Charging that by combating anti-Semitism Jews in the United States “promote the very prejudice they seek to suppress,” the Chicago Tribune, which seldom pays any attention to Jewish news, publishes an editorial “advising” Jewish organizations in America to abstain from raising funds for anti-defamation activities.
The editorial is based on a news story published in the Tribune which states that the Joint Defense Appeal of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation Legue of the B’nai B’rith intend to raise $4,000,000 among Jews and their freinds in the United States for a nation-wide campaign to stamp out anti-Semitism in this country. The Joint Defense Appeal is reported by the paper to have stated that of every 100 Americans, 25 are infected with anti-Semitism; 25 are opposed to anti-Semitism; 50 have no fixed opinions and can be swung to either the group opposed to anti-Semitism or to the group definitely anti-Semitic.
“It is utterly fruitless to try to combat religous prejudice, or race prejudice by logic because it is a wholly illegical emtion,” the editorial argues. “It is born of ignorance, not necessarily the ignorance of the ill-informed, but the ignorance of those who refuse to accept the facts. Such ignorance is not susceptible of correction by any tour de force of education, particularly by an educational effort by the victims of the prejudice.”
The paper then goes on to make a distinction between “prejudice” and “persecution,” emphasizing that it is not opposed to curbs on anti-Jewish persecution, but objects to measures which would tend to prohibit anti-Jewish prejudice. “It is one thing to curb action, another to curb or correct thought, however evil and erroneous,” the editorial asserts.
Emphasizing that “no minority group in this country has ever escaped prejudice,” the editorial says: “These prejudices die. They do not die as fast as we would all like to see them do, but there is little that can be done by conscious, organized effort to accelerate the process.” It concludes by expressing hope that the Jewish organizations “will abandon their ill-advised project,” to raise funds for curbing anti-Jewish proganda.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
