Why the Jews?

He said it.

It seems clear that the right has won the bitterly fought war for the culture, at least in the US, which probably means everywhere in time. There are and still will be struggles, assaults, riots, government overreaches, and assassinations, but the outcome is no longer in doubt. 

But now the right in turn seem to be increasingly delusional. I think of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, as examples.

This may be an overreaction to the atmosphere of thought policing, of cancel culture and deplatforming, being lifted. We saw something like this in the Sixties, when the McCarthy era ended, and the various media morality codes were lifted. In fitful exuberance, almost any idea was vented, and considered. Anything seemed acceptable. Why don’t we do it in the road? Why not put a hole in your head, to open your third eye? Why not drop out and live on a commune in Goa?

Ben Shapiro is currently being pilloried for saying something perfectly reasonable: that, if young Americans are lacking opportunities where they live, they should move. Others on the right are outraged. As Americans, we have the right to whatever we want, wherever we are. What sinister force seeks to steal this from us?

Shapiro is obviously right. Moving for better opportunity is the essence of the American story. It is a nation built by immigrants, and by settlers forever moving west. America is, as Margaret Atwood pointed out, with reference to its literature, the frontier. 

But like the Hippie Sixties, the resurgent right will suddenly not accept the bounds of reason or common sense: “we want the world, and we want it now.”

And part of why there is such blowback to Shapiro is that he is Jewish. For the question hangs suspended: if, the left defeated, we still do not have everything we want, what sinister force seeks to withhold this from us? 

This, sadly, naturally segues into antisemitism. If I deserve whatever I want, and some Jew seems to have more than I do, then they must be the guys. They must be keeping it from me.

The more so since the Jews always represent the Law: the idea of living with restrictions on one’s behaviour. 

To resurrect a famous phrase from the Sixties, we have met the enemy, and they is us.