Statesmen in Duodecimo

WHEN a cyclone sweeps over the prairie, men run to their storm cellars and stay sheltered until the storm blows over. Such underground refuges, however, are not available for a people when # storm of hatred sweeps over it. It must brave the strom, endure or perish.

Ever since the rise of Hitlerism in Germany and its ominous repercussions in the United States there has been developing among us a sort of ‘storm-cellar’ cult-a cult of the subdued. Alarmed by the threat of the gathering storm, many among us would like to protect themselves by burrowing deep down into some hole of self-effacement.

The Jew is too prominent, they argue, too much in evidence. He occupies too important polictical position. There are too many Jewish “stars” on the national stage. More of them ought to belong to the unnamed and undistinguished “komparserie.” The Jew is too out-spoken. He defends himself too vigorously. He protests too much in behalf of his persecuted brethren in Germany. He should let the non-Jew do the fighting for him. That would be brillaint strategy. Behind an imposing Gentile front, the Jews should quietly pull the strings in a very subtle and profoundly-secretive game of national self-defense, so subtle and so secretive that the world would never find out… That presumably is how every great race fights for its life and its honor…..

Jewish leaders in whom something of the old prophetic spark still glows and who have, in the past, spoken forthrightly and courageosly from pulpit, platform or in the press concerning the social evils of American society and the political and economic corruption in our midst, should now be admonished to muffie their utterances, to become discreet and circumpect, to walk, as it were, on tip-toes so as not to arouse still greater anti-Jewish feeling in this country. Courage is alright when there is no enemy about, but these are dangerous times….

Jews sould not be so prominent in radical movements. It makes for anti-Semitism. It may, of course, be similarly argued that Jews should not be so prominent in business and banking either. That, too, makes for anti-Semitism. But we have yet to hear of Jewish merchants or bankers voluntaritly liquidating their businesses in order to check anti-Semitism….

Jews sould not act vigorously in his own defense. An anti-Geman boycott is bad enough. It does not fit in with the general plan of Lilliputianizing the Jewish group in Amercia in the hope that it will be overlooked. But if the masses stubbornly insist upon boycotting Germany, let it at least be done in an “unorganized”, and “unofficial” manner, that is, secretly, in the dark, under the camouflage of some non-Jewish organization, so that even the German government would not suspect that Jews are boycotting it. That’s how dumb the Hitler government is…. There would then be no possibility of reprisale aginst the Jews in Germany, and the relations here between the German-Americans and their Jewish confreres would continue to remain unruffled and idyllic….

The rise of this Cult of the Subdued is the first real victory which anti-Semitism has scored in this country. It constitutes a major psychological defeat for us. It is the first and perhaps the most disastrous curtailment of our freedom of thought and action. In order to appease the anti-Semite or to outwit him, we sacrifice the very thing which he most wishes to deprive us of-absolute equality and free initiative. We yield to a policy of national bedwarfment and self-constriction, which, tentative at first, becomes permanent, and leads at long last to a total group eclipse.