each shone through all he wrote, was indomitable. of those two always rivalrous nations about the other. Remarking on Heine’s book-length essay On the No nation ultimately met Heine’s mark. He found History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, the the English self-satisfied, uninspired, and England it- scholar J.P. Stern begins by writing that “Heine had self made dull by the mercantile spirit. He held that the neither the scholarly equipment nor the detachment secret of the English superiority in politics “consists in to write anything that a respectable historian would the fact that they do not possess imagination.” His na- wish to put his name to.” But Stern goes on to add tive Germany was for him “the land of bigots,” where that “so much of it is true, that so much of the book patriotism consisted of “hatred of the French, hatred consists of brilliant, apparently casual and quite un- of civilization, and hatred of liberalism,” and where expected insights—that more truth and good sense is “servility was in the German soul.” The French, true said here about certain important aspects of German enough, could be “not only the wittiest of nations, but history and culture, about the German mind, than any also the most compassionate,” yet French verse was other single book I know—said implicitly and by in- for him “lukewarm rhymed gruel” and “Marseilles is nuendoes, but also explicitly, also in a grand rhetorical French for Hamburg—a thing I cannot stand even in style.” As for Heine’s essays, Stern held that “only Ni- the best translation.” America, which he never visited, etzsche’s have a comparable vigor.” Nietzsche himself he called “that monstrous prison of freedom…where thought Heine Germany’s greatest lyric poet. the most repulsive of tyrants, the populace, holds vul- gar sway” and “all men are equal—equal dolts…with ARRY HEINE, as he was known before his the exception, naturally, of a few millions, who have a fame, grew up as the oldest of four children black or brown skin, and are treated like dogs.” Hin a petit-bourgeois Jewish family in Dus- In May 1848, Heine took to his bed in his Paris seldorf. The family was more sentimentally than apartment, the bed he subsequently called his “mat- religiously Jewish. Heine’s father, Samson Heine, an tress grave,” from which he never arose. There he amiable flop, was in the textile business, at which

Commentary 41 For Heine, women were objects both of longing and contempt, and he by turns elevated and debased them. The misery of unrequited love is the central theme of his early poetry. he ultimately failed. His Uncle Salomon, a Hamburg Heine feel he came to true understanding of Hegelian banker, is said to have been one of the wealthiest men thought, at which point he rejected it. Among his store in Germany—and Heine spent a fair amount of calcu- of anecdotes, he liked to report that on his deathbed lating through his life in an only partially successful Hegel was supposed to have said, “Only one person has attempt to have this uncle underwrite his freelance ca- understood me,” then quickly added, “and he didn’t reer. His best biographer, Jeffrey L. Sammons, reports understand me, either.” that Heine “held a paying position for only six months Despite his failures at conventional occupations, of his life.” Heine’s confidence in his poetic genius never flagged. The great force in Heine’s early life was his His early fame came from his first collection, Book of mother. She had many plans for her oldest son, none of Songs, the poetry from which is today best known from which came to fruition. She first thought he might find having been set to music by, among others, Robert his calling as a diplomat, then as a banker. His Uncle Schumann, Franz Schubert, and Felix Mendelssohn. Salomon set him up in a textile business of his own. “A (By one estimate, Heine’s early poems provided the lyr- poet always cheats his boss,” a Russian proverb has it, ics to no fewer than 2,750 pieces of music.) Early in his only half true in this case since Heine did not cheat but, career, Heine called poetry “a beautiful irrelevancy” out of a want of interest, failed his uncle. He had nei- and soon turned to prose, though through most of his ther the taste nor the least talent for commerce. Law life he produced both simultaneously. As in the very school was the next option. Heine took up the study of different case of T.S. Eliot, Heine’s fame as a poet lent the history of Roman law and German jurisprudence his prose additional authority. at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Gottingen, J. P. Stern describes that prose as “a unique com- which left him bored blue. “If the Romans had been pound of the eternal raconteur’s fun and the precise obliged to learn Latin,” he later remarked about the intellectual wit of the guest at the ideal High Table.” complexities of mastering the language, “they would Stern wrote that his “lightness of touch, the effortless never have conquered the world.” Heine never prac- responsiveness of the medium, the quickness of the ticed law, either. insights and the melodramatic sharp edges of Heine’s In 1825, Heine put himself through a conversion expressiveness…all these are quite unprecedented in to Protestantism, for in the Prussia of that time Jews the annals of German prose.” Stern was particularly were not permitted to practice law or take up academic struck by “that ambiguity, that ironical illumination of positions and were excluded from much else. He called the truth, which are his most successful stylistic device.” his baptism as a Protestant “the ticket of admission to Karl Kraus, the 20th-century Viennese and European culture,” though he would later remark that wit, attacked Heine’s prose for its newfound informal- “if the Protestant church didn’t have an organ, it would ity, writing that “he loosened the bodice of the German be no religion at all,” and he expressed regret at having language to the point where any clerk can today fondle allowed himself to be baptized, however perfunctorily. her breasts.” Ernst Pawel, author of The Dying Poet, a In Bonn, Heine encountered August Wilhelm brilliant little book on Heine’s last years, wrote, correct- Schlegel, one of the great German literary critics of ly, that for Heine, “the poetry brought fame, the prose his day, who instructed him in Romantic theory and notoriety.” taught him a good deal about German prosody while editing some of his youthful poems. At the University ESCRIBING in his Memoirs a youthful kiss of Berlin, he attended the lectures of Hegel, whom he with the daughter of a professional execu- recalled speaking of God and the gods and “looking Dtioner, Heine notes that “at that moment there around anxiously, as if in fear that he might be under- flared up in me the first flames of two passions to stood.” He later called Hegel “the circumnavigator of which my subsequent life was to be devoted: the love the intellectual world, who has fearlessly advanced to of beautiful women and the love of the French Revolu- the North Pole of thought, where one’s brain freezes tion.” For Heine, women were objects both of longing in abstract ice.” Only after subsequent reflection did and contempt, and he by turns elevated and debased

42 Wit, Exile, Jew, Convert, Genius : June 2018 In most drawings and paintings of Heine, he resembles, if one can imagine it, a Jewish Lord Byron, with a slightly more emphatic nose and minus the clubfoot.

them, sometimes both at once. Two of the witticisms Heine’s best poems have a satiric edge, tak- on women that Louis Untermeyer quotes in his intro- ing up such subjects as how far Germany is from the duction to his translation of Heine’s poems: 1) “I will Rome of Brutus. Others are prophetic, in one case of not say that women have no character; rather, they Hitler: “Where men burn books,” he wrote in his play have a new one every day”; and 2) “Women have just Almansor, “they will burn people in the end.” As S.S. one way of making us happy, but thirty thousand ways Prawer writes: “He was able to detect tendencies in his of making us miserable.” time whose full unfolding would not come until well The misery of unrequited love is the central over a full century later.” theme of Heine’s early poetry. “Madame,” he once Some of Heine’s poetry could be erotic, some said, “anyone who wants to be loved by me has to bordering on the obscene. Here is a two-quatrain sam- treat me like dirt.” For a long while, his chief unre- ple from his “Song of Songs”: quiting lover was supposed to be his cousin Amélie, A pair of polished epigrams— the older of his wealthy Uncle Salomon’s two daugh- The rosebuds of the breast; ters. In his biographical study, The Elusive Poet, Jef- A fair caesura lies between— frey Sammons convincingly dispels this story. Heine It adds a certain zest. may have been interested in Amélie and later in her younger sister Thérèse, but if he had been, it was The heavenly sculptor shaped the thigh— perhaps as much for their father’s money as for their A parallel he drew. beauty or largeness of soul. Salomon Heine supplied The figleaf-veiled parenthesis his nephew Harry with an allowance all his days; af- Has quite an interest too. ter his death, the allowance—never sufficient in He- ine’s complaining opinion—was continued by Salo- He wasn’t bad at bawdy, either, as in the poem mon’s son Carl. called “Castratis”: As for the requited loves in Heine’s life, not all that much is known. He was a handsome man. In most The castratis all started out tut-tutting drawings and paintings of him, many done in three- As soon as I’d sung the first bar: quarters profile, he resembles, if one can imagine it, They complained (and were really quite cutting!) a Jewish Lord Byron, with a slightly more emphatic That my tone was too ballsy by far. nose and minus the clubfoot. When young, Heine took Byron for a model, both in his poetry and revolution- At 37, Heine contracted a marriage that, unlike ary fervor. In the Berlin salons of his youth, he was re- his putative love affair with George Sand, is perhaps garded as a German Byron. best described as improbable. This was with a 19-year- Many of Heine’s poems not devoted to the sub- old shopgirl named Crescence Eugénie Mirat. She was ject of unrequited love take up the subject of past lov- French and barely literate. In a letter to his mother, ers ultimately found inadequate. A characteristic qua- Heine wrote: “If she were smarter, I’d worry less about train on the theme runs: her future. Which again goes to show that stupidity is a gift of the gods, because it forces others to take care The joy that kissed me yesterday of you.” Mathilde, as he called her, never read anything Today looks pale and sickly, he wrote, was scarcely aware that he was a writer of And every time I’ve known true love considerable fame, didn’t know he was Jewish. Heine’s It’s faded just as quickly. efforts, à la Henry Higgins, to remake his wife, to edu- cate and polish her, were apparently unavailing. He Yet, as Ernst Pawel writes, “Heine’s actual love worried about her fidelity while he lived, and about life appears to have been considerably less extrava- her well-being after his death. She stayed with him gant than, with an ostentatious show of discretion, he through all his mattress-grave years, and there they would have liked his public to believe.” were, the oddest of odd couples.

Commentary 43 He found more to admire in the shtetl Jews of Poland than in the sadly assimilated but self-divided Jews of Germany, wearing the fashions of the day and quoting second-class writers.

HE PROBLEM with Heine,” wrote Ernst and Science of the Jews (Verein fur Kulture und Wis- Pawel, “is that no statement of his can ever senschafter der Juden), which sought to preserve the ‘T be taken at face value.” Nor is anything about Jewish heritage while joining it to modern science and him straightforward, uncomplicated, simple. This enlightenment values. He was less a champion of Ju- is partly owing to his rarely telling the truth about daism than a strong advocate for Jewish civil rights. himself. “Heine,” Robert C. Holub, editor of A Com- Above all he hated anti-Semitism, which he described panion to the Works of Heinrich Heine, writes, “is an as that hatred of the Jews “on the part of the lower and unreliable reporter about Heine.” Théophile Gautier, higher rabble.” The subject, if not the theme, of many Sainte-Beuve, Gérard de Nerval—all picked up on the of his middle and late period poems is the world’s contradictory nature of Heine. Here is Louis Unter- igno-rance of anti-Semitism. meyer on the subject: Heine despised the pressures of assimilation that Jews underwent to find acceptance in Germany. A German who dreamed of a greater Germany, For all their backwardness, he found more to admire he was an expatriate from his homeland and in the shtetl Jews of Poland than in the sadly assimi- spent most of his life in France. A proudly lated but self-divided Jews of Germany, wearing the race-conscious Jew, he became a Protestant fashions of the day and quoting second-class writers, and, after a liaison of seven years, married his neither fully German nor fully Jewish. What Heine Catholic mistress.…The most dulcet of poets, admired about the Polish Jews, and admired about Ju- he was also one of the bitterest and bawdiest; daism generally, was that, unlike Greeks and Romans a born Romantic, he exposed the spectral who clung to their soil and other peoples whose fealty hollowness of Romanticism. A cynical wit, he was to their princes, the Jews “always clung to the Law, was a political idealist; a journalistic hack, a to the abstract idea…[to] the law as the highest prin- pot-boiling newspaper correspondent, he was ciple,” the Bible their “portable fatherland.” Yet, what- at the same time an impassioned fighter for ever his sympathies for his people, he could not give humanity. himself over entirely to Judaism: “It would be distaste- ful and mean if, as people say of me, I had ever been Heine’s contradictory spirit shows up in ashamed of being a Jew, but it would be equally ridicu- heightened form in his regard for his own Jewish- lous if I ever claimed to be one.” ness, which has been the subject of endless scholarly As the enemy of all positive, of all organized, re- essays and a splendid 1986 book, S.S. Prawer’s He- ligions, Heine felt he could “never champion that reli- ine’s Jewish Comedy. Heine’s conversion may have gion which first introduced fault-finding with human been without true religious conviction or signifi- beings that now causes us such pain; and if I never- cance, but for him it was, in retrospect, not a negligi- theless do it after a fashion, there are special reasons: ble act. The need for it, implying the inferior stand- tender emotions, obstinacy, and care to maintain an ing of the Jews in Prussia, angered him. Heine was antidote.” In his Confessions, he wrote that for years German and Jewish both, but his true religion was he failed to show his fellow Jews sufficient respect, that which promised human freedom. (In later years blinded as he was by his partiality to Hellenic aes- he showed anger at the conversion of Felix Mendels- theticism: “I see now that the Greeks were only beau- sohn: “Had I the good fortune to be the grandson tiful youths, but the Jews were always men, powerful, of Moses Mendelssohn, I would not use my talents uncompromising men, not just in the days of old but to set to music the Lamb’s urine.”) Yet if he, Heine, right up to the present, despite 18 centuries of perse- never engaged Judaism, neither did he ever quite cution and misery.” give up on his Jewishness. In Heine’s search for the true religion, he reject- Throughout his life Heine struggled with reli- ed Christianity because, in its organized form, it “killed gion. As a young man in Germany, he was a member more joyous gods” and was “too sublime, too pure, too of a group that called itself the Society for the Culture good for this earth.” Besides, as he said, “no Jew can

44 Wit, Exile, Jew, Convert, Genius : June 2018 Heine believed in the freedom and potential for happiness for all people. Yet he distrusted most of those people, the masses, whose utopia left no room for poets or poetry. believe in the divinity of another Jew.” He believed that bliss which, in the opinion of the pious, will come only religions are “magnificent and admirable only when in heaven, on the day of judgment.” This belief was they have to compete with one another, and are perse- perhaps more Jewish than Heine could have known. cuted rather than persecuting,” and that “a system of Heinz Graetz, the 19th-century historian of Judaism, religion is as harmful to religion as to trade; [religions] wrote: “Judaism is not a religion of the present but of remain alive only through free competition, and they the future”—a future that “looks forward to the ideal will only return to their original splendor when po- age…when the knowledge of God and the reign of jus- litical equality of worship is introduced—free trade in tice and contentments shall have united all men in the gods, as it were.” bonds of brotherhood.” Yet, as he wrote, “from my earliest years I saw how religion and doubt can live side by side without N HIS EARLY YEARS, Heine himself saw the giving rise to hypocrisy.” Heine never claimed to be an world in a battle between the senses and the spirit, atheist and referred, mockingly, to “the monks of athe- Iand himself on the side of the senses. He was a ism,” by which he meant those for whom atheism was a free spirit, in the sense he himself defined it: a man fanatical religion of its own. Late in life, laid low by his “duty bound to engage seriously in the battle against illness, he claimed to have found God, though he did so evil that struts about so blatantly, and against the com- without the aid of organized religion. “The religious monplace that swaggers insufferably.” As Pawel puts it, revolution that has taken place within me,” he wrote Heine “had always been rebel rather than revolution- to his publisher Julius Campe, “is a purely intellectual ary, nay-sayer rather than would-be prophet, [who] one—more the product of thought than of beatific sen- never for a moment shed his skepticism.” timentality, and my illness has a small share in it, I am Heine called himself a monarchical republican sure.” As for the pain accompanying that illness, he or, on alternate days, a republican monarchist. He be- wrote to his younger friend Hans Laube that “though lieved in the freedom and potential for happiness for I believe in God, I sometimes do not believe in a good all people. Yet he distrusted most of those people, the God. The hand of this great animal baiter sometimes masses, who were all philistines and whose utopia left lies heavy on me.” He added still later that he would no room for poets or poetry. Imagining a Communist “bring charges with the SPCA against God for treating society to come, he noted that “some grocer will use me so horribly.” even the pages of my Book of Songs to wrap coffee and Moses, the lawgiver, is in Heine’s pantheon of snuff for the old women of the future.” Always more heroes. So, too, is Martin Luther, that most German precise about what he loathed than about what he of Germans, “at once a dreamy mystic and a practical loved; incapable of leading or of following any party; man of action” whose “thoughts had not merely wings exile, poet, Jew, Heinrich Heine was the ultimate out- but also hands; he spoke and acted.” Add another Mo- sider. ses, this one with the surname Mendelssohn, to the Of literary works, Heine much admired Don pantheon, who “overthrew the authority of Talmudism Quixote. He recounts first reading Cervantes’s great and founded pure Mosaism.” Then there was Goethe, novel as a young boy, unarmed in his reading by any who, as an artist, “holds the mirror up to nature, or, awareness of the great Spanish writer’s irony, utterly better, he is the mirror.” saddened by the defeat after defeat suffered by the These choices of heroes are dictated by Heine’s knight of the woeful countenance. Later, after he came larger view of mankind. “I believe in progress,” he to appreciate the irony, his love for the Don was undi- wrote in his History of Religion and Philosophy in Ger- minished and he came to view himself as a Don Quix- many. “I believe that mankind is destined to be happy, ote of his own day—but acting, as he put it, “from dia- and thus I think more highly of divinity than pious metrically opposed points of view.” Heine writes: people who think mankind was created only to suf- fer. Here on earth, by the blessings of free political and My colleague mistook windmills for giants; I, industrial institutions, I should like to establish that on the contrary, see in our giants of today only

Commentary 45 windmills; he mistook leather wineskins for whereas, in Heine’s words, “Quixotism lends wings mighty wizards; I see in our modern wizards to the whole world and to all in it who philosophize, only leather wineskins; he mistook every beg- make music, plough, and yawn.” They do not come gar’s inn for a castle—every donkey driver for along all that often, but when they do, authentic Quix- a knight, every stable wench for a lady of the otes reveal life’s larger possibilities and thereby en- court—I, on the other hand, look upon our liven its quality and enlarge its scope. On February 17, castles as disreputable inns, on our cavaliers 1856, Heinrich Heine was removed from his mattress- as donkey drivers, on our court-ladies as com- grave to a dirt one at Montmartre Cemetery in Paris. mon stable wenches. Just as he took a puppet- Asked as he was dying if he wished to have a clergy- play to be a noble affair of state, I hold our man in attendance, he replied that none was required: affairs of state to be wretched puppet plays. “Dieu me pardonnera. C’est son metier.” He will always But as doughtily as the doughty Knight of be among the small but indispensable band of Quix- LaMancha I fall upon the wooden company. otes. Let the last words be in his own verse:

Heine called Quixotism generally “the most pre- I am a German poet, cious thing in life.” A world filled only with Sanchos In German lands I shine; Panza, after all, would be one of unrelieved drabness, And where great names are mentioned philistine, sensible but ultimately dull and dreary— They’re bound to mention mine.q

46 Wit, Exile, Jew, Convert, Genius : June 2018 Politics & Ideas The Not-So-Great Chase

Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two bitually neglected husband, Bobby, rups,” she realizes her desire to Presidential Campaigns, and after the Clinton win. From that bear children will have to wait. “It One Intact Glass Ceiling failure and disappointment comes was vs. my ovaries.” By Amy Chozick Chozick’s debut book, Chasing Hill- Guess who won. Harper, 400 pages ary: Ten Years, Two Presidential But while the Democratic presi- Campaigns, and One Intact Glass dential candidate controlled her Reviewed by Daniel Halper Ceiling, an intimate journal that reproductive life—and repeated- tracks the author’s rise from “fifth- ly caused her to stand up her T WASN’T just Hillary Clin- generation Texan Jew” to her time husband—Chozick’s mental state ton who failed to secure a at the Gray Lady, where she re- throughout the campaign is in The job on November 8, 2016. It mains. Guys’ hands. That’s the author’s was also her traveling press Chozick intertwines her own shorthand for Hillary’s male cam- corps, a gang of reporters story with Clinton’s. Her child- paign handlers, who are manipula- Iand from myriad out- hood memories are meeting Hill- tive, duplicitous, and misogynistic. lets assigned to cover the presump- ary (“She seemed nice”), loving Bill Cumulatively, they are the abusive tive president’s every movement. (the then-president), and seeing spouses Chozick cannot escape. Its members wouldn’t be going to herself in Chelsea (both braces- They are effective. Just as Clinton the White House, either. wearing, curly-haired Southerners wanted. The Guys feed Chozick Among them was Amy Chozick, of similar age). Her adult views are (turning her into a self-proclaimed the New York Times’s beat reporter, not too dissimilar. “puppet”), starve her (depriving who covered Clinton for a decade It’s not only that she’s obsessed her of access and interviews for and had in mind a Georgetown with her subject, though of course months and years at a time), and fixer-upper to share with her ha- she is. Chozick is controlled by strong-arm her. her. She recounts a gynecological “You’ve got a target on your Daniel Halper, the author of visit she had three and a half years back,” The Guys repeatedly told Clinton Inc., is a contributing edi- before the bitter Election Day loss. her, apparently referring to some tor to the Washington Free Beacon. Heels resting in “cold metal stir- laughable conspiracy wherein the

Commentary 47 New York Times is determined to inside dope. Remarkably, in Chas- destroy Clinton. All are hampered There ing Hillary, she never attributes by paranoia—the campaign and i the stolen materials. the reporters covering it. “They’d are For instance, one of the ma- gotten in my head, and I let them,” two ways for a jor revelations in Podesta’s emails Chozick concedes. “I believed The were paid speeches to Wall Street Guys when they’d warn me that political reporter banks delivered by Hillary Clinton more assertive (male) colleagues after she left the State Department would boot me off the beat and to find immediate but before she became a presiden- tramp over my bloodied corpse.” success. The first tial candidate. They also make references to Chozick offers this paragraph: getting into Chozick’s body. “I is to bring down didn’t know I had to say it was off a politician. The Perusing Hillary’s paid speech- the record when I was inside you,” es to Wall Street banks, Mandy she quotes one of The Guys telling second is to ride Grunwald expressed her big- her amid an argument over wheth- a politician’s gest concern. “The remarks be- er a detail can be used in a sto- low make it sound like HRC ry. One of Clinton’s aides—though coattails. Chozick DOESNT think the game is not one of The Guys—comes on to is squarely in the rigged—only that she recogniz- her over drinks at a Des Moines es that the public thinks so,” she restaurant, when he creepily rubs second camp. said. “They are angry. She isn’t.” the author up and down. Despite the aide’s reputation as a sexual There is no reference, attribu- harasser, Chozick exposed him when her editors sideline her. “We tion, or footnote explaining the (Clinton’s spiritual adviser Burns were so fat and happy on the plane,” origin of Grunwald’s quotation in Strider) only earlier this year, even she writes, retelling the chartered the WikiLeaks trove. with literal firsthand knowledge. flight’s lunch menu and what cam- All of which makes Chasing Chasing Hillary is perhaps the paign reporters would order. “Qui- Hillary feel like an opportunistic most personally revealing mem- noa Salad with Chicken (or Turkey)” consolation prize for a reporter oir of the journalist-chasing-the- for her, please. That seems to suit who must have set out to write big-story-even-if-it-ruins-her-life Chozick’s reporting-style. “Scoops a very different book—one that genre—with references to the au- are not my forte,” she admits. “I pre- chronicled the election of the First thor’s youthful drug use (pot and fer lunch-based reporting.” Woman President. mushrooms), ex-boyfriends (none The most attention-grabbing There are two ways for a politi- apparently worthy of brags), job chapter is titled “How I Became cal reporter to find immediate suc- firing (stealing office supplies), an Unwitting Agent of Russian cess. The first is to expose, under- and, of course, gynecological visits. Intelligence,” in which the au- mine, or bring down the politician Chozick’s criticisms of her profes- thor excoriates other reporters but to whom the reporter is assigned. sion are searing. Because in the mostly herself for writing about the The second, and more common, end, the very exercise—the chase— hacked emails of Clinton campaign method is to ride the coattails of is futile and self-indulgent. chair John Podesta, first published whomever you are assigned. “Traveling with the campaign by WikiLeaks. Chozick says the six Chozick, by her own telling, meant I knew far less about what stories she wrote using the emails is squarely in the second camp. was happening inside the campaign (out of 1,285 Clinton-related pieces) “For three years, I’d been fighting than if I’d been back in New York “tainted my entire body of work.” with The Guys. I’d let my hero of working the phones or meeting Which might ring sincere if it a husband down. I’d put off hav- sources in Brooklyn,” she writes, were not for the fact that even now, ing a baby. I’d thrown punches in admitting to being a “captive stenog- a year and a half after the election, the Steel Cage Match and gained rapher” and that sometimes “the K-9 Chozick is still relying on those at least twelve pounds. I’d even crew that sniffed our luggage logged very emails. Indeed, she quotes become an unwitting agent of Rus- a more productive day’s work.” from Podesta’s trove of emails fre- sian intelligence,” she writes. And yet Chozick is determined quently throughout her own book “In the end, we all lost. I was to be on the road and complains to add what would appear to be done.”q

48 Politics & Ideas : June 2018 munist writers so long as they kept their politics out of his films. When challenged about Mission HUAC-a- to Moscow, the pro-Soviet propa- ganda film he made at the behest of the Roosevelt administration, Warner was indignant. “If produc- Mole ing Mission to Moscow in 1942 was a subversive activity,” he replied, Show Trial: posed deeper ties than previously “then the Liberty ships which car- Hollywood, HUAC, and the known between the Hollywood Ten ried food and guns to Russian allies Birth of the Blacklist and their Soviet controllers. In his and the American naval vessels By Thomas Doherty fascinating Show Trial: Hollywood, that convoyed them were likewise Columbia University Press, HUAC, and the Birth of the Black- engaged in subversive activities.” 400 pages list, Doherty doesn’t romanticize Directors William Wyler, John the Ten or try to justify the excesses Huston, and Billy Wilder, along with Reviewed by Mark Horowitz of HUAC. Instead, he highlights a Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, lesser-known aspect of the hear- and other stars, organized the Com- HE HOUSE Commit- ings: the dilemma of Hollywood mittee for the First Amendment tee on Un-American centrists and liberals squeezed be- (CFA) to oppose HUAC. Emboldened Affairs had a few tween the extremists on both sides. by a 1942 Supreme Court ruling that blind spots. After all, Like anti-Trump conservatives to- affirmed no government official “can it jailed the writer of day, anti-Communist liberals in proscribe what shall be orthodox T Pride of the Marines but somehow late 1940s Hollywood found that in politics, nationalism, religion or missed the Rosenbergs. One of its the middle could be a very lonely other matters of opinion,” they were co-chairmen was a world-class an- place. able to enlist hundreds of Hollywood ti-Semite, while the other went to In 1947, the Cold War had barely celebrities to challenge the commit- jail for financial corruption. So do gotten started and the blacklist tee’s right to question anyone’s politi- we really need another account of didn’t exist. Doherty shows how cal affiliations. the 1947 HUAC hearings, especially Hollywood’s top executives, too of- The Committee for the First so soon after Glenn Frankel’s su- ten painted as craven reactionaries, Amendment dominates Doherty’s perb High Noon: The Hollywood were fierce opponents of HUAC. account, not the House Commit- Blacklist and the Making of An And why wouldn’t they be? No self- tee on Un-American Affairs. “At American Classic? Don’t we know respecting movie mogul wants to be once glamorous and grassroots, it enough already about the Beverly told what films to make or whom would be the animating center of Hills Marxists who made up the to hire. And all the studio heads the campaign against HUAC from Hollywood Ten? And HUAC’s es- knew that many of the congressmen Hollywood’s besieged liberals,” he sential claim—that the motion-pic- on the committee were publicity- writes. By focusing on the story’s ture industry was promoting sub- hungry racists, former isolationists, angels, rather than its monsters, versive ideas before and during and anti-Semites using Hollywood the author separates himself from World War II—is preposterous. Tell to tar the legacy of the . his predecessors as he charts the it to Victor Lazlo. Casablanca and They were confident that they could CFA’s noble but naive conviction hundreds of other movies helped handle Congress, just as they had in that it could defend a Communist’s define the essential democratic the past. (Six years earlier, a proto- right to free speech without de- values America was fighting for. version of HUAC dominated by fending Communism itself. Yet histo- isolationists accused Hollywood of Hollywood liberals were hardly rian Thomas Doherty proves there un-American warmongering. Two naive about Communists. Before are still a few surprises, even af- months later, the Japanese bombed the war, they had worked alongside ter recent revisionist accounts ex- Pearl Harbor.) Communist Party members in the During the 1947 hearings, the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, one Mark Horowitz is a former studio chief Jack Warner confi- of the largest and most successful editor at Wired and the New York dently admitted before the com- Popular Front organizations of the Times. mittee that he employed Com- period. But after the Hitler-Stalin

Commentary 49 nonaggression pact in 1939, Mos- Ring Lardner Jr., said he overheard cow secretly ordered Party mem- The two women outside the hearing bers to cease opposition to Hitler i room discussing Bogart. and promote isolationist policies same “He’s a Communist,” one said. “I instead. Many of the future Hol- executives who won’t be going to any more of his lywood Ten, including screenwrit- movies.” ers John Howard Lawson, Dalton publicly rejected “No, he isn’t,” said the other. Trumbo, and Lester Cole, shame- “He’s an anti-Communist.” lessly flip-flopped overnight and a blacklist before “I don’t care what kind of Com- turned on their former allies, de- the hearings munist he is,” the first replied. “I’m nouncing liberal colleagues as war- still not going to any more of his mongers and traitors. agreed after movies.” Such hypocrisy and dishonesty the hearings Doherty methodically charts were difficult to forget. Yet when how, after the hearings, the movie CFA members flew to Washington in to fire the ten community rapidly transitioned 1947, they put aside their misgivings, ‘unfriendlies’ from “stiff-backed resistance to believing, as good liberals do, that supine capitulation.” The American freedom of expression and freedom and never Legion threatened boycotts, and of conscience demanded a stout de- again employ the studio chiefs were pressured fense. Weren’t these the very ideals by their bankers in New York. Americans had just fought for? Communists. The same executives who publicly At first, the argument seemed to rejected a blacklist before the hear- be working. During the first days ings unanimously agreed after the of the nationally broadcast hear- worked. HUAC co-chairman J. Par- hearings to fire the ten “unfriend- ings, following the testimony of the nell Thomas charged them with lies” and never again employ Com- studio chiefs and the “friendly” wit- contempt of Congress, and all ten munists. The CFA dissolved, and nesses, public opinion was trending eventually did jail time. (That Par- Bogart along with other celebrity against HUAC, something Doherty’s nell subsequently wound up in the opponents of HUAC were forced to new research makes clear. But then same federal prison as Lawson and make humiliating public apologies the Hollywood Ten testified. Cole is a third-act twist that still to preserve their careers. The “unfriendlies” and their beggars belief.) Was the outcome inevitable? lawyers (three of whom were Party Bogart, Bacall, and fellow CFA Was resistance to the new mood of members as well) had devised a members, seated in the hearing the country futile? Doherty argues unified strategy. Asked if they were room in full view of the cameras, that Hollywood’s newfound matu- Communists, the Ten didn’t invoke were unprepared for this testimony. rity and cultural importance from the Fifth Amendment and refuse to They had foolishly hoped that the 1939 to 1945 had raised its profile answer; instead, they cheekily cited Ten would defy the committee by and made it a high-value target, the First Amendment and replied taking the Fifth, then publicly and especially when longstanding po- with a barrage of prevarications honestly discuss their affiliations on litical divisions that World War and obfuscations. the Capitol steps outside the com- II had suppressed were resurfac- Since HUAC was able credibly mittee’s purview. Instead, the CFA ing. Republicans and conservative to document each witness’s party was now tied tightly to “unfriend- Democrats used HUAC to tarnish membership for the cameras and lies,” who no longer seemed like a the New Deal. Hollywood right- press, these obstreperous antics particularly sympathetic bunch to wingers used HUAC to denounce came across as evasive, not prin- defend. A press report said that the old rivals on the left. And the cipled. They weren’t Democrats visiting celebrities “were blind to Reds, on orders from Moscow, used or Republicans; they really were how cynically the Communists had HUAC to discredit democracy and Communists, and they were just played them.” And it didn’t help that prove that fascism was on the rise. trying to keep it secret, as required several of the Ten showed up just Doherty’s tragic conclusion is by the Communist Party at the days later at a New York dinner in that Hollywood’s naive and ideal- time. If Moscow’s strategy was de- honor of a Soviet spy. istic liberals, caught between the signed to turn the Hollywood Ten The hearings were a disaster for Committee and the Comintern, into martyrs, as many suspect, it Hollywood liberals. One of the Ten, never stood a chance.q

50 Politics & Ideas : June 2018 a bestseller until the Depression, Its Not Done sold 150,000 copies in 1925 and went on to be largely for- A Man of His gotten. Woodrow Wilson: A Psycho- logical Study, which Bullitt wrote with Sigmund Freud, has also been largely forgotten but for dif- Century ferent reasons. A meld of Bullitt’s memories and Freud’s theories, the Roads Not Taken: predicted, would be the bloodiest book’s publication was delayed by An Intellectual Biography of in human history because of the differences over the manuscript William C. Bullitt ties between Russia, Germany, and and by events in Europe. It was fi- By Alexander Etkind Japan—a trio he described as “the nally published in the 1960s, when University of Pittsburgh Press, league of…discontent.” psychobiography enjoyed a brief 290 pages House took Bullitt under his heyday. Perhaps Bullitt’s best claim wing, setting in motion the young to literary immortality comes cour- Reviewed by Fred Siegel man’s long and tumultuous con- tesy of the Russian novelist Mikhail nection with the USSR. In 1919, Bulgakov, who immortalized him ITH Russia House made Bullitt part of Wilson’s in the character of Woland in his back at the team at the Paris Peace Accords. classic The Master and Margarita. center of the But in the midst of the negotia- 21st-century tions over the future of Germany, HANDSOME contributor geopolitical the Russian Civil War broke out. to FDR’s 1932 presiden- Wmap, it seems only fitting that a new It was a bloody conflict that would A tial campaign, Bullitt was biography of William Bullitt has come to claim 25 million lives. connected to Roosevelt by way of just been published. Bullitt was in But at the time it seemed to have Col. House. Both Bullitt and House many ways the architect of Ameri- reached a stalemate. Sensing an believed that the failed 1919 mis- ca’s 20th-century relationship with opening, House sent the 28-year- sion to Lenin might yet be of use. In the Soviet Union. Alexander Et- old Bullitt to Russia to meet with 1933, FDR became the first presi- kind’s Roads Not Taken: An Intel- the 49-year-old Vladimir Lenin, dent to extend diplomatic recogni- lectual Biography of William C. who was for the moment badly tion to the USSR and made Bullitt Bullitt is an engrossing account of a outgunned by his rivals. After three the first American ambassador to Philadelphia blueblood who, though days of negotiation, Lenin agreed the Soviet Union. Bullitt arrived he grappled with Woodrow Wilson, to forgo Soviet claims to much of in Russia with a strongly philo- Lenin, Freud, FDR, and Stalin, has what had been Czarist Russia. But Soviet attitude. largely been forgotten. when Bullitt returned to Paris with Etkind, who teaches at the Eu- When Bullitt graduated a seeming triumph at hand, Wil- ropean University Institute in Flor- from in 1912, he was son was sick and too ill-disposed ence, paints a colorful portrait of voted the “most brilliant” in his to give Bullitt his attentions. In Bullitt’s time at Spaso House, the class. His writing skills and family the interim, the Bolsheviks rallied, famously elegant American embas- connections landed him a job with and the three days that might have sy. In Russia, Bullitt trained George the Philadelphia Public Ledger. shaken the world had passed. An Kennan and Chip Bohlen, the two Bullitt’s talents won him an as- angry Bullitt denounced Wilson as most prominent Soviet specialists signment in the midst of war-torn a mountebank and resigned from of the Cold War. Etkind quotes Europe, where his insights caught the diplomatic corps. University of Pittsburgh Russian- the eye of Colonel Edward House, Disillusioned, Bullitt devoted ist Sean Guillroy, who said that political intimate and chief politi- much of the 1920s to writing. In “Bullitt’s embassy was one big frat cal adviser to President Woodrow 1925, the year F. Scott Fitzgerald party,” where beautiful ballerinas Wilson. The 20th century, House wrote The Great Gatsby, Bullitt had numerous dalliances with the published It’s Not Done, a novel embassy staff, including the twice- Fred Siegel is an editor of City about the world that had been lost divorced Bullitt. Despite the reality Journal and Scholar in Residence in WWI. While Gatsby sold 20,000 that the ballerinas were supplying at St. Francis College in Brooklyn. copies in 1925 and didn’t become Stalin with intelligence, Bohlen

Commentary 51 fondly remembered the situation. scene in Bulgakov’s novel, but “the idea of European unification “I have never had more fun or inter- many of those who attended—in- was increasingly present in Bullitt’s est in my whole life,” he said. “This cluding the Bolshevik luminary dispatches from Paris before the embassy...is like no other embassy Nikolai Bukharin, legendary the- war.” According to Bullitt himself: in the world.” ater director Vsevolod Meyerhold, “These dinky little European states The Holodomor, Stalin’s mass and the modernizer of the Red cannot live in an airplane civiliza- murder of Ukrainian peasants, Army Mikhail Tuhachevsk—were tion.” He feared that war “will mean was already well under way. But tortured and murdered only a few such horrible suffering that it will the horrors of the regime came year later in Stalin’s purges of the end in general revolution, and the home to Spaso House only with late 1930s. The party is still re- only winners would be Stalin and the murder of Sergei Kirov, a membered in Moscow. company.” prominent member of the Polit- After Bullitt’s departure from Bullitt used his ties with the buro who had been rumored to Moscow, things changed consider- French to good effect. He pro- be a possible successor to Stalin. ably. Joseph Davies, Bullitt’s suc- moted the career of the young Kirov’s murder, probably ordered cessor as ambassador, was a major Jean Monnet, who would go on to by Stalin, was the beginning of contributor to FDR’s 1936 presiden- become one of the founders of the the Great Terror. The episode had tial campaign. He was a wealthy European Union. And he used his a profound effect on Bullitt and anti-trust lawyer who knew little of French sources to convince FDR Kennan, who came to place Hitler foreign policy and referred to Sta- that Hitler was a madman with and Stalin in the same bracket. lin as the kindly “Uncle Joe.” It was unlimited ambitions. When Soviet Marxism, as Bullitt was coming a view consistent with Roosevelt’s intelligence chief Walter Krivitsky to see it, was merely a mask for own misunderstandings. defected to the West, he brought a new version of Czarist cruelty. Transferred to Paris, Bullitt of- with him the revelation of the com- But despite Bullitt’s extensive cor- fered his opinions freely to FDR’s ing Nazi-Stalin alliance, realizing respondence with FDR describ- emissary Harold Ickes. He foresaw Bullitt’s worst fears. But although ing the horrors of Stalinism, the that Mussolini would find Ethio- he also had information about Al- president continued to have a pia a burden, Franco would win ger Hiss’s Communist connections, positive view of the Soviet leader. the Spanish Civil War, and “China Bullitt could neither get Washing- In his last dispatch from Moscow, would win battles but lose the war ton to listen to him nor protect Bullitt wrote, “The Soviet Union is to Japan.” But, Etkind writes of Krivitsky, who was assassinated by unique among the great powers. Bullitt, “overestimating his beloved Stalin’s agents in his Washington It is not only a state but also the France, he thought the war could hotel room. headquarters of an international last 20 years in Europe.” Where he Bullitt repeatedly rubbed FDR faith.” Bullitt’s criticisms of Stalin, completely missed the boat was on the wrong way by importuning explains Etkind, cost him FDR’s England, where he thought that the the president for a major post in good will. fascist Oswald Mosley would have the administration. And he was But before he left for his next to be installed as prime minister if blocked professionally by his rival, diplomatic posting, which was to the island didn’t fall to Hitler. Under Secretary of State Sumner be in Paris, Bullitt held what was Bullitt’s influence on France Welles, an ally of Alger Hiss’s and a perhaps the most extraordinary was unusual for a foreigner. He at- man who had described Mussolini diplomatic ball ever staged. It was tended so many cabinet meetings as “the greatest man [I] ever met.” a barely believable party for 500 that the press described him as Denied a position he thought wor- guests, including the Soviet foreign a minister without portfolio. But thy of his talents, Bullitt resigned and defense ministers. The affair consistent with his exalted sense from the diplomatic service and implicitly mocked Stalinism with of himself, he showered insights joined the French army as a major. a re-creation of a collective farm and advice on Roosevelt concern- He fought under rugged conditions complete with baby goats, roost- ing the whole of Europe. Aviation, as an aide to General Jean de Lat- ers, a drunken bear (and a Czech he claimed, was “the new element” tre Tassigny and demonstrated his band). The revelers munched that changed the rules of European courage by winning the Croix de on duck-liver pâté while starva- security. “The modern bombing Guerre and the Legion of Honour. tion spread throughout country- plane has confronted Europe with As the war wound down, Bullitt side. The scenes of revelry live an alternative of unification or was increasingly critical of Roos- on as the climactic Satan’s Ball destruction.” Etkind also notes that evelt. He ultimately saw FDR as a

52 Politics & Ideas : June 2018 man who, like Woodrow Wilson, had won the war but lost the peace. FDR was, he argued, as weak at Yalta, physically and strategically, as Wilson had been at Paris. The UN, The War on Bullitt maintained, left us powerless against the aggression of any “ban- dit great power.” But while Bullitt hurled imprecations in essays for Dignity Life, his protégé George Kennan, deputy head of mission in Moscow, had the eyes and ears of Secretary of State James Byrnes. In what became The Rise of Victimhood Culture: en.” Police later determined that the famous February 1946 Long Tele- Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, the post was a hoax and that the gram, Kennan crafted the argument and the New Culture Wars threat had been written by Meg that, according to Etkind, had “first By Bradley Campbell Lanker Simons herself. Before the been hammered out in extended and Jason Manning police arrived at this conclusion, a discussions with Bullitt when they Palgrave Macmillan, 278 pages rally against “rape culture” had had been at Spaso House in Mos- been held at the university. cow.” Influenced by Bullitt, Kennan Reviewed by Claire Lehmann The Rise of Victimhood Culture articulated what became known as makes the case that incentives at the doctrine of containment: N 2011, a group of University the modern American university of Wyoming students creat- have created a new moral culture, Marxism provided the Soviet ed a Facebook group called one where victimhood is granted Union with the…fig leaf of… “UW Crushes,” where they a special moral status. Awarding moral and intellectual respect- shared anonymous declara- status to victims has in turn led to ability. Without it they would Itions of attraction to one another. hoaxes, false accusations, and, in stand before history, at best, as The police were called to investi- some extreme cases, moral panics. only the last of that long suc- gate when one anonymous poster The diagnosis is put forward by so- cession of cruel and wasteful wrote: “I want to hatef--k Meg ciologists Bradley Campbell and Ja- Russian rulers who have relent- Lanker Simons so hard That chick son Manning, and they make their lessly forced their country on runs her liberal mouth all the time case convincingly. The argument is to ever new heights of military and doesn’t care who knows it. I that college campus is ground zero power in order to guarantee think its [sic] hot and it makes me for this new culture, but its rules external security of their inter- angry. One night with me and shes of conduct are starting to leak into nally weak regime. [sic] gonna be a good Republican mainstream institutions. bitch.” Students who were mem- Campbell and Manning did not Kennan channeled his thoughts bers of the group asked the group’s start their careers investigating mi- and fears into a patient doctrine administrators to remove the post. croaggressions and trigger warn- that called on countering the Krem- But Lanker Simons objected: “Ac- ings. Campbell had been studying lin when it attempted to expand. tually, I want this to stay up. This is the sociology of genocide at Califor- The more voluble Bullitt couldn’t disgusting, misogynistic, and ap- nia State University, and Manning remain as calm. He saw the growth parently something the admins of had been studying suicide at West of Communist parties in France this page think is a perfectly ac- Virginia University. They came to- and Italy as the imminent footfalls ceptable sentiment.” She contin- gether to consider the questions of of doom. After an extraordinary ued: “Even if it is taken down, I’m how groups manage conflict and career, he would never again rise left to wonder if there’s someone how grievances are handled in dif- to the heights of fame. “Unques- out there with a violent fantasy ferent cultural contexts. In The Rise tionably,” notes Kennan, “he de- about me—and likely other wom- of Victimhood Culture, Campbell served better of the country than and Manning describe the three he received from it….in the end of Claire Lehmann, who writes main moral cultures that exist to- his life Bullitt became bitter…an from Australia, is the editor of the day: “dignity,” “honor,” and “victim- unjustly frustrated man.”q online magazine Quillette. hood,” and the various behaviors

Commentary 53 associated with each. accolades might incentivize vexa- of nobles was weakened, the upper A dignity culture, they explain, tious or false complaints in a stu- classes adopted dignity culture as has a set of moral values and behav- dent body seemed not to matter to well. So while dignity spread up- ioral norms designed to promote adults in charge. wards from the middle classes to the idea that each human life pos- In the most disquieting chapter, the social elite, Campbell and Man- sesses immutable worth. If an indi- Campell and Manning predict that ning warn, victimhood culture will vidual has been brutalized or exists victimhood culture will eventually likely spread downwards from the at the bottom of a social pecking spread from elite colleges into the social elites to the middle classes— order, she still has human worth. mainstream. In making this pre- as those wishing to be upwardly In a dignity culture, children are diction, they note the significance mobile will try to emulate upper- encouraged to try their best and are of the fact that victimhood culture class moral norms. taught aphorisms such as “sticks has emerged among the wealthiest While the culture is likely to and stones make break my bones, schools in America. Oberlin and spread downwards, it is also likely but words will never hurt me.” Brown, for example, have led the to inspire resentment. Campbell By contrast, in an honor cul- microaggression movement, while and Manning warn that the narra- ture, being on the bottom of a social Claremont has been a pioneer in tives of privilege deployed by the pecking order is associated with safe-space demands, microaggres- culture, which target white men great shame. Victims are tainted sion protests, and the banning of in particular, are just as likely to and often punished for bringing speakers. They point out that the inspire hostility as deference, es- dishonor to their families. In some median family income at Middle- pecially in those who feel that they extreme circumstances, they may bury College—where Charles Mur- are unfairly targeted as oppressors: even be killed. ray was shouted down and where A victimhood culture departs his sponsoring professor, Alison If whites and males increasing- from both by inverting their norms. Stranger, was given whiplash inju- ly face a moral world divided On a university campus, for ex- ries in a parking lot—was $240,000 between those who vilify them ample, victims are not shamed but per year. That income level is dou- and those who glorify them, are instead fiercely protected, and ble that of Saint Louis University, we should not be surprised if now awarded status. This dynamic where Murray spoke to an attentive many find the latter more ap- could be observed as early as 2015, audience. The book thus highlights pealing than the former.… Here in the reception to Emma Sulkow- a peculiar fact: The students most again, the backlash against vic- icz’s protest against a sexual assault obsessed with their own oppres- timhood may not necessarily she alleged had taken place. It con- sion are some of the most pam- advance the ideals of dignity, sisted of her carrying her mattress pered individuals in the world. such as the moral equality of all around the Columbia University Unlike victimhood culture, dig- people. Victimhood culture de- campus, including to class, under nity culture did not arise from viates from this moral equality the condition that her accused rap- pampered pupils at American by producing a moral hierarchy ist needed to be expelled in order schools and universities. It did with white males at the bottom; for her to stop. For this perfor- not even originate with the upper the reaction it provokes may mance, she was widely criticized, classes. Campbell and Manning be the resurgence of a moral but she was also heralded as a explain that it was first established hierarchy that places them at feminist hero. The New York Times in the class of yeoman farmers, the top. art critic Roberta Smith called it master craftsmen, and artisans of “succinct and powerful” and added Northern Europe. Since its mem- Paradoxically, the backlash that Sulkowicz has “set a very high bers had goods to sell, they had a against political correctness is like- standard for any future work she’ll lot to gain from general tolerance ly to make the situation worse. do as an artist.” Although Columbia of the foibles of others and a lot Conservatives are quickly learn- University and the New York Po- to lose from engaging in reckless ing to ape victimhood, too. The au- lice Department failed to establish violence. While the nobility contin- thors note that professional provo- any wrongdoing on the part of the ued to duel with swords, Europe’s cateur Milo Yiannopolous “thrives student Sulkowicz had accused, growing middle classes developed on causing offense and controver- for art critics such as Smith, the cultures of commercial interdepen- sy,” neither of which promotes a accused student’s guilt was a fait dence. When institutions such as culture of dignity. accompli. That such awards and courts matured and the authority When Kevin Williamson was

54 Politics & Ideas : June 2018 fired from the Atlantic, Erick Erick- son tweeted, “Kevin Williamson’s firing is a reminder that there are two Americas and one side will stop Churchill: at nothing to silence the other.” Kurt Schlichter took it up another notch: Retorts and All Never Trump, the public hu- miliation of Kevin Williamson Normandy and Beyond, ness, or capacity for impish mis- demonstrates the indisputable May–December 1944: The chief. Running through the entire fact… Churchill Documents, Volume 20 length of the work is also a cold Edited by Sir Martin Gilbert hatred of Hitler and the Nazis, who, You can side with the left and and Larry Arnn at the volume’s end in December hope to be allowed to exist The Hillsdale College Press, 1944, have just been stopped from like a domesticates [sic] lap 2,576 pages breaking through to the River dog like David Brooks or Bret Meuse, as the Battle of the Bulge Stephens… Reviewed by Andrew Roberts turns in the Allies’ favor. The book is packed with Or you can accept this is an exis- ILLSDALE College Churchill’s love of unusual words tential fight and join us. in Michigan has and forceful expressions, many of for many years which have never appeared in any The logic of victimhood cul- now been under- previous biography of him. Writing ture, then, is escalating grievance taking the truly to Anthony Eden, his foreign secre- and retaliatory aggression. When Hmammoth task of publishing every tary, on May 7, for example, Churchill slights cannot be neutralized with significant primary document relat- complained of the way the Special a dignified turn of the cheek, the ing to the life of Sir Winston Operation Executive “barges in an prognosis looks grim. Churchill, a project that is now fi- ignorant manner into all sorts of del- What the purveyors of victim- nally nearing its end. The 20th vol- icate situations. They were originally hood culture do not seem to grasp ume of the series has been produced responsible for building up the nest is that in weakening dignity, and with the same scholarship, criteria of cockatrices for [the Communist in undermining the principles that for choice of material, meticulous partisans] in Greece.” (“A cockatrice deem all men and women to be footnoting, and attention to detail is a mythical, two-legged dragon or moral equals, they unwittingly de- that have characterized all its pre- serpent-like creature with a cock’s stroy the safeguards that prevent decessors. It takes its hero from May head,” we are told in a footnote.) bad actors—such as hoaxers and 1, 1944, five weeks before D-Day, to On May 22, General Sir Hugh narcissists—from climbing the so- the end of that tempestuous year, as Tudor, who had served in Palestine, cial hierarchy through dishonesty Churchill returned from strife-torn wrote to Churchill about an article and manipulation. In incentivizing Athens after Christmas, having suc- in a New York Arabic newspaper weakness and reliance on third cessfully put in place the military proposing that Jerusalem be cho- parties to intervene in disputes, and political arrangements that sen as the seat of the new United students invite a paternalistic au- saved Greece from Communism. Nations organization after the war. thoritarian apparatus to develop. Despite its monumental length, “It is pointed out that Palestine is While they seem comfortable with readers are unlikely to come across one of the most central places in the an authoritarian apparatus on their any of the book’s 2,576 pages world and therefore as suitable as university campus today, we should without being awed at Churchill’s any for this purpose,” Tudor told the not be surprised if they demand an linguistic fluidity, clarity of thought prime minister. “It is also pointed authoritarian state to police the citi- and expression, sense of humor, out that Jerusalem is held sacred by zenry tomorrow. The logical end- foresight, sheer bloody-minded- the people of three great religions; point of a victimhood culture will so it would be best to international- not be a progressive utopia. On the Andrew Roberts’s biogra- ize it.” He added: “It would certainly contrary: The further this culture phy, Churchill: Walking with Des- disturb the Muslim world greatly if radiates outward, the more likely it tiny, will published by Penguin in it were put under the Jews,” which will make victims of us all. q November. probably explains why Churchill,

Commentary 55 a convinced Zionist, declined to go Field Marshal Smuts in terms al- into the issue with him. The deep most verging on the anti-American. “Give my love to Randolph i Churchill’s pain and anger at the should he come into your sphere,” divisions way the Warsaw Uprising failed to Churchill wrote to Marshal Josip between FDR gain support from Stalin (referred Tito on May 25. “I wish I could to as “Uncle J” by FDR here) is also come myself but I am too old and and Churchill evident. Churchill asked Roosevelt heavy to jump out of a parachute.” to authorize the USAAF to supply Churchill hoped that Tito might be over the South the Uprising, “landing if necessary drawn into the Western rather than of France and on Russian airfields without their the Soviet sphere of influence after formal consent.” He added: “We the war, and this volume sees him the Balkans are would of course share full responsi- considerably hardening his attitude recorded in detail. bility with you for any action taken toward the Russians even two years by your Air Force.” Roosevelt merely before his Iron Curtain speech. “I The disputes replied a little later that “the prob- have found it practically impossible ended with lem of relief for the Poles in Warsaw to continue correspondence with has therefore unfortunately been them,” he told President Roosevelt FDR’s victory, solved by delay and by German ac- of the Russian foreign minister, to Churchill’s tion and there now appears to be Vyacheslav Molotov. “But I note that nothing we can do to assist them.” after each very rude message they chagrin. The assassination of Churchill’s send to me, they have done pretty friend Lord Moyne, his minister to well what was asked. Although Mo- the Middle East, by the Irgun Zwai lotov was most insulting about Ru- India, “hostile to us in every fibre, Leumi underground movement in mania, they have today told us they largely in the hands of the native November 1944, tested his Zionism accept the broad principle that they vested interests and frozen to his as never before, but the Cabinet take the lead in the Rumanian busi- idea of the hand spinning-wheel minutes merely record, “The Prime ness and give us the lead in Greece.” and inefficient cultivation methods Minister suggested that the Secre- He was constantly asking Roosevelt for the over-crowded population of tary of State for the Colonies should for tougher stances against Russia India.” Churchill never saw Gandhi see Dr [Chaim] Weizmann and im- but rarely got them. “Do not hesi- as anything other than a fraud. This press upon him that it was incum- tate to be blunt with these Russians volume contains President Roos- bent on the Jewish Agency to do when they become unduly trucu- evelt’s refusals to Churchill’s repeat- all in their power to suppress these lent,” he told A.V. Alexander, the first ed requests for American shipping to terrorist activities.” Even the mur- lord of the admiralty, that month. transport Australian wheat to Ben- der of a close family friend of 40 President Trump might benefit gal during the terrible famine there. years could not disturb his dreams from reading Churchill’s note to “I regret exceedingly the necessity of for a Jewish national homeland. General Sir Hastings “Pug” Ismay, giving you this unfavourable reply,” The overall impression created his military secretary, of May 7, the President wrote on June 1. Those by these volumes, which cover eight 1944: “I do not like press conferenc- revisionist historians and journalists crucial months of World War II, is es, even off the record, on the eve of who attempt to blame Churchill for that Britain was extraordinarily for- an important battle. I have recently the famine and its aftermath should tunate to have a leader of the caliber been perturbed at reported state- read this volume, which absolves of Winston Churchill to guide her ments from Naples, one in the Cor- him from their ahistorical and fun- destinies while V-1 and V-2 terror riere, explaining that we are about damentally ignorant attacks. weapons were still landing on Brit- to attack. Is it really necessary to The deep divisions between Roo- ain, and the Nazis were still show- tell the enemy this?” sevelt and Churchill over their rival ing themselves to have a terrifyingly One enemy of Churchill’s who plans for assaults in the South of potent capacity for counterattack. is today considered a secular saint, France and the Balkans are re- We are also very lucky to have Mohandas Gandhi, comes in for corded in detail here. The disputes Hillsdale College devote the time, harsh treatment in these pages. “He ended with Roosevelt’s victory, to money, scholarship, and effort to is a thoroughly evil force,” Churchill Churchill’s great chagrin, as pri- build this magnificent memorial to wrote to Lord Wavell, the viceroy of vately expressed to friends such as him. q

56 Politics & Ideas : June 2018 spend time in Tulsa they under- stand factory workers in Okla- homa. Of course this ignorance works both ways. When a man I Small-Town was interviewing in Little Rock found out that I lived in New York, he asked me if it was true that all New Yorkers are rude and eat a lot Clues of hot dogs. Wuthnow’s first observation about small towns is that they are The Left Behind: Decline and 62 percent of the rural vote went to “moral communities.” He explains: Rage in Rural America Trump, compared with 50 percent “I do not mean this in the vernacu- By Robert Wuthnow of the suburban vote and 35 per- lar sense of ‘moral’ as good, right, Princeton, 192 pages cent of the urban vote. In fact, “the virtuous, or principled. I mean smaller a county’s population and it rather in the more specialized Reviewed by the farther it was from a metropoli- sense of a place to which and in Naomi Schaefer Riley tan area, the more likely it was to which people feel an obligation to have voted for Trump.” Moreover, one another and to uphold the lo- HOSE people up there the divide between rural and ur- cal ways of being that govern their in Washington, they ban seems to be growing. Rural expectations about ordinary life think they know more voters have become “increasingly and support their feelings of being than we do. They treat Republican” in each of the past two at home and doing the right thing.” us like second-class elections. When people who live in cities T citizens, like we’re dumb hicks, like Wuthnow, a professor of sociol- think about small towns, they of- we don’t know what’s going on.” ogy at Princeton who grew up in a ten focus on the idea that everyone That was the complaint of Reverend small town in Kansas and has spent knows everyone else, that other Ralph Patterson, who presides over much of his career wisely observ- people are in your business, that a Protestant church in a small town ing the nation’s religious trends, your past is never fully past because of 3,000 people near the Gulf of has turned his attention in the past everyone around you remembers Mexico. Patterson, who was one of several years to rural life. His 2013 it. But these factors can also change the subjects interviewed by Robert book, Small-Town America: Find- the way people behave—for the bet- Wuthnow in his new book, The Left ing Community, Shaping the Fu- ter. Not only because someone is Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural ture, was a dense academic study always watching but also because America, also had a warning for his based on thousands of qualitative if you have to have encounter the fellow Americans a few years ago: “I interviews with residents. The Left same people over and over again, think they’re going to have a rude Behind is a shorter, less ambitious there are certain accommodations awakening up there in Washington work that aims to look back on his you will make. It may seem like a in the next few years. People are just previous research and determine cliché, but people from small towns fed up. They want to put some other whether or not he (or the rest of us) generally have to take a pragmatic people up there that’s got some should have seen Trump coming. approach to life. Of course there common sense.” More broadly, Wuthnow tries to are long-running feuds and people Was it this sentiment, one that explain one part of America’s popu- who have isolated themselves from Wuthnow reports as fairly common lation to another. the community, but for the most in the rural parts of America, that Many have observed that the part, people who desire anonymity brought us Donald Trump? Wuth- conceit of dividing America into have left. now cites exit polls showing that Blue and Red states masks deep And so, for that matter, have divisions between rural and urban a lot of other people. Small-town Naomi Schaefer Riley is a populations inside those states. populations have been in decline senior fellow at the Independent The result is that our cultural and for decades now as farm work has Women’s Forum and a visiting media elite think that when they become mechanized. The middle- fellow at the American Enterprise visit Kansas City they understand class men and women of small Institute. farmers in Missouri or when they towns generally encourage their

Commentary 57 kids to get a college education, and to be immoral, though (as with the are often blurred. those who do rarely come back. rest of America) as more and more But what about other sorts of There are simply not enough op- people are likely to know someone associations? Are rural Americans portunities for them. who is gay, their opposition has more likely to hold racist views? People who do stay in small waned. Rural Americans are not Certainly they are torn about the towns often have to curb their particularly concerned with what issue of immigration. While many ambitions. Wuthnow notes, for we might think of as traditional welcome immigrants to towns instance, that when a couple inher- gender roles. Sure, women are of- where the population has been its a family farm and moves back ten taking care of children and the declining for some time, a clear ma- home, a woman (usually) will have elderly, but they may also be driv- jority wants more national restric- to give up her career in the process. ing tractors and keeping the books tions on immigration. This was no Wuthnow writes: “The interviews for family businesses. Pragmatism doubt part of President Trump’s we conducted were interrupted usually wins out. appeal to the rural population. frequently by people pausing to The cultural concern goes be- Whether racism is a more serious get a grip on their emotions as they yond hot-button social issues. Ru- problem in rural America than described goals they knew they ral Americans feel that they have elsewhere, and whether that also would never achieve and the atten- less control over the moral order of led to Trump’s election, Wuthnow dant frustrations. They were on the their communities than they once is not ultimately willing to say. He whole content with the knowledge did. The Internet has brought the hears a lot of “implicit prejudice” that life was what it was, whether seediest aspects of urban life right in his interviews. People complain that meant having given up a ca- into their homes. The scourge of about “riff-raff” who were not reer, suffering from job loss or the drugs in these small towns has also “pulling their weight” in a town failure of a farm, or growing old left people feeling anxious—indeed with a small population of poor without children nearby.” more anxious than if they lived in a blacks, for instance. Or they launch Even the churches that provide larger city because “a family mov- into invectives about President comfort and guidance to the people ing away or a teenager on meth Obama’s being a socialist. of rural America are emptying out. becomes a community problem, In a recent “interview” with the (Given Wuthnow’s interest in reli- rather than only a personal one.” website Vox, Wuthnow’s interlocu- gion, one must assume the title of And individuals in a small town tor lectured him: “We can talk all the book is a winking reference to feel especially responsible. “You we like about the sanctity of these the apocalyptic novel series Left may not be affected personally small communities and the tradi- Behind, a bestseller among evan- but you are part of a failing com- tional values that hold them to- gelicals.) munity.” gether, but, as you say, many of the There’s a certain melancholy This sense of personal responsi- people who live in these places hold that pervades these communities, bility has plenty of positive effects, racist views and support racist can- and it seems a stark contrast to the such as the fact that there are likely didates and we can’t accommodate kind of pioneering spirit one imag- to be many more voluntary organi- that.” Wuthnow does not suggest ines was responsible for the found- zations per capita in small towns accommodating such views, but ing of these towns. Of course there than large ones. The value placed he does suggest that these views are economic factors that have led in small towns on self-reliance alone are an incomplete picture to this situation. But Wuthnow ar- means not simply that people of rural America. “My message for gues that what distinguishes small want to see their neighbors pulling fellow academics and ‘producers towns and what explains the way themselves up by their bootstraps of knowledge’ in the liberal elite is that they vote is largely the result but also that there are plenty of that rural America is not crazy.” He of culture. ways they can get help. Wuthnow goes on: “Some of them participate Residents of small towns are notes that people in small towns in rallies where people scream particularly anxious about the cul- are much more likely to associ- invectives at Democrats and the ture. “The odds of being against ate with one another across class media. Some of them publicly con- abortion under all circumstances lines than are people in cities. done racial slurs and homophobia. with only the exception of rape They attend the same schools and Most of them do not. Their outrage or incest rises steadily as town churches, and the lines between is quieter. It remains hidden most sizes decreases.” Similarly, people blue-collar and white-collar work- of the time.” But after 2016, we can’t in small towns find homosexuality ers in farming and manufacturing be surprised by it anymore.q

58 Politics & Ideas : June 2018 Culture & Civilization How Do You Solve a Problem Like Oscar Hammerstein?

The enduring start of its decline in the mid-’60s, historical significance, nor does the only 20 or so are now revived regu- popularity of these six musicals legacy of an larly. Five of them—Oklahoma! show any sign of diminishing. But underpraised (1943), Carousel (1945), South Pa- there is a gap between that popu- cific (1949), The King and I (1951), larity and the esteem in which he man and The Sound of Music (1959)— is held by many critics. Kenneth By Terry Teachout feature lyrics by Oscar Hammer- Tynan summed up the conventional stein II and music by Richard Rod- wisdom about the alleged sentimen- F ALL the Broadway gers, while a sixth, Show Boat tality and naiveté of Hammerstein’s musicals written be- (1927), was written by Hammer- work when he dismissed The Sound tween the consolida- stein and Jerome Kern. Hammer- of Music as “a show for children of all tion of the genre in stein also wrote the books for five of ages, from six to about eleven and a the early ’20s and the these shows (the exception is The half.” Stephen Sondheim, Hammer- O Sound of Music), and those libret- stein’s protégé, put it more forgiving- Terry Teachout is Commen- tos define to this day how a “nor- ly when he described him as “easy to tary’s critic-at-large and the drama mal” musical is constructed. He is make fun of because he is so earnest.” critic of . He thus by definition the most impor- Hammerstein affected to be un- recently directed Satchmo at the tant and influential figure in the fazed by such criticisms. “In my Waldorf, his first play, at Houston’s history of musical comedy. book,” he told Mike Wallace in a Alley Theatre. No one questions Hammerstein’s 1958 TV interview, “there’s nothing

Commentary 59 wrong with sentiment because the grandfather an opera impresario— things we’re sentimental about are Even in that determined his destiny. He the fundamental things in life, the i started writing for the stage in birth of a child, the death of a child college, college, teaming up with the com- or of anybody, falling in love.” Yet he sought to posers Rudolf Friml, Otto Harbach, they continue to be made, if less and Sigmund Romberg to cre- often today than in the past, and create shows ate European-style operettas. Even Todd S. Purdum engages directly then, he sought to create shows with them in Something Wonder- whose songs whose songs were firmly rooted in ful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s were rooted in their dramatic action, and he also Broadway Revolution, an intro- longed to junk the fluffy plots that duction to the lives and work of dramatic action, dominated the genre. But Ham- Rodgers and Hammerstein. Its first and he also merstein had no knack for coming chapter is actually titled “The up with original storylines, and it Sentimentalist.”* But Purdum is a longed to junk was not until he started adapting political journalist, not a student the fluffy plots preexisting source material that he of theater, and his book neither found himself as an artist. breaks new biographical ground that dominated Seven years after Hammer- nor offers fresh insights into the the genre. But stein’s first Broadway show opened, interior lives of its subjects. It is he and Jerome Kern wrote Show hard to see for whom Something he had no knack Boat, a stage version of Edna Fer- Wonderful was written other than for coming up ber’s bestselling 1926 novel and readers who know nothing whatso- the first musical in which serious ever about either man, nor does it with original subjects (among them murder and seem likely that its publication will storylines. miscegenation) were treated on have any discernible effect on their stage. But the success of its original reputations, critical or otherwise. production, which ran for a year About Rodgers’s reputation, of mixed marriage (his father was a and a half, failed to persuade other course, there is no doubt. Long fully assimilated second-generation producers that theatergoers were before he ended his partnership German Jew, his mother a Presby- eager to embrace similar fare, and with Lorenz Hart and started writ- terian Scot) and carefully steered while several of the later songs that ing with Hammerstein, he was clear throughout his career of sub- Hammerstein wrote with Kern, universally regarded as having (in ject matter indicative in any way including “All the Things You Are” the words of Leonard Bernstein) of his Jewish background, though and “The Song Is You,” became “established new levels of taste, he made no attempt to conceal it. standards, he wrote no hit shows distinction, simplicity in the best He broke up his first marriage after between 1932 and 1943. sense, and inventiveness” in popu- falling in love at first sight with an- Hammerstein then teamed up lar song. But what about his second other man’s wife, leading to a union with Rodgers, whose long-standing collaborator? Will Oscar Hammer- that was not merely successful but collaboration with Lorenz Hart stein be remembered merely as a all-consumingly so: He reserved his had been derailed by Hart’s al- shrewd craftsman who knew what emotions for Dorothy, his second coholism. It had already run its the public wanted and gave it to wife, treating his children in a dis- course in any case, for Hart was in- them? Or will he be seen as a giant tant, often aggressively competitive capable of writing the books for his in his own right? manner and running his profes- own shows, and he and Rodgers, sional life in much the same way. both of whom longed to do more AMMERSTEIN called Adored by his friends, he was seen challenging work on Broadway, himself “a strange man,” by his colleagues as a canny and found it impossible as a result to re- H and while that is an exag- ruthless businessman who could be, alize their shared ambitions. When geration, his personality was far as the director Joshua Logan put it, Rodgers invited Hammerstein to from simple. Born in New York in “tough as nails.” work on a musical version of Green 1895, he was the oldest son of a It was Hammerstein’s own the- Grow the Lilacs, a 1930 play by atrical family—his father was a Lynn Riggs about pioneer life in * Henry Holt, 386 pages vaudeville producer, his paternal what would become the state of

60 Culture & Civilization : June 2018 Oklahoma, Hammerstein accepted sexual awakening of one character with alacrity. He and the killing of another) and By then he had long since per- i designing a tightly knit structural fected his lyric-writing style, turn- created template in which each successive ing out songs that were noteworthy a tightly knit song pushes the show inexorably for their seemingly effortless com- closer to its climax. bination of frank emotionalism structural Aside from the shows them- and directness of utterance (“Why selves, it is this formal template was I born? / Why am I living?”). template in that is Hammerstein’s chief con- To this he now added an increased which each tribution to the American musical. determination to do again what Virtually every Broadway musical he and Kern had already done so successive song to have held the stage since 1943 well in Show Boat, writing an en- pushes the has been structured in a way simi- tire show in which the emotional lar to that of Oklahoma!* Shortly stakes are involvingly high and show inexorably before Oklahoma! opened, Ham- every musical number is painstak- closer to its merstein told his son that it was ingly integrated into the show’s “different [from] and higher in dramatic arc, propelling it forward climax. This its intent” than other musicals. instead of standing apart from it. template The same was true of Carousel, an To this end, Rodgers and Ham- Americanized version of Ferenc merstein broke with Broadway is his chief Molnár’s 1909 play Liliom that tradition by reversing the order contribution to contains what Sondheim calls “the in which they wrote their songs. single most important moment in Instead of setting his lyrics to the American the revolution of contemporary Rodgers’s preexisting tunes, Ham- musicals.” Sondheim is referring to merstein usually wrote them first, musical. the “bench scene,” a 12-minute-long after which Rodgers set them to near-operatic scena during which music. This made it easier for them ing several years ago, the kind the show’s two principal characters to break free from the rigid for- of morning which, enveloping discover and reveal their love for mal strictures of repeating-chorus the shapes of earth—men, cattle each other in an exquisitely sus- “golden age” popular song, and in the meadow, blades of the tained melding of speech and song: it also allowed Hammerstein to young corn, streams—makes “If I loved you, / Words wouldn’t plunge further into his own deep them seem to exist now for the come in an easy way— / Round in well of feeling, thereby encourag- first time, their images giving circles I’d go!”** ing Rodgers to write music more off a visible golden emanation. Except for George Gershwin’s expansive than the brilliant show Porgy and Bess (1935), which was tunes to which Hart had previously In addition to yielding up the conceived as a full-scale grand set his lyrics. In addition, Ham- lyrics of “Oh, What a Beautiful opera, no previous Broadway show merstein shunned his predeces- Mornin’,” which describe “a bright, had contained so ambitious and sor’s elaborate wordplay, opting golden haze on the meadow” and completely realized a piece of mu- for straightforwardness (“I can corn that “looks like it’s climbin’ sic drama. It has to be said that see the stars gittin’ blurry / When clear up to the sky,” this passage the flawless first act of Carousel is we ride back home in the surrey”) gave Hammerstein the idea to start followed by a finale in which Ham- over Hart’s self-conscious virtuos- Oklahoma! not with the customary merstein comes perilously close to ity (“I’m wild again! / Beguiled rousing full-ensemble chorus but letting genuine sentiment spill over again! / A simpering, whimpering with the plainest of stage pictures, * For a detailed discussion of Hammer- child again”). a lone woman churning butter stein’s formal innovations, see my “Why Hammerstein looked to his while a cowboy is heard singing Musicals Succeed” (Commentary, March source material not just for song offstage. Here as elsewhere, he 2016). cues but for actual inspiration as shook off the tired conventions of ** A kinescope of a 1954 telecast in which well. Consider Riggs’s opening stage the musicals of the ’20s and ’30s, the “bench scene” is performed by Jan Clayton and John Raitt, who created the direction of Green Grow the Lilacs: preferring emotional force to fizzy leading roles in the original production of It is a radiant summer morn- frivolity (Oklahoma! hinges on the Carousel, can be viewed on YouTube.

Commentary 61 into sticky sentimentality, above all cessful but now irretrievably dated in “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” which Having Flower Drum Song (1958). By then, is invariably cited by those who i their energies were being diverted dislike his work (“At the end of the charted into the production of overblown storm is a golden sky, / And the the future widescreen film versions of their sweet silver song of a lark”). Even stage shows. so, it still brings Carousel to a dra- course of the While they scored two more matically convincing close when successes with The Sound of Music sung and staged with disciplined American and a TV version of Cinderella understatement. musical, (1957), neither is comparable in The hallmark of Carousel and artistic quality to its predecessors, Oklahoma! is their untragic ideal- Hammerstein in part because Hammerstein, ism, which is central to their mass longed to try who was already suffering from appeal. They embody a quintessen- the stomach cancer that killed tially American vision of life, one something him in 1960, turned over the task in which the inescapable pain and new. But his of writing the book of the former suffering of human existence—not show to Howard Lindsay and Rus- excluding violent death—can be desire to keep sel Crouse. These old pros yielded ameliorated by the power of love. on innovating to the temptation to indulge in Nor was this vision insincere, at the florid sentimentality of which least in Hammerstein’s case (Rodg- exceeded his Hammerstein had mostly steered ers’s personality was more opaque). ability to do so, clear and to which he now suc- He described himself as “one-third cumbed in some of his own lyrics, realist and two-thirds mystic,” and as he proved the last he ever wrote. The colos- every word he wrote came straight with Allegro. sal success of The Sound of Music from the heart. When he urged (and its 1965 film version) cement- Sondheim not to imitate him, he ed his posthumous reputation as said, “Don’t write what I feel. I re- a merchant of kitsch, and it was ally believe all this stuff. You don’t.” The two men then returned to taken for granted decades after Had he not believed it, he could form with South Pacific and The his death that all his musicals had never have written “If I Loved You,” King and I, whose scores are re- become period pieces. which Rodgers set to a melody (it splendently beautiful, though both Yet Hammerstein’s songs and is no mere tune) of Tschaikovskian shows, South Pacific in particular, shows continued to be sung and amplitude that is worthy of his are marred by Hammerstein’s ob- staged, and a dark-hued 1992 Royal partner’s wholly felt words. trusive liberal didacticism: “You’ve National Theatre revival of Carou- Having charted the future got to be taught before it’s too late sel brought about a critical reevalu- course of the American musical, / Before you are six or seven or ation of his work whose effects Hammerstein longed to try some- eight / To hate all the people your have proved to be lasting. Today he thing new. But his desire to keep relatives hate.” (Rodgers himself is generally acknowledged as a ma- on innovating exceeded his ability admitted in 1968 that Hammer- jor figure, and only blinkered snobs to do so, as he and Rodgers proved stein’s “one fault” was that he was now feel the need to apologize for with Allegro (1947), in which they “too preachy.”) Nevertheless, they appreciating his best work with threw out their rulebook and continue to be revived, not merely both Rodgers and Kern, much less wrote an experimental musical because of the quality of their for admiring the dramaturgical that uses a quasi-Greek chorus to songs but also because of the sure- innovations that, in Stephen Sond- tell the story of an Everyman-like ness of Hammerstein’s dramatic heim’s words, “changed the texture small-town doctor. Hammerstein’s carpentry. of the American musical theater book, ingenious though it is, bor- The duo’s first four hits seem forever.” He is, in fact, one of ders on the faux-naïf (“Gosh! Is to have exhausted their powers America’s greatest and most char- everybody in this town going to of creative renewal, for they were acteristic artists, a genius whose have their babies today?”), while followed by two forgotten flops,Me open-eyed optimism is a reflection Rodgers’s music is pleasant but and Juliet (1953) and Pipe Dream of our national character as it once largely unmemorable. (1955), and the commercially suc- was and may yet be.q

62 Culture & Civilization : June 2018 MEDIA COMMENTARY Desperately Seeking Trumpslayer

MATTHEW CONTINETTI

ONALD TRUMP had been president for just searching for a messiah who will herald the end of the a little more than a week, but Francine Prose 45th presidency, who will save America from itself. D was ready for him to go. On January 30, 2017, The list of potential saviors is long. It is also subject the novelist published her call to action in the pages of to revision. For example, on February 3, 2017, the Guardian. “I believe that what we need is a nonvio- magazine asked, “Will this man take down Donald lent national general strike of the kind that has been Trump?” The man in question was then–New York more common in Europe than here,” she wrote. state attorney general Eric Schneiderman, the “slender, Online activists loved the idea. The #NationalStrike slightly built former corporate lawyer, the only son of a hashtag began to trend on Twitter. David Simon, the New York philanthropist whose last name adorns sev- television writer, garnered additional publicity when he eral city cultural institutions,” who also “has a record of tweeted, “If you believe in America, show it by refusing going not only after Trump, but going after people now to work on the Friday before President’s Day, Feb. 17. Let in Trumpworld.” And going after women he is dating, them know.” His post was re-tweeted thousands of times. according to the New Yorker, whose account of Schnei- When the day arrived, protesters gathered in sev- derman’s verbal and physical abuse of girlfriends led to eral major cities. They carried signs, chanted slogans. his resignation on the evening of May 7, 2018. But the strike was a flop. If anyone did refuse to work, The ongoing investigation into Russian interfer- no one paid attention. Life went on. Trump, as you may ence in the 2016 election has dogged the Trump have noticed, remains president. presidency since the beginning and provided multiple Yet plenty of Trump’s opponents, and the media in opportunities for Trump’s critics to speculate, loudly which they appear, continue to believe that his resig- and without any evidence, that he won’t survive its nation is imminent, that some looming insinuation, outcome. “If true, this CNN report about Russia could accusation, revelation, or betrayal is about to drive destroy Trump’s presidency,” wrote Alex Shepard him from the White House. For these people, Trump of in the spring of 2017. The CNN is forever on the verge of being delegitimized, laid low, report, published on March 23, 2017, said, “The FBI brought down. has information that indicates associates of President Indeed, the phrase “bring down Trump” appears in Donald Trump communicated with suspected Rus- the headlines again and again, as if the words them- sian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of selves hold the power to end his reign. Since Trump information damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.” took office, reporters, editors, and commentators—not It was a bombshell—one that, at this writing, has not to mention the readers who gobble this up—have been been substantiated. On May 2, 2017, GQ published an interview with Mi- Matthew Continetti is the editor in chief of chael Moore headlined, “Michael Moore’s Master Plan the Washington Free Beacon. to Bring Down Donald continued on page 63

64 June 2018 MEDIA COMMENTARY continued from page 64 Trump.” Describing maintaining (in their view) credibility. In this way, the Moore’s stage show, Scott Meslow wrote, “The Terms departure of a Trump staffer from the White House of My Surrender is built around a single, provocative becomes the occasion for hypothetical pieces about question: Can a Broadway show bring down a sitting presidential betrayal and arrest. president?” Yes, singular. Provocative. And absurd. The On January 19, 2018, for example, Stephen A. Crock- Terms of my Surrender closed in October 2017. ett Jr. wrote on TheRoot.com, “If the rumors [prove On June 5, 2017, Lawrence O’Donnell said that, by true] that former White House worker (or President allowing former FBI director James Comey to testify to Donald Trump’s personal Diet Coke getter) Omarosa Congress, Donald Trump “destroyed his presidency.” Manigault Newman secretly recorded private conver- O’Donnell went on: “The video you’re about to see sations she had during her short White House stay, might be the video that we’re showing you years from then I hate to say this—it actually pains me to say now when we’re pinpointing the beginning of the end this—but Omarosa might be our only hope to bring of the Trump presidency.” down the White House.” The headline for Tina Nguy- The video was of White House press secretary Sarah en’s February 1, 2018, piece on VanityFair.com read, Sanders telling the public that Trump would not claim “Could Hope Hicks be the one to bring down Trump?” executive privilege in relation to Comey. In subsequent Life lesson: If all you’ve got is Omarosa, you might months, the former FBI director testified, wrote a want to rethink things. book, and embarked on a major publicity tour. Among Rod Rosenstein, Michael Wolff, Tom Steyer, Adam the things Comey may have “destroyed” in the process Schiff—all have been portrayed as the Trumpslayer, was his own reputation. the agent of presidential demise. The most recent and Plenty of Trump associates have been swept up in sensational claimants to the title are Stephanie Clif- the Russia investigation, to be sure. And every time ford, aka Stormy Daniels, and her telegenic attorney one of them cops a plea or submits to questioning, Michael Avenatti. “If for some reason Mueller does Trump’s adversaries declare that the jig is up, that the not get him, Stormy will,” Maxine Waters told Joy Reid paddy wagon is on its way to 1600 Pennsylvania. On during a March 11 phone interview. A March 12 Rolling December 1, 2017, when Michael Flynn pleaded guilty Stone article purported to explain “How the Stormy to misleading investigators, Chris Matthews said, “Mi- Daniels Scandal Could Bring Down Trump.” chael Flynn is going to be the most important Ameri- On March 16, Donny Deutsch agreed: If Stormy can besides Donald Trump in the next several months Daniels really had been threatened with violence for because he may well bring down Donald Trump.” telling her story, then “that in and of itself could bring Flynn has a lot of competition for the role. “‘The down this presidency.” On May 3, Stephen Colbert end of his presidency’: John Dean says Rick Gates’s opened the Late Show by saying: “My next guest has testimony could bring down Trump for good,” tweeted helped turn a civil dispute with a porn star into an exis- RawStory.com when the former campaign official tential threat to the Trump presidency. Please welcome turned state’s evidence. “Prediction: I’m calling it now,” Michael Avenatti!” tweeted MSNBC contributor Scott Dworkin. “Roger And so the Resistance has descended the winding Stone will bring down Donald Trump.” Former Obama staircase from People Power to porn stars, from Robert aide Jesse Lee tweeted, “What Manafort knows might Mueller to Michael Avenatti. Who will be next to join be able to bring down Trump and his whole family.” the ranks of false media messiahs? No doubt the an- Defense attorney Joey Jackson said on CNN, “If the swer will surprise us. “Could an Army of Accountants end game is to squeeze [Michael] Cohen, who knows Bring Down Trump?” asked a recent headline. so much about Trump, boy, that could bring down the What caught my eye was the place where this article Trump presidency.” appeared. So desperate are they to overturn the results Note the frequent use of “might’ and “could,” the of the 2016 election, it would seem, that the editors of way these pundits hedge their bets, titillating their the Nation are willing—if only grudgingly—to embrace audience with the possibility of Trump’s collapse while bean counters.q

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