Black on White

The right to be radical, enjoyed by all other races, must not be denied to the Jews.

The activities of a Jewish Socialist may prove embarrassing to a Jewish banker or a Jewish Republican. For that matter, the activities of Jewish bankers and Republicans give small joy to the Jewish Socialist. But an entire phase of modern life must not be lopped off in the panicky fear that the whole radical movement will be blamed upon the Jews.

The stalwart pride in race which insists that Jews may engage in any trade and hold any political opinions become illogical and a little silly if it stops short in fright beyond the frontiers of “respectable” political opinion.

It is quite true that the prominence of Jews among leaders of finance provides the raw material for anti-Semitic inventions. Our enemies seek to put all the blunders and crimes of high finance at the doors of Jewish bankers. Are we, for that reason, to call upon Jews to abstain from banking?

It is no less true that the excesses and mistakes of the amusement industries are blamed upon Jewish film men and theatrical producers who happen to be prominent in those fields. Are we, therefore, in defense of the Jewish race, to call upon these businessmen to abandon their callings?

In the same way, Jewish leadership in unpopular political and economic movements is misused by Jew-haters to brand those movements as Jewish. Are we for that reason to exhort Jews to boycott radical thought and organization?

The same Jews who accept with composure the prominence of Jewry in the judiciary, in finance, in politics, in the arts and sciences, in publishing and education—who are not alarmed by Jewish participation in Tammany Hall and other unsavory political bands—stand aghast at the fact that in the subversive movements, too, Jews who enter attain leadership.

They do not sense their lack of logic. They do not realize that, having conquered fear in other departments of human existence, they give it rein in this department.

Economic conditions and the dissemination of certain unorthodox theories are drawing and pushing large sections of humanity into the vortex of Socialist, Communist and other radical movements. Jews being part of that humanity and subject to the self-same economic and ideological influences are in the sectors thus affected. They have as much right to be radicals as non-Jews and as much right to achieve positions of leadership in these movements as “Aryans” have.

The Judaism which would deprive them of this right merely because anti-Semitic liars will try to make radicals and Jews synonymous is surrendering its human dignity and human equality—surrendering it just as much as if it deprived Jews of the right to be bankers or to make motion pictures.

A Jew of genius, it happens, provided the groundwork for psycho