This has happened before
Antisemitism helped destroy Tsarist Russia. It could do the same to America today.
It’s a great shame that the study of history today has either been abandoned or distorted beyond recognition. There are numerous reasons why this is detrimental and even dangerous, but perhaps the most significant is that it has deprived people of one of history’s most crucial lessons: Nothing is new.
Any study of history reveals that, from then to now, men have fought wars, made art, explored the world, philosophized at length, cultivated pleasure, conducted politics, and wondered what it’s all about in largely the same way and for the same reasons as men do today.
That is, history ebbs and flows and comes back round again. As the Book of Kohelet puts it: “That which has been is that which shall be, And that which has been done is that which shall be done; And there is nothing new under the sun.” Ain kol hadash tachat ha’shemesh.
This eternal return takes different forms, but as Heraclitus said: “We step and do not step into the same rivers. We are and are not.”
In other words, the study of history teaches us that this has all happened before in one form or another. And it forces us to conclude that it is all very likely to happen again. Without history, we cannot know or understand this immutable and perhaps tragic fact.
I was reminded of this, somewhat ominously, by an article in an early 20th-century edition of the Jewish Encyclopedia. It recounted horrific events that were, when it was written, painfully recent.
The entry dealt with the dark legacy of Tsar Alexander III of Russia, who ruled from 1881-1894. During his reign, Alexander III presided over perhaps the most brutal campaign of antisemitic violence in Russian history.
Alexander III ascended to the throne after political radicals assassinated his father, Alexander II. Alexander II is still considered a relatively “liberal” tsar; if that term can be applied to an autocrat. Indeed, he implemented several progressive measures, including the emancipation of the serfs and the end of some of the more restrictive laws governing Jews and Jewish life.
To some extent, Alexander III likely blamed Alexander II’s assassination on the liberal policies he had implemented. He swiftly reversed many of these policies. At the same time, he capitalized on the fact that one of Alexander II’s assassins was a Jew—the others were not—to unleash a wave of antisemitic atrocities.
As the Jewish Encyclopedia states: “Soon after Alexander III [of Russia] had ascended the throne, anti-Jewish riots broke out. … In these riots thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed, many families reduced to extremes of poverty; women outraged, and large numbers of men, women, and children killed or injured.”
The memory of these mass pogroms is still etched into the collective memory of Ashkenazi Jews. My great-grandparents, like innumerable others, were forced to flee the Russian Empire to escape the violence.
Indeed, in many ways, Alexander III’s atrocities laid the foundations of the American Jewish community. To a somewhat lesser extent, they did the same for the Palestinian Jewish community that would form a bulwark of early Zionism in the Land of Israel. It is doubtful the tsar would have appreciated the irony.
Given this history, it is perhaps no surprise that after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacre and the ensuing orgy of antisemitism—unleashed by the Red-Green Alliance of genocidal progressive leftists and Islamic supremacists—a friend of mine remarked that none of it was new.
She noted the Passover Haggadah’s admonition: “In every generation, they rise up against us.” Killing Jews is what these people do and have always done. I could only reply that today, at least, the Jews have the power to exact a very heavy price from the monsters.
Reading the article on Alexander III, I could not help thinking that my friend was right. Indeed, the parallels are, in many ways, extraordinary.
For example, the article notes of the pogroms: “It was clear that the riots were premeditated. To give but one example—a week before the pogrom of Kiev broke out, Von Hubbenet, chief of police of Kiev, warned some of his Jewish friends of the coming riots.”
Now, it is very unlikely that the RGA had prior notice of the Oct. 7 attack, especially given Hamas’s secrecy regarding its plans. It is just possible that officials high up in the Muslim and leftist NGOs that undergird the RGA may have known that something big was in the offing, but no more than that.
What is certain, however, is that the RGA had been preparing to unleash a pogrom for years, if not decades. If it had not done so, the pogrom could not have happened. The RGA knew that, at some point, a major conflict between Israel and the Palestinians would break out, and they intended to be ready.
They had conquered and colonized academia and established a totalitarian dictatorship over it. They had a network of NGOs and organizations built. They had hordes of activists and thugs organized and ready to move. They had innumerable politicians in their pockets. When the massacre came, they pushed the button. And like the Israeli security establishment on Oct. 7, an American Jewish leadership beset by hubris and complacency was utterly unable to stop them. We know, of course, what happened next.
But even more striking, perhaps, are the parallels between the reaction of Alexander III’s officials and today’s powers-that-be.
The Jewish Encyclopedia states:
Appeals to the authorities for protection were of no avail. All the police did was to prevent the Jews from defending their homes, families, and property. “The local authorities,” says Mysh in “Voskhod,” 1883, i. 210, “surrounded the pillagers with an honorary escort, while some of the rabble shouted approval.”
To a delegation of the Jews of Kiev, Governor-General Drentelen said that he could do nothing for them; “for the sake of a few Jews he would not endanger the lives of his soldiers” (“Zeitung des Judenthums,” May 31, 1881).
On May 18, Baron Horace de Günzburg was received in audience by Grand Duke Vladimir, who declared that the motive of the anti-Jewish agitation was not so much resentment against the Jews as a general tendency to create disturbances. …
Both the emperor and the grand duke Vladimir expressed their belief that race-hatred was not the real cause, but only the pretext, of the recent disorders. … But on the same day, General Ignatiev by order of the czar issued a circular to the governors, in which he pointed out that the Jews had been exploiting the Slav inhabitants of the empire, and that this was the real cause of the riots.
The parallels here are almost unbearably obvious. In both cases, the collaborationist and complicit authorities took the same measures:
They protected, enabled, and even celebrated the pogromists.
They pleaded inability to stop the pogroms even if they wanted to—which they didn’t.
They blamed the pogroms on causes other than antisemitism.
They blamed the Jews themselves for the pogroms. In particular, the authorities held that the Jews were somehow “oppressing” the pogromists. In other words, they claimed the Jews deserved it.
If nothing else, this illustrates perfectly that there is indeed nothing new under the sun. In numerous cases since Oct. 7, the authorities in charge of protecting the rights of their Jewish citizens and students, and maintaining public order, either capitulated to or collaborated with the pogromists.
Many university administrators and faculty encouraged, praised, and, in some cases, nearly deified the monsters. Municipalities often did the same or threw up their hands in mock lamentation that they were unable to stop the violence, even though their capacity to do so was obvious. Indeed, many of them actively prevented non-collaborationist authorities like the police from taking effective action.
At the same time, national politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez either offered hypocritical expressions of concern or declared the pogromists righteous advocates of the oppressed.
Indeed, this is perhaps the most perverse and striking parallel between the pogroms of Russia then and America now: Apologists for and supporters of the pogromists universally blamed the victim.
They claimed that due to Israel’s “oppression” of the Palestinians and American Jews’ alleged complicity in that “oppression,” the pogroms were thoroughly understandable. Even worse, they attacked American Jews who condemned the pogroms as racists, Islamophobes, or worse. That is, they held that American Jews were “oppressing” the pogromists. In other words, all of them implied or said outright that the Jews deserved it.
These parallels have very dark implications for the American Jewish community because, as noted above, we know how the pogroms of Russia ended: The Jews got out.
As the Jewish Encyclopedia states:
These persecutions, added to the distressing economic conditions then prevailing, gave rise to the emigration movement, which soon assumed extensive proportions. … Hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews removed to the United States of America, where they found a new home. Some went to Palestine and founded agricultural colonies.
For American Jews, this ought to be a warning of a possible and terrible future: A boot stamping on a Jewish face—forever.
That is, if the pogromists and their collaborators get their way, American Jewry will become a marginalized and beleaguered minority; a ghettoized community at the mercy of leftist and Muslim antisemites aided and abetted by officials high and low.
If this future becomes real, the endgame is obvious: American Jews will leave. They will make Aliyah or seek out some other destination where, at least for the moment, conditions are less dire.
If this proves to be the case, it will have horrendous implications for both Jewish and American history. One of the largest and most successful Diaspora communities will be stamped out. Jews will once again have their suspicions confirmed: The world hates us, and we must take whatever measures necessary to ensure it cannot destroy us.
The Jews will survive this as we have survived so many times in the past, but the grief and sorrow will mark our collective memories as profoundly as the expulsion from Spain five centuries ago.
In some ways, however, the implications for the United States are even more dire. America will have violated one of its supreme social compacts and the soul of the republic will be sullied forever. Some piece of America will die.
And if history has proven anything, it is that modern societies cannot survive antisemitism. They either become stagnant and backward or destroy themselves.
Americans who want to preserve and enrich their republic should remember this. Then, they should look to history and heed its warning: The tsar’s kingdom did not expire of antisemitism, but its campaign against the Jews was part of the autocrat’s plan to consolidate and preserve his reactionary regime. In doing so, he made that regime’s downfall inevitable. The tsar and his minions took the side of the monsters and ultimately destroyed themselves.
If the RGA and its collaborators get what they want, the United States could well go the same way. If they want to survive, Americans ought to do everything in their power to stop them.
Benjamin, please essay me this.
Why wasn’t self defense promoted during the Diaspora? Certainly Jewish lives would have been saved. Certainly would-be tormentors would have been discouraged. Is fighting back un- Jewish?