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Hilaire Belloc on anti-Semites

Thread ID: 18675 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2005-06-15

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Hilaire Belloc [OP]

2005-06-15 17:18 | User Profile

An interesting commentary, one which is still relevant today.

“The irritation against Jewish power in Western Europe is partly the friction between the two races, but much more than annoyance of feeling that non-national financial power can restrict our information and affect our lives in all sorts of ways. It is legitimate to point out, if one does not grow wearisome, the fact that Jewish financial power has prevented people from knowing the truth about most famous foreign trials where Jews were concerned. But just because these matters so nearly verge upon violent emotion, it is essential to avoid anything like the suspicion of fanaticism. It destroys all one’s case and weakens all one’s efforts…[u]I think it is particularly silly to turn our one independent paper we still have into a monotonous mass of repetition upon on the single question of the hundred it should deal with.[/u] Supposing one were to fill a paper entirely with the danger to England of the German Fleet – which is a very real and practical question calculated to interest a vast number of people – how deadly the paper would become in three weeks.” --October 30, 1913

Quantrill

2005-06-16 14:35 | User Profile

Belloc was one of the finest minds of the twentieth century. It is heartening to see people begin to rediscover Chesterton; it is time to rediscover Old Thunder, as well.

albion

2005-10-26 00:55 | User Profile

Belloc's own book [I][B]The Jews[/B][/I] (1922) sets out his views in his own words. It has been construed both as supporting the case that Belloc had no animus against Jews, and as a statement of the historical view that Jewish integration 'inevitably' causes friction. It could be argued that these are two parts of a consistent non-anti-semitic view, and that Hilaire Belloc was saying the same thing, at the time. Indeed, in his book, he does a fair job describing a cycle of Jewish Tragedy because of the suffering of the Jewish race. Far from anti-semitic, the work sympathetically documents the history of Jewish persecution and has even been cited positively by Jewish historians who acknowledge Belloc's accomplishment is identifying a cycle of persecution and coining the phrase 'The Tragic Cycle' of anti-semitism. Belloc wrote, 'It has been a series of cycles invariably following the same steps. The Jew comes to an alien society, at first in small numbers. He thrives. His presence is not resented. He is rather treated as a friend. Whether from mere contrast in type — what I have called "friction" — or from some apparent divergence between his objects and those of his hosts, or through his increasing numbers, he creates (or discovers) a growing animosity. He resents it. He opposes his hosts. They call themselves masters in their own house. The Jew resists their claim. It comes to violence.

It is always the same miserable sequence. First a welcome; then a growing, half-conscious ill-ease; next a culmination in acute ill-ease; lastly catastrophe and disaster; insult, persecution, even massacre, the exiles flying from the place of persecution into a new district where the Jew is hardly known, where the problem has never existed or has been forgotten. He meets again with the largest hospitality. There follows here also, after a period of amicable interfusion, a growing, half-conscious ill-ease, which next becomes acute and leads to new explosions, and so on, in a fatal round.' Hilaire Belloc, [I]The Jews[/I], Butler and Tanner, London, 1937, pp. 11-12.

Belloc also wrote, 'The various nations of Europe have every one of them, in the course of their long histories, passed through successive phases towards the Jew which I have called the tragic cycle. Each has in turn welcomed, tolerated, persecuted, attempted to exile — often actually exiled — welcomed again, and so forth. The two chief examples of extremes in action, are, as I have also pointed out in an earlier part of this book, Spain and England. Spaniards, and in particular the Spaniards of the Kingdom of Castile, went through every phase of this cycle in its fullest form. England passed through even greater extremes, for England was the only country which absolutely got rid of the Jews for hundreds of years, and England is the only country which has, even for a brief period, entered into something like an alliance with them.' Hilaire Belloc, [I]The Jews[/I], Butler and Tanner, London, 1937, p. 215.

[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilaire_Belloc"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilaire_Belloc[/URL]

Aside from the conjecture based on a patchwork of statements here and there, the anti-Semite argument does not work anymore and the issue now seems settled. These accusations come from critics not so much appalled by Belloc’s occasional injurious statements, but by either their secret loathing for Belloc’s clarity in elucidating historical truths, the diversity and scope of his knowledge, simple ignorance of his works, hearsay, jealousy, guilt by association (see Chesterton comment [I]supra[/I]) or, of course, that general anti-Catholic sentiment which secularity continuously revels in. Contrary to the standard anti-Semite label, the biographer Michael Coren wrote: "Belloc’s polemics did periodically drift into the realms of bigotry, but he was invariably a tenacious opponent of philosophical anti-Semitism, ostracized friends who made attacks upon individual Jews, and was an inexorable enemy of fascism and all its works, speaking out against German anti-Semitism before the National Socialists came to power." Coren, op. cit., p. 212.

Gregz

2005-10-26 16:47 | User Profile

“The irritation against Jewish power in Western Europe is partly the friction between the two races, but much more than annoyance of feeling that non-national financial power can restrict our information and affect our lives in all sorts of ways. It is legitimate to point out, if one does not grow wearisome, the fact that Jewish financial power has prevented people from knowing the truth about most famous foreign trials where Jews were concerned. But just because these matters so nearly verge upon violent emotion, it is essential to avoid anything like the suspicion of fanaticism. It destroys all one’s case and weakens all one’s efforts…I think it is particularly silly to turn our one independent paper we still have into a monotonous mass of repetition upon on the single question of the hundred it should deal with. Supposing one were to fill a paper entirely with the danger to England of the German Fleet – which is a very real and practical question calculated to interest a vast number of people – how deadly the paper would become in three weeks.” --October 30, 1913

Wise words indeed a cooler head and greater moderation by our people is certainly needed. If that is if we are not to become yet another bunch of mindless zealoted fanatics obsessed with hateful rhetoric.

Greg

"'He is a prodigy,' he said at last. 'He is an emissary of pity, and science, and progress, and devil knows what else. We want,' he began to declaim suddenly, 'for the guidance of the cause entrusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose.'" - Heart of Darkness : Joseph Conrad

Hilaire Belloc

2005-10-31 18:55 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Gregz]

Wise words indeed a cooler head and greater moderation by our people is certainly needed. If that is if we are not to become yet another bunch of mindless zealoted fanatics obsessed with hateful rhetoric.

Greg [/QUOTE]

Indeed Belloc himself warned against such zealots. He pointed out to Cecil Chesterton that it was one thing to attack the negative influence of Jewish power(which is justified) and attacking some random person just for being Jewish(which is not justified). A reasonable solution to the Jewish question has to be found as he continually insisted.

Here's a basic outline to his book concerning the Jews:

** [url]http://www.angeluspress.org/social_doctrine3.htm[/url]

The Jews Hilaire Belloc

An attempt by the author to present a frank and open discussion of the Jewish question giving many of the issues involved with the problem. From the Preface, "The object of this book is…the relation between the Jews and the nations around them…" Belloc skips over ad hominem attacks and focuses on the undeniable reality of the problem of Jews living in a Christian culture.

Belloc's fairness and even-handedness is surprising. He speaks of: [LIST] [*]the Jewish control of banking yet does not fail to point out that the average European Jew is poor

[*]that Bolshevism is a Jewish movement, but not a movement of the Jewish race as a whole

[*]the Jewish mentality

[*]the failure of gentiles to be honest about the Jewish question

[*]Anti-Semitism (an evil to be deplored but hard to oppose because it exploits the truth so often denied by liberal gentiles), the only two forces capable of opposing industrial capitalism —the Jews and the Church…divergent paths

[*]the interplay of the four most important forces in the world: the Catholic Church, the Jews, Islam and industrial capitalism

[*]the history of the Jews in England (fascinating —control of money-lending in the Middle Ages, their exile under Edward I, their return under the Protestant Cromwell and their alliance against their mutual enemy, the Catholic Church, attempts to form an Anglo-Judaic state in Palestine (if this isn’t pertinent reading for today, then we don’t know what is!)

[]Zionism and much more! [/list]*

Hilaire Belloc

2005-10-31 20:00 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Quantrill]Belloc was one of the finest minds of the twentieth century. It is heartening to see people begin to rediscover Chesterton; it is time to rediscover Old Thunder, as well.[/QUOTE]

One reason why Chesterton is more popular than Belloc is largely because Chesterton's works are more easily understood; wheras deep thinking is needed to understand Belloc.

Plus people are more attracted to Chesterton's light-hearted and humourous nature, wheras Belloc was more harsh and combative.

As Brother Anthony Brown explained: "One of the differences between Belloc and Chesterton in defending the Faith was that Chesterton did a lot of fencing, but Belloc drew real swords and real blood. Before engaging in battle, he would clearly state his objective, plan his campaign and examine his weapons. He would note what good there was in his opponent and then clearly state the evil he was about to attack and then attack it. 'Without wounding and killing,' he said, in criticism of Chesterton, 'there is no battle.'"