Orwell's characterization of the political technique of scapegoating Jews to drum-up nationalist (and Islamic pan-nationalist) sentiment to boost their own support seems to fit the current anti-Israel movement/campaign afflicting the Muslim, European Christian, and media worlds.
Orwell wrote in 1950: (I overheard a British) "intelligent woman, on being offered a book dealing with antisemitism and German atrocities: "Don't show it me, PLEASE don't show it to me. It'll
only make me hate the Jews more than ever."
I could fill pages with similar remarks, but these will do to go on with. Two facts emerge from them. One--which is very important and which I must return to in a moment--is that above a certain intellectual level people are ashamed of being antisemitic and are careful to draw a distinction between "antisemitism" and "disliking Jews". The other is that antisemitism is an irrational thing. The Jews are accused of specific offences (for instance, bad behaviour in food queues) which the
person speaking feels strongly about, but it is obvious that these accusations merely rationalise some deep-rooted prejudice. To attempt to counter them with facts and statistics is useless, and may sometimes be worse than useless. As the last of the above-quoted remarks shows,
people can remain antisemitic, or at least anti-Jewish, while being fully aware that their outlook is indefensible. If you dislike somebody, you dislike him and there is an end of it: your feelings are not made any better by a recital of his virtues. ..
I have no hard-and-fast theory about the origins of antisemitism. The two current explanations, that it is due to economic causes, or on the other hand, that it is a legacy from the Middle Ages, seem to me
unsatisfactory, though I admit that if one combines them they can be made to cover the facts. All I would say with confidence is that antisemitism is part of the larger problem of nationalism, which has not yet been seriously examined, and that the Jew is evidently a scapegoat, though for what he is a scapegoat we do not yet know. In this essay I have relied almost entirely on my own limited experience, and perhaps every one of my conclusions would be negatived by other observers. The
fact is that there are almost no data on this subject. But for what they are worth I will summarise my opinions. Boiled down, they amount to this:
There is more antisemitism in England than we care to admit, and the war has accentuated it, but it is not certain that it is on the increase if one thinks in terms of decades rather than years.
It does not at present lead to open persecution, but it has the effect of making people callous to the sufferings of Jews in other countries.
It is at bottom quite irrational and will not yield to argument.
The persecutions in Germany have caused much concealment of antisemitic feeling and thus obscured the whole picture.
The subject needs serious investigation.
http://www.george-orwell.org/AntiSemitism_In_Britian/0.html
Carrying the baton against British anti-Semitism, like Melanie Phillips, is David Aaronovitch, whose TV documentary can be viewed on DemoCast.TV.
