Here’s a quick test of your ability to spot antisemitic talk when confronted with it. Please read the following text:
You’re a Jewish son of a bitch and I’m going to kill you. You’re a con man, just like your family and the rest of the Jews, Hitler ought to have killed you all, never mind, I’ll be out in six months for having acted in the heat of the moment […] Yes, I’m antisemitic and xenophobic […] I want the money tomorrow.
Would you say that those words quoted above were a) antisemitic or b) not antisemitic? Take your time and think about it.
If you answered a) then I’m sorry to have to tell you that you’re wrong, at least according to a decision made yesterday by a city of Buenos Aires appeal court. In a ruling on a dispute between two businessmen that took place in bar last July, Judges Eduardo Farah and Eduardo Freiler held that the expressions I’ve translated above,
…regardless of how repugnant they are, amounted to a way, certainly an unfortunate way, of expressing discontent arising from a business relationship and can best be understood in fact as a possible threat.
So not even a direct threat, just a possible one. The two Eduardos went on to say that racial hatred “cannot be shown by an isolated discriminatory remark” because such a remark “does not encourage the persecution or hatred of a person or group of people.”
I wonder what an ordinary, decent antisemite would have to do in order to convince the two Eduardos that he actually had it in for the Jews.
Based on some personal experience I’d like to offer a possible explanation:
I once witnessed an eruption from someone who considered herself the epitome of compassionate humanism against another she hated for political reasons. Said target revealed on-line that she had a minor birth defect. The revelation then was picked up as a rhetorical weapon intended to shame and dehumanize that person who was then repeatedly and contemptuously referred to as “the cripple”. The abuser was exonerated by politically like-minded posters who excused her behaviour as merited by the horridness of the other person.
I suppose for some people, Jewishness is some sort of a minor birth defect. People can live with such a person as long as that person does not cause them any perceived or actual harm. Once that treshhold is breached, and the blood boils, no such restraint is called for. In the mind of the aggrieved party, the alleged transgressor has forfeited any claim to civility or indeed humanity and is totally stripped of any such rights for consideration. The relationship has entered into a phase of no holds barred and nothing is counted as beyond the pale as far as the need to insult, humiliate, intimidate is concerned. And if it has to be done through that person’s weakest feature, then more power to it.
The antisemitism of the person who uttered these words is explicit and beyond doubt. Then there are the judges who forgive the abuser based on a shared premise that Jews are indeed congenitally handicapped a should be extra careful how they comport themselves so as not to provoke the baser and uglier instincts of their fellow humans.
I am reminded of Alan Furst’s novel “Kingdom of Shadows”, where I found the following quote:
“The last week, in May, the Hungarian parliament had passed a law restricting Jewish employment in private companies to twenty percent of the workforce.
“Shameful,” Morath said “But the government had to do something, something symbolic, or the Hungarian Nazis would have staged a coup d’etat”
Balki read further. “Who is count Bethlen?”
“A conservative. Against the radical right.” Morath didn’t mention Bethlen’s well-known definition of the anti-Semite as “one who detests Jews more than necessary.”
Except that the judges were not asked to decide if the outburst was antisemitic. They were asked to decide if it amounted to an encouragement or incitement to persecution or hate against a person or group of persons.
Since the exchange took place in the context of a private conversation, the inflammatory comments can’t possibly be interpreted as influencing other people, which is what encouragement or incitement are about.
Please don’t find antisemitism where there’s none.