Is Johan Galtung, a leading figure in peace research and peace practice, an anti-Semite?\u00a0 I have known him for twenty years, and I\u2019m sure that he is not.\u00a0 But he has spoken in such a way as to give some credence to this charge, which complicates the issue.<\/p>\n
The burden of Galtung\u2019s argument is that there is increasing danger that, as the American Empire continues its decline and Western economies deteriorate further, Jews will be seen as the source of these failures and scapegoated as they were in interwar Germany.\u00a0 Johan is in touch with the growing anger and desperation of working-class and middle-class people in the U.S. and in Europe \u2013 a state of frustration which is already producing a resurgence of right-wing nationalism and rise of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, especially in nations in which Jews play a prominent role in the news media, investment banking, and higher education.\u00a0 The cure for this ominous malaise, he thinks, is to solve the structural problems that are impoverishing working people and throwing nations into debt, as well as generating useless foreign wars and interventions.\u00a0 Meanwhile, as an antidote to anti-Semitism, he advocates discussing the Jewish role in society openly instead of maintaining current taboos.<\/p>\n
Three of Galtung\u2019s recent assertions are particularly worth mentioning, since the manner in which they were presented, particularly in a recent speech in Norway, has convinced many people that they not merely anti-taboo but anti-Jewish.<\/p>\n
People should read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and consider its implications for Jewish security.<\/em><\/p>\n Galtung\u2019s recommendation that people read this notorious anti-Semitic forgery, which asserts the existence of a Jewish plot to take over the world and run it from Jerusalem, was bound to produce astonishment, confusion, and anger in many of his listeners.\u00a0 I understand what he meant by this, however, since he discussed it at a recent meeting in Virginia that I attended.\u00a0 First, he noted the rising rage in Europe over austerity programs introduced in response to the sovereign debt crisis.\u00a0 Then, he remarked on the prominence of Jewish-owned companies like Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, et al. in the field of investment banking.\u00a0 Finally, he called attention to the fact that the main theme of the Protocols <\/em>is that Jews will achieve control over the world\u2019s nations by plunging them into debt and taking advantage of this indebtedness to advance their own interests.<\/p>\n Was Galtung reviewing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion<\/em> favorably?\u00a0 Of course not!\u00a0 He understands very well the role that this work played in the thinking of the Nazis and subsequent anti-Semitic movements.\u00a0 His point, as I understand it, is to encourage Jewish Americans and others to understand their possible vulnerability to this sort of propaganda in the light of the public role played by prominent Jewish investment bankers, financiers, and traders in typical Wall Street machinations.\u00a0 Presumably, having understood this role, Jews can attempt to counteract it by working to change the existing system in the same way, say, that J Street is working to change the existing Middle East policy system by combating the machinations of AIPAC.<\/p>\n The problem, in my view, is not that Galtung is wrong either in his critique of the current system or in his perception that, should the economy tip over again, Jews could well be scapegoated.\u00a0 The problem is twofold:<\/p>\n (a) The role played by Jewish interests in the current financial system can easily be overstated.\u00a0 George Soros is Jewish; Warren Buffett is not \u2013 and what difference does it make anyhow?\u00a0 This is something that requires investigation, if one wants to investigate it, rather than issuing conclusory statements that may lead some people to assume the essential correctness of the Protocols.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n (b) As Johan knows very well, the system that is making the poor poorer, the rich richer, and everyone more insecure, is predatory capitalism, which would exist in its current form with or without Jews.\u00a0 His formulation of the problem, however, may lead listeners to reach a conclusion which he does not share: that the system is essentially \u201cJewish.\u201d\u00a0 In short, the cure for anti-Semitism, in the way that he is administering it, may unintentionally exacerbate the disease.<\/p>\n Particularly in the United States, Jews dominate the news media and use their position to advocate narrowly pro-Israel (anti-Iranian, etc.) policies.<\/em><\/p>\n Mearsheimer and Walt made a similar point in their 2007 book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.<\/em>\u00a0 My own view is that it conveys a partial truth about the American news media and U.S. Middle East policy.\u00a0 But there are two problems with this sort of statement, parallel to those noted above in the case of the Protocols.<\/em>\u00a0 First, while Jews occupy many important positions in the media world, it is easy to overstate their \u201ccontrol.\u201d\u00a0 The list of news organizations in which they play minor roles, if any, is very long, and there is a nasty tendency to consider organizations like the Washington Post<\/em> \u201cJewish\u201d because a Jewish family once owned them, even though they have been run for decades by Gentiles.\u00a0 Moreover, an outfit like Time-Warner is responsible to its directors and shareholders, not just to management officials who may be Jewish.<\/p>\n More important, the notion that a pro-Israel stance on the part of many media outlets is mainly a result of Jewish influence rather than other factors is another hypothesis that remains to be proved.\u00a0 Is Fox News, say, or CNN controlled by some cabal of unidentified Jews?\u00a0 Or are their views responsive to other interests, such as those of military-industrial corporations, the national security establishment, pro-Israel evangelicals, etc.?\u00a0 As Stephen Zunes wrote of Mearsheimer and Walt\u2019s book, “There is something quite convenient and discomfortingly familiar about the tendency to blame an allegedly powerful and wealthy group of Jews for the overall direction of an increasingly controversial U.S. policy.\u00a0 Indeed, like exaggerated claims of Jewish power at other times in history, such an explanation absolves the real powerbrokers and assigns blame to convenient scapegoats.\u201d<\/p>\n In my view, there is nothing wrong with Johan Galtung inviting us to consider the role of Jewish media owners and executives in shaping attitudes toward U.S. foreign policy.\u00a0 As he says, that sort of inquiry could generate the kind of healthy debate that the Mearsheimer-Walt book did, and perhaps help American Jews to avoid being scapegoated, say, for a disastrous future war against Iran.\u00a0 Down with the taboo!\u00a0 But the assertion that \u201cJewish control\u201d explains<\/em> the news media\u2019s editorial and reportorial biases can be seen as a form of scapegoating in itself.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s Mossad may have some connection with the Norwegian mass murderer, Anders Breivik.<\/em><\/p>\n Anybody who knows Johan Galtung understands that he sometimes \u201cshoots from the hip,\u201d offering grounded intuitions to provoke listeners or readers to think about previously unimagined possibilities. Sometimes, these \u201ceducated guesses\u201d seem inspired, as when he speculated, based on his understanding of terrorist psychology and ideology, that the probable target of UA Flight 93 commandeered by al Qaeda was the CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia.\u00a0 Occasionally, they seem merely cranky.<\/p>\n Galtung has already conceded that his statement about Mossad and Breivik was a mere hypothesis.\u00a0 One can see why he might have made this connection, since Mossad, one of the world\u2019s most powerful and efficient intelligence organizations, is believed to have played a role in various anti-Islamic movements on several continents, and Breivik has declared himself a passionate Zionist.\u00a0 Of course, this does not prove anything.\u00a0 If it were not for Johan\u2019s statements about Jewish media moguls and the Protocols, <\/em>one would simply label the Mossad-Breivik comment a Galtungian intuition perhaps deserving further research.\u00a0 As it is, however, many observers are labeling it evidence of anti-Jewish paranoia.<\/p>\n I think that Galtung\u2019s main difficulty, in all this brouhaha, has been to speak carelessly and somewhat peremptorily about highly sensitive matters, previously taboo, that require much care and precision of speech in order to avoid arousing post-traumatic fears and giving an impression of insensitivity to people\u2019s basic needs.\u00a0 One does not overturn a well-entrenched taboo by engaging in the verbal equivalent of flag-burning.<\/p>\n Johan Galltung is not<\/em> an anti-Semite \u2013 a term whose misuse has robbed it of much meaning. \u00a0(\u201cAn anti-Semite used to be someone who didn\u2019t like Jews.\u00a0 Now it means someone Jews don\u2019t like.\u201d)\u00a0 He remains as devoted as ever to the cause of peaceful conflict transformation.\u00a0 I think that this will become clear as he takes the opportunity to explain his views in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n _________________________________<\/p>\n Richard E. Rubenstein is a professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I think that Galtung\u2019s main difficulty, in all this brouhaha, has been to speak carelessly and somewhat peremptorily about highly sensitive matters, previously taboo, that require much care and precision of speech in order to avoid arousing post-traumatic fears and giving an impression of insensitivity to people\u2019s basic needs. \u201cAn anti-Semite used to be someone who didn\u2019t like Jews. Now it means someone Jews don\u2019t like.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[196,40,50,54,242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-news","category-transcend-members","category-analysis","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","category-exposures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}