Excellent and much appreciated - thank you! Your insights into Gopnik's repulsive self-flattery are dead-on, but actually the old antisemitism was top-down, too. The antisemites in Nazi Germany filled the universities, and of course seduced the immature, easily-led youth. Yes, there were unthinking thugs throughout the ranks, but they really only followed what the thinking thugs (!) were saying. In early Christianity, religious authorities - priests and scholars and Church Fathers - were the ones responsible for anti-Jewish theology, because theology's an intellectual business. Almost all the major Western philosophers have been anti-Jewish, to one degree or another (there's great book by David Nirenberg, "Anti-Judaism", that traces the whole long history). Anti-Jewish prejudice misuses intellect and perverts rational thought, but it's always connected to a belief system (for lack of a better term). Hitler said the Jews "invented conscience", so it seems he thought that if he got rid of all Jews everywhere, he could live a life of conscience-free criminal self-indulgence.
I think anti-Jewish prejudice always has to do with *what people tell themselves about themselves*, if that makes any sense. Which is why psychoanalysis was considered a "Jewish science" by the Nazis. In an important sense, antisemitism is just anti-psychology. On some level, doesn't everyone believe it's important to be "good", and doesn't everyone except psychopaths want to feel okay about themselves, to at least feel "good enough"? (Psychopaths always feel fine, so they have no problem here.) Then some authority tells you it's okay to do everything you know is really evil, because if you do it against Jews, it will become not just good, but Extra-Double-Plus Good! Who can resist?
Really, only people who can tell the difference between good and evil, in a real-life way. Gopnik is exploiting this elitist trope to excuse his lazy, safe, entitled self from facing reality.
Excellent article, I am glad you back to writing. I too have noticed the lost nature of the G&M, its a shame. I simply cant read it any more, and I used to read it every weekend for many years. Your analysis is excellent and correct.
I read the Globe in order to know what the Ottawa bubble thinks, not in order to know is actually happening. Sad, as you say.
Excellent and much appreciated - thank you! Your insights into Gopnik's repulsive self-flattery are dead-on, but actually the old antisemitism was top-down, too. The antisemites in Nazi Germany filled the universities, and of course seduced the immature, easily-led youth. Yes, there were unthinking thugs throughout the ranks, but they really only followed what the thinking thugs (!) were saying. In early Christianity, religious authorities - priests and scholars and Church Fathers - were the ones responsible for anti-Jewish theology, because theology's an intellectual business. Almost all the major Western philosophers have been anti-Jewish, to one degree or another (there's great book by David Nirenberg, "Anti-Judaism", that traces the whole long history). Anti-Jewish prejudice misuses intellect and perverts rational thought, but it's always connected to a belief system (for lack of a better term). Hitler said the Jews "invented conscience", so it seems he thought that if he got rid of all Jews everywhere, he could live a life of conscience-free criminal self-indulgence.
I think anti-Jewish prejudice always has to do with *what people tell themselves about themselves*, if that makes any sense. Which is why psychoanalysis was considered a "Jewish science" by the Nazis. In an important sense, antisemitism is just anti-psychology. On some level, doesn't everyone believe it's important to be "good", and doesn't everyone except psychopaths want to feel okay about themselves, to at least feel "good enough"? (Psychopaths always feel fine, so they have no problem here.) Then some authority tells you it's okay to do everything you know is really evil, because if you do it against Jews, it will become not just good, but Extra-Double-Plus Good! Who can resist?
Really, only people who can tell the difference between good and evil, in a real-life way. Gopnik is exploiting this elitist trope to excuse his lazy, safe, entitled self from facing reality.
Thank you again.
Excellent article, I am glad you back to writing. I too have noticed the lost nature of the G&M, its a shame. I simply cant read it any more, and I used to read it every weekend for many years. Your analysis is excellent and correct.