Blaming the Victim: the Plot Against Civilization pp. 106-111

 Webster loves her block quotes and in today’s section we get a bunch of them. It seems like her floor is anti-Semitism, and her writing is a ball dropped from the hand. It hits the anti-Semitism floor once, then rises above it, only to come down again. The trouble is that the ball does not bounce as high as it did before and it spends less time away from the floor. In the last few months Webster has mentioned “The Jew” once or twice, but then she’ll spend some odd paragraph on it going back to whatever her target was before. In the last few of our posts, her return to blaming Jewish French has become more frequent and today’s post she’s back on it.

The question she begins to answer on page 107 (of the PDF) is very interesting: did the Jews do better in France before or after the Revolution? This is a question that is within some sphere of historical research and as an outsider I’d be interested to hear the yes/no. Webster isn’t interested in that question so much. She’s more interested in telling those ungrateful jerks that they should be happy they didn’t get murdered and thus should back off to their corners.

Initially we are told that once the Monarchy was overthrown laws that existed which hindered activity by the Jews were removed. So the answer is to the question is: yes, they did better. Webster has a different tone in mind, “but the edicts passed at the beginning of the Revolution, decreeing their complete emancipation, had removed all restraints to their rapacity.”

She’s claiming that the removal of the laws was bad because as a people, the Jews have an innate need for rapacity. See, it’s not just the standard xenophobia that causes anti-Semitic laws to be put in place—they’re necessary because as a whole they are not to be trusted.

The most infuriating part of Webster is how she blames the Jews for the same actions that the French nobility performed, “Under the Old Regime, the feudal dues had proved oppressive, but in many instances the seigneurs were the benefactors and protectors of their vassals. The Jewish usureres on whom the peasant proprietors now depended to carry on if crops failed or weather proved unpropitious, showed no indulgence.”

Except, no they didn’t. The economic isntability of the peasant class was one of the reasons that the revolution happened. As France went bankrupt those “seigneurs” pushed more taxes on the peasant classes. Under the feudal system one might argue that the Lord protected the serfs, but from who? Another lord. The feudal system is only beneficial if you are primed to agree with it. The average smith or cooper is very unlikely to agree without the threat of sword or damnation that it benefited them.

Webster wants to blame the Jews for usury that harmed the peasant classes. In this, she’s accidentally right but for the wrong reason. Usury is the problem, but it’s not because of the Jewish money lenders, it’s because of usury itself. The history of this problem is part of a history of Europe. The problem that the monarchs of Europe faced was that charging interest on loans is profitable, but Christianity forbids the charging of interest (so does Islam). European royalty merely hired the Jewish men to run the accounts since Judaism has no specific forbiddance on the charging of interest. Those accountants were only allowed to do business with those that lord allowed and they had no rights of their own. If the economy collapsed the lord could just have the accountant executed and their property seized. When the laws were removed the Jewish accountants, if they had money, could lend to whoever. There were no banking laws or restrictions so they could charge what they wanted. The problem is not Jewish bankers, but bankers. Regulations of the kind that Adam Smith recommends would alleviate the problem, but as always, people were making too much money to really be concerned about it.

“When in the fourteenth century the peasants rose against the noblesse, the blame, we are told, must rest solely with the nobles. Yet why is peasant fury when it took the form of a ‘jacquerie’ to be condoned, and when it takes the form of a pogrom to be remorselessly condemned? Surely in one case as much as the other the plea of uncontrollobale exasperation may be with justice put forward.”

She has to know the difference.

I wish I knew what 14th century peasant uprising she was referring to. I assume she means the 1381 revolt in England, but given that she once again forgets to reference this event, we can’t be sure. However, she cannot be making this argument honestly. Her position is that the two are equal.

If, she is referring to the 1381 revolt, the causes of which were numerous and had a good deal to do with the consequences of the black plague and the oppression of the population through a taxation system that relied on information pre-plague, this taxation system did not affect those precious noblesse that Webster holds in such esteem. The only good argument she can make here is that neither the uprising or the pogrom should be necessary. However, her take is to “both sides” the position. If you support the one, you should support the other.

This is a false equivalence. The pogrom is an official position by the state, it is purposeful, and it is calculated. Whereas the peasant revolt was the culmination of factors that exploded into armed conflict. The power imbalance should be the chief difference, but there’s also the Christian majority versus the non-Christian minority. Punching down on an oppressed minority is much different than an oppressed minority rising up.

Webster wants to blame the Jews for modern capitalism by pinning the blame on Marx, which is a take that I’ve never heard before so good job in surprising me. Webster claims that the capitalism was innovated by Jewish business owners because she read this in a book “The Jew and Modern Capitalism” by Werner Sombart. This book sounds like it’s super anti-Semitic, but the wiki-summary doesn’t make that case. The book seems to concern itself with how Jewish merchants were excluded from the Medieval system and sought to change economic practices.

I can’t speak to the veracity of this book or its claims—it is outside of my expertise. I do know from researching anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that this overview seems legitimate. The wikipedia entry points out that Sombart ignores the fact that the more religious the business owner the less profitable they were, just as Max Weber observed in a similar book about the Calvinists.

Webster is cherry picking her facts and leaning on Rothschild conspiracy theories to make her claims. Marx wouldn’t be focusing on the Jewish role in creating 19th century capitalism because the owners weren’t Jewish, and if they were, it’s not because of their Jewishness that they oppressed the workforce. Webster claims that, “Marx was not sincere in his denunciations of the Capitalistic system, and that he had other ends in view.”

What are those ends? She says, she’ll return to it; but I’m not holding my breath.

I know that there are middle ground positions between Socialism and Capitalism, but I don’t know if Webster knows that. She wants to blame the Illuminati (and the Jews) for both sides, but she hasn’t offered a legitimate criticism of Socialism. The only system she seems to criticize with any kind of accuracy is the robber baron industrial revolution style capitalist one.