Anti-Semitism is primarily economic in Britain and social in the United States but in both nations "it is no longer permissable to avow it openly," the Spectator, Britain’s leading Conservative weekly, asserted today in an article comparing such prejudice in the two English-speaking nations.
The weekly said "active anti-Semitism" in Britain is "most virulent" and open among small businessmen who feel the pressures of free enterprise and "put a Jewish name or a Jewish face on the competitor, or creditor, or employer who exercises" such competitive pressures.
In an open society, the Spectator declared, "exclusiveness takes on almost magical significance. To be exclusive, you must exclude someone–Negroes are automatically banned, Jews are ignored on key occasions and in key groups, first generation Americans with East European names are expected to keep in the background."
"The one cheerful sign on this unpleasant landscape," the weekly asserted, "is that, although anti-Semitism still exists in both nations, it is no longer permissable to avow it openly. The insecure and frustrated cohorts of race snobbery are in retreat."
Another comparison deals with the impact of the "exaggerated respect for written constitutions" in the United States as against the situation in Britain where written rules hardly exist. In the United States, the Spectator declared, "there are few institutions from the top universities to the bottom poker club which do not have an agreed quota for Jews." In the British way, "most organizations carefully have no written, or even spoken, agreement on the subject," the weekly reported. "It simply happens that Jews are not elected."
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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.
