Does Dostoyevsky's antisemitism matter?
I recently came across this article by an Israeli rabbi, Eli Kavon, and his wise words got me to think about the issue of moral judgment of historical figures:
Dostoevsky offends me but I’ll live with it
https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Dostoevsky-offends-me-but-Ill-live-with-it-600943
Eli Kavon basically argues that although Dostoyevsky was antisemitic, he still considers him as a major thinker whose ideas are worthy of attention. He then continues by explaining and somewhat excusing his antisemitism as a product of his culture and historical context, extending the same indulgence to other major thinkers throughout the ages, advising that we should not apply our modern moral concepts to famous individuals of the past and recognize their genius, even if we disagree with some parts of their worldview and that we should recognize that our own views have been forged by all previous thinkers, who ultimately brought us to what we now consider a more enlightened set of moral values.
I would like to agree with him entirely, as I do see the problem with moral crusades against the past, an utterly Marxist approach to history.
Unfortunately, I see people using famous individuals such as Dostoyevsky to justify their own antisemitism in the present. It was an antisemitic post about Dostoyevsky's views on Jews that got me to research this issue.
Consistent thinking - not so much
Bizarrely, no one ever mentions Marx's antisemitism, but it has always been omnipresent in every Marxist movement - even the ones heavily controlled or influenced by Jewish people, which seems pathological. Ignorant people deny that Marx was antisemitic, referring to his Jewish ethnicity as "proof" that he could not be antisemitic. His parents had converted to Protestantism, but there were many rabbis among his ancestors. This did not stop him from writing this evil drivel:
What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. … Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man—and turns them into commodities. … The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange. … The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.
-- Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” published in 1844
More educated [?] Marxists are fully aware of his antisemitism. They make up excuses a bit like Eli Kavon for Dostoyevsky, but with far less justification - Marx was truly a foaming-at-the-mouth hater of Jews and Judaism.
There's a lot of Marx in all those leftist white people and Jews in the US who support the openly antisemitic BLM movement:
https://www.jns.org/600-plus-jewish-groups-sign-full-page-ad-supporting-black-lives-matter/
The Bail Project, which supports BLM and Antifa rioters, is run by Jewish women and financed by George Soros:
What could possibly go wrong when Jews support antisemitic organizations?
Propaganda works
A Jewish woman Jessica Krug, a university professor [...] pretended to be black, for some mysterious reason, a lie she finally admitted to in a article on Medium, but apparently just in time before someone else exposed her, so the sincerity of her admission is somewhat compromised:
"The Truth, and the Anti-Black Violence of My Lies"
https://medium.com/@jessakrug/the-truth-and-the-anti-black-violence-of-my-lies-9a9621401f85
A musician who went on a Tinder date with her says that she was the most racist person he ever met - she did not just pretend that she was black, she had developed a pathological self-hatred, which she expressed through hatred of all white people:
"'I have never met anyone more racist than her!' Musician reveals he went on a 'Tinder date from hell'"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8718411/Musician-went-Tinder-date-hell-race-faker-Jessica-Krug.html
This kind of trans-racialism is far from unique - it even became quite popular. Among the first white individuals to become famous for such behavior were Rachel Dolezal and Shaun King. Both claim to be black and are anti-white activists.
What kind of psychological and sociological pressure could get a person to so totally reject their own nature, origin and culture?
Michael Laitman, Founder and president of the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education & Research Institute, sees it as a reaction to antisemitism, an attempt to fit in:
"There Is a Jessica Krug in Every Jew"
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/there-is-a-jessica-krug-in-every-jew/
But that cannot be the answer: if Jessica Krug had just wanted to fit in, she could have claimed to be a non-Jewish white woman. Yet she rejected not just her ethnicity and culture, she rejected being white. Many Ashekenazim Jews claim not to be "white", echoing the cultural Marxist idea that "being white" is not just a matter of biology, but of culture, while defining as "white culture" values that are clearly Judeo-Christian. So whatever they reject is not just a skin color, but a culture they are an integral part of.
It also does not change the fact that Ashkenazim Jews are indistinguishable from other Europeans - which is why the Nazi needed a yellow star. Invariably, those who hate white people also hate Jews (the reverse is obviously not necessarily true, cf. Nazis). So for Jews to instigate hatred of white people is clearly not a wise move.
Jessica Krug's issue is much deeper than a rejection of being Jewish. Trans-racialism is basically the same as trans-genderism - the intense desire to be physically someone else, a person one simply cannot and will never be, which is a pathological rejection of the self and always sad to see, generally accompanied by blind hatred for the trans-racialist's own people.
Based on all the examples I'm aware of, trans-racialists are profoundly racist and permanently preoccupied with race, making a mockery out of their claim of being "anti-racist". They simply try to evade racism directed at them by joining the racists who hate their own racial or ethnic group. Like Jews joining the Nazis - which actually did happen. They were called "capos".
This is most likely a consequence of an intense exposure to hatred for one's own people. In the past, this was often claimed to have happened to black people and indeed, some black people did develop self-hatred and would have preferred to be white.
Michael Jackson is probably the most famous example. He never explicitely said that he wanted to be white, but seems to have done everything he could to appear as such:
He also adopted white children, mirroring numerous white celebrities who adopted black children.
Today, Michael Jackson would be almost unthinkable. The immense majority of trans-racialists seem to be white people who want to appear as non-white. Mixed-race individuals universally identify as non-white. To mention a few famous ones: Obama, Kaepernick, Megan Markle, Elizabeth "Pocahontas" Warren etc. Being non-white clearly provides substantial social and financial benefits - proving that "white privilege" does not exist.
As a side-note, black conservatives and libertarians are often called "Uncle Toms" (which is bizarre, as Uncle Tom's character was a black man willing to die to allow fellow slaves to escape) and "race traitors", although they do not hate their black identity at all - they are perfectly fine being black, they just don't agree with the kind of agenda represented by BLM.
Although blacks still represent a small minority - about 13% of the US population, far less in Europe - media propaganda managed to represent being non-white and especially black as good and being white as evil, so such self-hatred is clearly no accident.
Justifications for hatred
White people are presented as the worst perpetrators of slavery, which is absurd, and as having "invented" racism, which is outright ridiculous. If self-declared anti-racists who condemn white people for slavery were consistent, they would have to condemn all black people as well, as slavery existed throughout Africa long before white people arrived and was practiced extensively by blacks as well as Muslim Arabs. Practically all slaves in the transatlantic trade were originally enslaved and sold to the Europeans by blacks and Arabs:
"The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth…the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery…" ~ King Gezo, king of Dahomey (known today as Benin).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/9chapter2.shtml
The author of this BBC article makes excuses for his own Nigerian grandfather participating in the slave trade:
Nigerian journalist and novelist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani writes that one of her ancestors sold slaves, but argues that he should not be judged by today's standards or values.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53444752
But ... white people should collectively be judged by today's standards and values and condemned for the 1-2% white people who owned slaves in the US, before 1860? Americans who never owned slaves should pay "reparations" to people who never were slaves?
The Arab slave trade was far more extensive and lasted much longer than the transatlantic slave trade:
The hidden history of Arab slavery in Africa, and why UCT should not ignore it
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-08-04-the-hidden-history-of-arab-slavery-in-africa-and-why-uct-should-not-ignore-it/
So should all black, Arab and Muslim people be condemned because their ancestors practiced slavery? How about the fact that slavery is still practiced - inofficially - in many African and Islamic countries?
Marxists don't care, because those who attack white people because of slavery are not consistent or moral thinkers. They are ideologues, they just use made-up accusations to gain political power. If they really cared about slavery and morality, they would first and foremost worry about present-day slavery, not alleged or real misdeeds of the past.
Which brings us back to Marx and the fact that he did not just hate Jews, he also openly hated black people ... yet the black founders of BLM self-identify as "trained Marxists":
https://nypost.com/2020/06/25/blm-co-founder-describes-herself-as-trained-marxist/
Clearly, their "training" did not include the reading of Marx's correspondence with Engels, such as what he wrote in reference to his socialist political competitor, Ferdinand Lassalle:
"... it is now completely clear to me that he, as is proved by his cranial formation and his hair, descends from the Negroes from Egypt [sic], assuming that his mother or grandmother had not interbred with negro. Now this union of Judaism and Germanism with a basic Negro substance must produce a peculiar product. The obtrusiveness of the fellow is also negro-like."
-- July 1862 letter by Marx to Engels
That clearly doesn't bother anyone in the BLM movement - I would love to hear how they justify following the ideology of a person who wrote such anti-black racist prose.
Islam and feminism
Then there are all those women who accept that a fanatical Muslim, Linda Sarsour, as representative for a major feminist movement, although Islam, in addition to be antisemitic and racist towards black people, considers women as inferior and mentally deficient. Linda Sarsour herself is openly antisemitic. She acts the part of the "liberated woman" while promoting an ideology that, if it gained traction in the west, would relegate her to a role barely above a slave:
The antisemitism grew so strong that self-respecting Jewish women tried to make a stand and were ejected from the movement:
https://www.jta.org/2020/01/17/opinion/how-the-womens-march-made-itself-irrelevant
At what point will those Jewish women working for BLM and Antifa experience that no one in those movements really loves them, regardless of their efforts? They will have to deny their identity completely, just like Jessica Krug. And they should already know how Antifa and BLM feel about Jews:
For now, many Jews who are ideologically on the left are in denial about the antisemitism that drives the hatred against Israel. Should Israel ever be destroyed, they would find out that those self-declared "anti-zionists" who just want to defend the poor, oppressed Palestinians will morph back into basic antisemites and their new goal will be the removal of all Jews.
And unfortunately, those individuals do refer to Dostoyevsky and many other famous historical figures who promoted antisemitism to justify their hatred.
Retroactive vs appropriate condemnation
It appears that people will make excuses for almost anything to defend an ideology (or religion) they chose to follow. Ideological consistency seems to be almost non-existent and totally irrelevant. Marxists, especially, will never question the obvious inconsistencies and contradictions in Marx's and their own thinking about racism and antisemitism. Nor will they question the history of slavery, racism and misogyny in Islam.
Which answers the question if we should be tolerant towards historical figures when some of their views are repulsive to us:
The timeline matters
Do we want to be consistent? Then we have to examine how deeply ingrained their objectionable beliefs were and how they influenced their contributions we consider valuable.
Wagner's music is unquestionably spectacular. Was it affected by his antisemitic beliefs? This is not a new debate and it has never been conclusively resolved:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Wagner-German-composer/Wagners-anti-Semitism
As I see it, Wagner was not responsible for what the Nazis did or how they used his music, which, for as far as I can tell, does not express antisemitism. I heard many of his operas and orchestral works. At no point did I feel that he was telling me to hate Jews. He would probably have been horrified if he had ever learned about the Holocaust. So I personally still listen to his music - with mixed feelings - but I can understand if someone decides to reject Wagner and his works entirely.
How about Picasso? His case is quite clear-cut - he condemned Franco and the Nazis, but he celebrated Stalin - even though he knew about Stalin's horrendous genocides. So he was an abysmal hypocrite and deserves to be reviled just like any Nazi sympathizer. He actually behaved like a tyrant towards all the people in his personal life. I once heard an hour long interview with his granddaughter who lives in Geneva. She said that she had to go through 15 years of therapy because of her grandfather's behavior towards her and her family. If all of his paintings disappared from museums tomorrow, I would not shed a single tear.
When I learned that Luc Besson named one of his children "Mao", that was it, for me - I can no longer watch his movies without remembering that he celebrated one of the most evil genocidal psychopaths in history. I later learned that he got a 14 year old girl pregnant, confirming that he is not a morally sound person.
So should we condemn Jefferson for preaching liberty while owning slaves?
No, absolutely not, for a compelling reason: because he himself acknowledged the injustice of slavery. He lived in a world where slavery was common, but he understood that it was not right. He agreed to political arrangements to win the war of independence which prevented an outright elimination of slavery in the original constitution, but he was conflicted about it.
The moral values Jefferson, Franklin and the other founders embedded in the US constitution made the creation of a free society possible, a society that offers equal rights for all, today. The fruit of their ideology, their values, their political efforts was a great gift to humanity.
When the Left and BLM in particular attack Jefferson today, it is pure hypocrisy - they do not care about whether he owned slaves or not. They reject him because of all the values he stood for, especially individual liberty, is a threat to their collectivist movement.
They reject the former slave Frederick Douglass, a brilliant writer who was an active member of the abolition movement, for the same reason: he defended individual liberty. They destroyed at least one of his statues during the BLM riots:
Who Tore Down This Frederick Douglass Statue? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/nyregion/frederick-douglass-statue-rochester.html
No human being can be expected to be perfect. We should judge and reject those whose ideas have proven to be consistently harmful and never seek to justify their deeds or evil ideas based on their cultural or historical context, if such a justification would perpetuate the same evil.
We should not condemn those whose ideas were overwhelmingly positive. No one could say that praising Jefferson's contributions to the US constitution justifies or perpetuates slavery. That would be absurd.
The fruits of Marx's and Mohammed's ideologies, however, were poisonous. They caused nothing but misery and violence - hundreds of millions of deaths - along with endless lies.
Mohammed's absuse of a 9 year old girl led to the perpetuation and justification of such child abuse to this day:
"Yemeni child bride, eight, 'dies on wedding night' "
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/sep/11/yemen-child-bride-dies-wedding
Marx inspired many other ideologies such as Fascism, first defined by Giovanni Gentile, 1875-1944, a self-declared Marxist:
"Is Fascism Right Or Left?"
https://youtu.be/m6bSsaVL6gA
The Nazis were unquestionably inspired by Marx, a fact I explain in this article here in great detail:
https://www.minds.com/SMetzeler/blog/national-socialists-are-communists-1107368875892244480
So how about Dostoyevesky?
Like Wagner, he cannot be considered responsible for what happened after his death and the use that is made of his antisemitic views. I'd say that the quality of his social and psychological observations justify the continued interest in his works, which do not, as such, perpetuate antisemitism.
If you run into someone trying to use Dostoyevsky as justification for antisemitic views, simply point out that although he was a good writer, he was also a flawed human being and not a moral authority.
Einstein, despite all his genius, actually supported socialism, which is definite proof that even a scientific genius can be very wrong about social and economic issues. Considering how many leftists are in academia, that seems to be the rule, not the exception.
Always remember that a reference to an "authority" is a fallacy:
"Argumentum ad Verecundiam"
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html
An argument must always hold up based on its own merits, irrespective of who advanced it. Even an expert in a given field may be wrong, so just because an expert said it, does not make it true. Only facts and logic decide the validity of an argument.