Not long after it was
reported that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright blames "them Jews" for
his estrangement from President Obama, a
gunman opened fire in the Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington.
As if to prove August Bebel's maxim that "anti-Semitism is the
socialism of fools," the suspect in the museum shooting created a
Web site for his rantings
against "Illuminati," bankers, "JEWS-NEOCONS-BILL O'REILLY"
-- it's all a conspiracy, you see.
Whereas the standard-issue socialist rants again capitalism,
"greed" and "corporate America," the anti-Semite
concentrates his resentment more specifically. Like the
socialist, the conspiracy-minded anti-Semite seeks an ironclad
theory that explains what is to him otherwise inexplicable, most
especially including his own insignificance or failure. It isn't
merely about disliking Jews; rather, it is about externalizing
blame.
Externalizing blame is a natural psychological defense mechanism
by which the ego protects itself from the negative feedback that
psychologists describe as cognitive dissonance. We
all wish to think well of ourselves, but for most of us,
this positive self-image is regularly challenged by evidence
that (a) we aren't as wonderful as we might like to
think, and (b) others hold us in lower esteem than we would
wish.
A healthy mind responds to this cognitive dissonance by accepting
personal responsibility for failure and taking positive measures
toward self-improvement. Yet the pathological temptation -- to
deny our shortcomings, shield our self-image from negative
feedback, and externalize blame on some scapegoat -- is always
present.
In its basic psychological motivation, then, anti-Semitism
resembles the attitude of the whining ungrateful child who blames
his own unhappiness or failure on a sibling, a parent, a
classmate or a teacher. The brat steadfastly refuses to accept
responsibility for his own actions and the consequences of those
actions, no matter how patiently the true situation
is explained to him.
By the same token, the man who imagines that "the Jews" are to
blame for society's ills cannot be persuaded by any contrary
argument. The stubborn irrationality of the belief testifies
to the important psychological function of the fallacy.
Both the Rev. Wright and the museum shooting suspect represent
extreme examples of this. For the Rev. Wright, no amount of
evidence can disprove his irrational belief that the 9-11 attacks
were "chickens coming home to roost" -- the necessary
payback for America's alliance with Israel. For Jim Von
Brunn, belief in a sinister Jewish-Illuminati banking
cabal was sufficient that
he attempted to take hostage the Federal Reserve in 1981 and,
if initial reports of today's attack are correct,
shot three people at the Holocaust Museum.
As media commentators and Internet pundits rush to assign blame
for the museum shooting --
Michelle Malkin has a round-up of the finger-pointing -- it
is important to understand what really caused this irrational
violence. Von Brunn was no more a "right-wing" critic of U.S.
monetary policy than the Rev. Wright is a "left-wing" critic of
U.S. foreign policy. Their irrational beliefs transcend any
ordinary policy criticism, instead representing the pathological
result of extreme mental weakness.
That pathological temptation must always be resisted, and so
whenever I seek the source of my own disappointments,
the true scapegoat stares back from my mirror. It's all my
fault --
because I suck.
