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Old August 11th, 2015 #1
Karl Radl
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Default Was F. Scott Fitzgerald anti-Semitic?

Was F. Scott Fitzgerald anti-Semitic?


In my previous article, 'F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Jews', (1) I pointed out and discussed the fact that the American author and novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald saw jews as the most dangerous enemy that America faced when he was writing in the 1920s and 1930s. What I didn't discuss in that article was whether F. Scott Fitzgerald was actually anti-Semitic.

Now it is worth being in mind that when I say 'anti-Semitic'; I am referring to the correct, not the colloquial, use of that label. What I mean by that is that someone is not necessarily 'anti-Semitic' if they criticize Judaism or Israel, contrary to both jewish and Israeli propagandists, but rather anti-Judaism and/or anti-Zionist respectively. Anti-Semitism is a very specific label and only refers to the criticism of jews on the basis of their being a national body, a race and/or a biologically-defined grouping. (2)

Of course someone can be anti-Judaism, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic, but we know of plenty of individuals historically who were anti-Semitic but yet pro-Zionist, (3) while others have been anti-Judaism and anti-Zionist, but not anti-Semitic. (4)

Claiming that anti-Judaism and anti-Zionism are anti-Semitism is not only intellectually absurd, but rather obviously self-defeating; since when any criticism of anything related to individual jews, jewish organizations or jews as a group is 'anti-Semitism'; then is a disincentive to both distinguishing criticism and an incentive to focus instead on the jews (as a group) as the collective enemy.

That being said in the case of Fitzgerald; we can see clearly that he was anti-Semitic in the correct sense of the term.

He refers in 'The Beautiful and the Damned' to jews being racially distinguishable by their features, the 'Semitic violinist' and the dark, short jewish shopkeepers with 'prideful and suspicious eyes', while he describes a jewish film mogul as being corpulent, slimy and power-grubbing.

Similarly in his best-known novel 'The Great Gatsby' Fitzgerald has one of his side characters refer to 'a little kike' who she almost married, because he relentlessly pursued her. The subtext to this statement is that Fitzgerald is promoting the idea that jewish men lust after and relentlessly pursue non-jewish women rather than their own.

One of the other side characters actually marries the jew concerned. She relates to the reader that he claimed to be a gentleman and a writer, but it turned out that he lives over a garage with her and 'borrowed' a suit to get married in (which he didn't tell his bride to be or anyone else) and then tried to not give it back when the owner came and asked for its return.

In other words Fitzgerald is urging his readers not to marry jews, because they are serial liars and only after feeling superior for sexually conquering a non-jewish woman.

Fitzgerald also describes a jewish side character as being small, flat-nosed with hairy nostrils and tiny eyes. He is said to have jewelry made of human teeth and to have fixed the 1919 World Series, but hasn't been prosecuted because, while everyone knows it was his doing, the police cannot find any evidence to actually do anything about it.

We see a similar reference to jewish power by Fitzgerald when he lists the names of people closely involved in Hollywood and they are nearly all, obviously, jewish in origin.

Fitzgerald is clearly here depicting the jews as a racially alien, fundamentally evil and diabolically clever people; who will stop at nothing to achieve their ends.

This reaches its most obvious form in Fitzgerald's short story 'May Day' when a black-haired jewish agitator is haranguing a crowd of poor workers and former soldiers advocating pacifism and claiming that the First World War was a capitalist conspiracy. The jew is then called a 'god damned Bolshevik' by a blonde worker and former soldier who pulls him down from his soap box and the non-jewish crowd punch and kick the jewish agitator till he is broken and bleeding.

In other words Fitzgerald regarded jews as a biological group who were alien to the United States and who were dangerous and subversive to both said country and the people who founded it.

That is, by any reasonable definition, anti-Semitic.


References


(1) http://www.semiticcontroversies.blog...-and-jews.html
(2) See Albert Lindemann, 1997, 'Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews', 2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York
(3) Adolf Eichmann, Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler are obvious examples.
(4) For example many of the early Christian critics of the state of Israel.

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This was orginally published at the following address: http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...i-semitic.html
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Last edited by Karl Radl; August 11th, 2015 at 04:05 PM.
 
Old August 11th, 2015 #2
M.N. Dalvez
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Quote:
Fitzgerald also describes a jewish side character as being small, flat-nosed with hairy nostrils and tiny eyes. He is said to have jewelry made of human teeth and to have fixed the 1919 World Series, but hasn't been prosecuted because, while everyone knows it was his doing, the police cannot find any evidence to actually do anything about it.
My understanding was that that character (whose name I forget at the moment; I don't have a copy of "The Great Gatsby" handy) was based on the real life jewish racketeer Arnold Rothstein, who was said to have fixed the 1919 World Series.

I'm sure Fitzgerald had a good knowledge of the jewish role in organised crime.
 
Old August 12th, 2015 #3
Karl Radl
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Originally Posted by M.N. Dalvez View Post
My understanding was that that character (whose name I forget at the moment; I don't have a copy of "The Great Gatsby" handy) was based on the real life jewish racketeer Arnold Rothstein, who was said to have fixed the 1919 World Series.

I'm sure Fitzgerald had a good knowledge of the jewish role in organised crime.
Didn't know that little detail.

Thanks!
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