David Kramer’s blog of July 24th elicited my blog of July 25th which, in turn, resulted in an e-mail I received from a physician who suggested that my blog reflected a “dislike of all Jewishness,” particularly my supposed reply that “Jews have become like the Nazis, or are becoming like the Nazis.” He thought that these blogs “internalized antisemitic feelings” among readers who might not have read them “with a critical eye” as had he. He added that this was not the first time he had observed “an antiJewish antiIsrael bias” on LewRockwell.com.
I responded to this reader as follows:
Dear Doctor:
To my knowledge, I have never met you, and thus my response to what you have written is based solely on the contents of your e-mail.
If I came to you as a patient, complaining of headaches, and you made notes about and treated me for a completely different symptom (e.g., stomach pains) would you regard yourself as a competent physician? You have taken comments I have made in a blog and twisted them into something that comes not from me, but from what you call your “critical eye.” You have, in the process, provided a perfect example of what Carl Jung – to whom I referred in my blog – would have regarded as an act of projecting the “dark side” of our unconscious minds onto others. (I might add that one of Jung’s most acclaimed works, “The Undiscovered Self,” was grounded in a psychological critique of Nazism that was spreading across Europe at the time he wrote.) In brief, Jung reminds us that each of us – you as well as I – has a “dark side,” a “shadow,” to ourselves that we would prefer not to have. This “shadow” finds unconscious expression in all kinds of fears about ourselves that we might harbor: the capacity for violence, dishonesty, laziness, racism, etc., etc. We might not act on the basis of such forces, but we fear that we might. Being uncomfortable with such feelings, we try to rid ourselves of their presence – albeit done quite unconsciously – by projecting them onto “scapegoats.” This practice is what fueled the Nazi holocaust, and finds expression in current news stories from all over the world. When we embrace any group identity – ANY – we set ourselves apart from those outside what Fritz Perls called our “ego boundaries,” and often want to take destructive action against them. The practice was enunciated in George W. Bush’s classic statement “if you’re not with us, you’re against us.” America had to attack Iraq, it was felt, because the Iraqis were intent on attacking America. If you can’t see the projection of dark side fears within such thinking, I don’t know what more it would take.
I did not say “Jews have become like the Nazis, or are becoming like the Nazis.” Re-read my blog: I was replying to the expression “we become what we hate.” My point was that we do not become what we hate, but that we hate what we fear we already are, and project our undesired felt traits onto others. Your suggestion that I harbor a “dislike of all Jewishness” or have “internalized anti-Semitic feelings” is both intellectually dishonest and, possibly, a projection of your own dark side fears onto me (only you can discern this for yourself, if you are prepared to turn your “critical eye” inward.)
One thing you do need to get over (if you have not already done so) is the point I made at the outset: each of us has a dark side that most of us are uncomfortable acknowledging. Jews can be mobilized by the shadow as easily as can 1930s-era Germans, and those who comment on this fact are not necessarily “anti-Semitic” (it would be anti-Semitic to suggest that Jews, alone, have this trait). You should also take note of the fact that I do have a “bias” – if that’s the appropriate word – against all political systems, because of their violent characters. I admit to the same “bias” against Israel – as a political system – that I have against Germany, the erstwhile Soviet Union, Chile, the United States, Saudi Arabia, India, China, etc., etc. I refuse to single out Israel and give it a free pass to invade other countries (e.g., Lebanon) or tyrannize other groups of people (e.g., Palestinians) when I would not do so in connection with the violent acts of other nation-states. If you believe that I should make an exception, here, I would like to hear your argument: but please do not just fall back on empty name-calling as a way of trying to intimidate me – or others – into turning a blind eye – rather than a critical one – toward the wrongs Israel – like other state systems – practices.
Humanity is in the process of destroying itself. Governments, in the 20th century alone, managed to intentionally slaughter over 200,000,000 men, woman, and children. If we are to end such institutionalized insanity, we must be prepared to look at ourselves; to see how WE – not just THEY – are constituted and driven. I don’t know you, but I suspect that – as you are a medical school graduate – you have the intelligence to look beyond the symptoms of our social disorder and get to the underlying disease.
Butler Shaffer
