The Holocaust Industry Read Online Free PDF Page B

politics and the economy . 55 Complementing the rightward turn was an inward turn,
    as Jews, no longer mindful of past allies among the have-nots, increasingly earmarked their resources
    for Jewish concerns only. This reorientation of American Jewry 56 was clearly evident in growing
    tensions between Jews and Blacks. Traditionally aligned with black people against caste
    discrimination in the United States, many Jews broke with the Civil Rights alliance in the late 1 960s
    when, as Jonathan Kaufman reports, "the goals of the civil rights movement were shifting - from
    demands for political and legal equality to demands for economic equality." "When the civil rights
    movement moved north, into the neighborhoods of these liberal Jews," Cheryl Greenberg similarly
    recalls, «the question of integration took on a different tone. With concerns now couched in class
    rather than racial terms, Jews Red to the suburbs almost as quickly as white Christians to avoid what
    they perceived as the deterioration of their schools and neighborhoods." The memorable climax was
    the protracted 1968 New York City teachers' strike, which pitted a largely Jewish professional union
    against Black community activists fighting for control of failing schools. Accounts of the strike often
    refer to fringe anti-Semitism. The eruption of Jewish racism - not far below the surface before the
    strike — is less often remembered. More recently, Jewish publicists and organizations have figured
    prominently in efforts to dismantle affirmative action programs. In key Supreme Court tests —
    DeFunis (1974) and Bakke (1978) — the AJC, ADL, and AJ Congress, apparently reflecting
    mainstream Jewish sentiment, all filed amicus briefs opposing affirmative action. 57
    Moving aggressively to defend their corporate and class interests, Jewish elites branded all opposition
    to their new conservative policies anti-Semitic. Thus ADL head Nathan Perlmutter maintained that the
    «real anti-Semitism» in America consisted of policy initiatives «corrosive of Jewish interests," such as
    affirmative action, cuts in the defense budget, and neo-isolationism, as well as opposition to nuclear
    power and even Electoral College reform. 58
    In this ideological offensive, The Holocaust came to play a critical role. Most obviously, evoking
    historic persecution deflected present-day criticism. Jews could even gesture to the "quota system"
    from which they suffered in the past as a pretext for opposing affirmative action programs. Beyond
    this, however, the Holocaust framework apprehended anti-Semitism as a strictly irrational Gentile
    The Holocaust Industry: CAPITALIZING THE HOLOCAUST
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    loathing of Jews. It precluded the possibility that animus toward Jews might be grounded in a real
    conflict of interests (more on this later). Invoking The Holocaust was therefore a ploy to delegitimize
    all criticism of Jews: such criticism could only spring from pathological hatred.
    Just as organized Jewry remembered The Holocaust when Israeli power peaked, so it remembered The
    Holocaust when American Jewish power peaked. The pretense, however, was that, there and here,
    Jews faced an imminent «second Holocaust." Thus American Jewish elites could strike heroic poses
    as they indulged in cowardly bullying. Norman Podhoretz, for example, pointed up the new Jewish
    resolve after the June 1967 war to «resist any who would in any way and to any degree and for any
    reason whatsoever attempt to do us harm.... We would from now on stand our ground." 59 Just as
    Israelis, armed to the teeth by the United States, courageously put unruly Palestinians in their place, so
    American Jews courageously put unruly Blacks in their place.
    Lording it over those least able to defend themselves: that is the real content of organized American
    Jewry's reclaimed courage.
    Footnotes:
    1 Gore Vidal, "The Empire Lovers Strike Back,"