It is not impossible that the Nuremberg Laws may eventually be “reenacted in this country and enforced with vigor,” declares Albert Jay Nock, American philosopher and author, in the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly.
Nock, who is known as a skeptic in his writings, bases his prediction chiefly on his expectation of credit inflation, currency inflation, repudiation, and perhaps great civil disturbances” in the United States. Citing a number of historical facts, he comes to the conclusion that governmental protection of the Jews in the face of a strong popular prejudice and agitation would hardly amount to anything.
“When our economic reckoning comes due; when the bilked and necessitous proletariat and the equally necessitous middle class feel the squeeze forcing them together in a demonstration against anything that can be made to look like a common enemy; when the upper class remains sullen and apathetic; when proletarian demagogues throughout the country raise the old cry ‘Der Judist schuld’–the government will then be under an unprecedented temptation to use the ensuing agitation as a lightning rod,” Nock writes.
The article, entitled “The Jewish Problem in America,” is the first of a series which the Atlantic Monthly has started as “a discussion of a problem which is of the outmost gravity.” Jews and Gentiles will be invited by the publication to participate in this discussion “in the hope that a free and forthright debate will reduce the pressure, now dangerously high, and leave us with a healthier understanding of the human elements involved,” the editor states.
Nock concludes his article by expressing his conviction that “there is now no rational ground whatever for an optimistic persuasion that the Jewish problem may be safely trusted to settle itself if let alone.” The element of time is against this notion, he believes. He does not doubt that, if even the destructive force now latent in America were released, the consequences would be “as appalling in their extent and magnitude as anything since the Middle Ages.”
“The American mob’s grim reputation for sheer anthropoid savagery is equaled only by that of the revolutionary mobs of Paris,” the writer asserts.
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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.
