Modernity smiled upon the Jews. Despite Jewish deaths during the Second World War, which some Jews have interpreted positively as a type of biological “pruning” of the Jewish ethnocultural nation, the Jews rebounded dynamically, in a manner unique in human history. I must admit that the history of the Jews fascinates me, and I see their history unparalleled in any other nation. For religious regions, I am particularly interested in the meaning of Jewish history. Considering the facts surrounding the establishment of Israel, one is amazed that the Jews and their patrons succeeded in taking lands from the previous owners and handing these over to newcomer Jews, something that would have been condemned as inhumane and barbaric had it involved any other nation. Developments related to the success of Jews outside of Israel in recent time have been equally astounding. By the end of the twentieth century in America, the world’s richest and most powerful state, the Jews peacefully had seized much of America’s wealth, political power, and the control of academe and the communications media. Yet Jewish progress, which typically benefits the Jews and simultaneously corrupts or destroys the societies of non-Jews, revolves around deception.

Before the twentieth century, much of the world’s Jewish population had come to be concentrated in poor Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. Due to the historical events of the twentieth century, most of those Jews were dispersed, and the physical relocation of the Jewish population from Eastern Europe was accompanied by a remarkable rise in their wealth and influence. The non-Jewish populations of Eastern Europe also suffered from the turbulent events of that time, notably Nazism and communism, yet their descendants have not experienced the recent good fortune of the Jews. This leads one to consider what is the ultimate “fortune,” and whether wealth and power are, indeed, a blessing in this life. Always I return to the meaning of Jewish history, because it is something I never fully comprehend. Viewing individual Jews and all their personal shortcomings, it is difficult to understand the tremendous material rewards that have been bestowed upon the Jews as a collective.

In my own vision, the historical period of modernity begins with Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, two controversial figures that, in the traditional sense of Judaism, were hardly Jewish at all, though from my perspective of modernity, everything about them was Jewish. Representing an enigma of modernity, Marx and Freud unleashed ideas that were deadly, physically and spiritually, for millions of non-Jews. They symbolize the “liberation” of the Jew from religious Judaism, the social advance and material success of the Jew within non-Jewish society, and the destruction of the traditional societies of non-Jews that has taken place with every advance of Jewish modernity. Still today some Jews applaud Marx and Freud, perhaps not for their discredited semi-philosophies, but for their chutzpah and because those charlatans spit in the face of Christianity, the Jews’ chief ideological foe for two millennia. (It was long the tradition, as explained by Israel Shahak and others, for Jews to spit on the ground in contempt, whenever passing a Christian church).

Polish Nobel prize winner Czeslaw Milosz declared himself an anti-modernist (though not because of opposition to Jews, a group whom he regards with some sympathy). I, also, am opposed to nearly everything modernity represents, most obviously its deception. Similarly, my chief criticism of the Jews as a group is their deception. I question the value of all the symbols of Jewish modernity: art, architecture, literature, philosophy, as well as popular culture, all of which today have some Jewish point of reference. I detect a common thread that runs through the commercialized cultural product of individuals as far removed from one another as Freud, Marx, Milton Berle, Bob (Zimmerman) Dylan, Norman Mailer, Howard Cosell, Jerry Seinfeld, and Howard Stern. From my perspective, the Jewish advance in modern society involves deception, as illustrated well by Marx, Freud, and by the numerous contemporary Jewish “prophets”. Their philosophies have dazzled and amazed the masses for decades, not because of inherent truths, but because of their novelty and gimmick. As the faithless Jews in the desert poured a calf from gold and worshipped it, so mankind in modernity has come to worship new deities of Jewish origin, which are attractive not for their essence, but for their outward sheen.

There are two roads traveled in modernity. One is for the Jews. That path often involves the destruction of earlier (in many cases, Christian) societies, where the role of the Jews, due to a variety of prescriptions introduced over time both by Jews and by non-Jews, was restricted. For the Jews, their advance always represents a “liberation” from earlier restraints and a destruction or crippling of the societies in which the role of the Jew was restricted. Liberalism has been the philosophy of the Jews for decades, not because it has produced great, substantive results for human society at large, but because always it allows the advance of the Jews.

The other track for human civilization is traveled by non-Jews. Only rarely does that path involve the material successes known to the Jews. The greatest opposition to the Jewish idea, which champions wealth, success, humiliation of its enemies, and the “righting” of “wrongs” as interpreted from the perspective of the historical present, is found in traditional Christianity, as represented by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The essential teaching of the latter philosophy is diametrically opposed to vindication, the accumulation of wealth, sexual deviation, and all the other “human rights” of Jewish modernity. As history has delegated two separate histories to Jews and non-Jews. one full of material wealth and fulfillment, the other plagued sometimes with doubt and poverty, an individual must consider which is the greater blessing.

One must also consider the reaction of non-Jews towards Jewish deception and Jewish ethnocentrism: how is one to react to the Jew, to his wealth and privilege, to his endless parade of Freuds and Howard Sterns? For the non-Jew, the Jew is, more than anything else, a provocation. His wealth and influence, which are granted, apparently, without any basis in his personal virtue or merit, bring forth envy and hatred in the non-Jew. His destruction of non-Jewish cultures causes deep resentment among those who see through his charades. One of the greatest of the Jew’s transgressions is his blindness and ethnocentrism. The Jew is convinced of his superiority, and thus, he believes, he deserves the rewards he is granted. He believes that history revolves around him. In fact, that is just as much an illusion as all the other Jewish gimmicks and deceptions. The twenty-first century Jew is here as a distraction. He is a test for the non-Jew, who must never respond to the Jew with hatred or violence. Persecution of the Jew benefits only the Jew and confirms him in his role of the eternal, blameless victim. If one takes the Apostolic Christianity of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy literally, then the modern Jew, truly, is cursed, because he has abandoned his ancestral religion and instead he grasps the things of this world that authentic Christianity tells us lead to damnation. Blessed will be those individuals who do not rise to the Jew’s provocation.

Stojgniev O'Donnel is the pseudonym of an American scholar.