Maureen Dowd mines an anti-Semitic theme
The New York Times columnist crosses a line in her condemnation of Goldman Sachs.
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November 13, 2009
We do not believe New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd to be an anti-Semite. Nor is she either stupid or unaware of the potential impact of her words. Thus, the blatantly anti-Semitic insinuations in her column of November 11 about the profiteering of what she refers to as “blood-sucking banks” are especially appalling.
Ms. Dowd was reacting to an interview given by Goldman Sachs chairman Lloyd Blankfein to the Sunday Times of London. Even though he believes that his and other financial institutions “have a social purpose” in that they “help companies grow by helping them to raise capital,” which in turn “allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth,” he self-deprecatingly acknowledged that “I could slit my wrists and people would cheer.” He also observed, perhaps ironically, that he was “doing God’s work.”
Blankfein is living refutation of another stereotype that all Jews or investment bankers are smart. Still, his insensitive, bordering on moronic, comments do not give Ms. Dowd the right to revive and recirculate a number of vicious and dangerous anti-Semitic stereotypes. She contrasts the “cycle of greed and concupiscence” of what she calls “Goldmine Sachs” (hint, hint) with the “virtuous” Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism. And just to be certain that no one should miss her point, she concludes by emphasizing that “the bankers who took government money and then gave out obscene bonuses are the same self-interested sorts Jesus threw out of the temple.”
We have heard these terms far too often to let them pass. Anti-Semitic tracts and Web sites are replete with references to “blood-sucking Jews.” And Ms. Dowd is too intelligent not to have realized that the depiction of Jews as greedy money-lenders has resulted in persecution and pogroms over the course of the past two millennia. Ms. Dowd has given new life to such ancient anti-Semitic incitements.
In his 1543 treatise, On the Jews and Their Lies, Martin Luther denounced Jews as “nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury.” Luther went on to deplore that “we let them [the Jews] get rich on our sweat and blood, while we remain poor and they suck the marrow from our bones.”
Along the same lines, Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that the Jew historically “has squeezed and sucked the blood again and again,” and that Jesus “made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity.”
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan was equally unsubtle when he declared that “Many of the Jews who owned the homes, the apartments in the black community, we considered them bloodsuckers because they took from our community and built their community but didn’t offer anything back to our community.”
We dread the prospect of swastikas smeared outside Goldman Sachs offices, or of learning that some street hood, inspired by Ms. Dowd’s column, broke an observant Jew's leg shouting "let Goldman Sachs buy you a new leg."
At a time when a virulent Judaeophobia is on the rise, especially in Europe and throughout much of the Muslim world, politicians, journalists and columnists have a responsibility to refrain from using inflammatory anti-Semitic code words. Our constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech does not bestow on any of us a license to incite to bigotry or violence.
Comments
Jason Dolinsky
November 14, 2009
I am co-author of this article. The title “Protestant Ethic and the Spirt of Calvinism” should read “Protestant Ethic and the Spirt of Capitalism” (referring to the Book by Max Weber 1904/1905).
Sue B. Lerner
November 14, 2009
I was appalled when I read the Dowd op-ed first in the NYT and then in our local paper in Greensboro, NC. How viciously anti-Semitic it is. She is too smart not to know the implications of the references she used. The New York Times and the local Greensboro News and Record should reevaluate her place in their newspapers. The Anti-Defamation League wrote a letter to the NYT and I am waiting for more objections to appear in print. What is her excuse????? I didn’t know what those words meant??? Ha!
Marcy
November 15, 2009
The only slightly anti-semitic part of the article might have been the last sentence where she describes the bankers of today like the one’s “Jesus threw out of the Temple”. This is in reference to the Jewish people in the Temple who were taxing the poor people.
I am very Jewish and I did not make the connection between “blood sucking banks” and “blood sucking Jews”....are we reading too much into this?
B
November 17, 2009
As a child growing up I sympathized for Israel and what I considered our Jewish ‘cousins’. Now I see banks destroying the everyday man, and the elite of those ‘cousins’ making every excuse why it is ok for what the banks did, and screaming anti-semitism at any small critique’s of their agenda. Saying the bankers are akin to the banking occurring on the temple mount is not anti-semitism, it is anti-predatory lending practices and nefarious land/housing and loan mod scams that hurt everyone. Not all the of the ‘chosen’ people were bankers in the temple, and I don’t think this article slam Jews so much as the heathen bankers perverting the temple.
'TheAZCowBoy'
November 17, 2009
Calling a ‘spade-a-spade’
An old American tradition.
It is amazing, after stealing the investments, retirement and life savings of millions of Americans as they did (as the Jewish president and CEO of Goldman-Sachs said last week)‘G-d’s work’ they refuse to let out a ‘peep’ lest they be accused of being anti-semites?’
It took so god awfully long to truly understand the depth and breath of the wisdom of that little guy (prophet) with the funny mustache from Austria who ‘had these gangsters number’ from day one.
TheAZCowBoy
Tombstone, AZ.
Nancy
November 18, 2009
“what she refers to as “blood-sucking banks” are especially appalling.”
You’re simply overreacting. Why is that everyone that disagrees with a Jew, or a Jew-sounding is labeled an anti-Semite? Grow up already, your whining is tiresome.
Larry
November 24, 2009
The language Dowd uses is obviously intentionally anti semitic.I agree completely with her thoughts about bankers, but from her wording, one wouldn’t realize that the vast majority of powerful bankers are WASP, white anglo saxon protestents. I hate bankers, I hate the greed of many aspects of capitalism, I hate rich people who get their wealth without regard to the social consequences. But what about Haliburtan, a very non-Jewish firm that makes its billions bilking the government on contracts to help kill people around the world, the same firm which gave us the Vietnam war. Dowd’s choice or words, and choice of firms and bankers to emphasize was a blatent attack on Jews, putting her in the same camp as those rich bankers: doing her job without regard to the social consequences.
Prof Watson
May 03, 2010
Now people are saying that if you criticise Goldman Sachs you are an anti-Semite. These charges of anti-Semitism lose its bite when everybody, even Jews, are now anti-Semites. Please, give it a rest and lets talk about the issues and don’t give Goldman Sachs a free pass just because they appear to be Jews.
Van Helsing
February 06, 2011
Rosensaft and Dolinsky are only calling attention to the gross over-representation of Jews in finance when they scold Maureen Dowd for the predatory practices of Goldman Sachs. Instead of whining about Dowd engaging in the “antisemitism” of criticizing bloodsucking banks and their ruthless practices against hard-working people and better served about reaming Blankfeld et al out for engaging in the “antisemitism” displaying kind of greedy, hateful behavior that reflects badly on the Jews.
No provocations, no reactions. When these bloodsuckers stop ripping the American taxpaying public off, the public will stop hating them. And playing Pocahontas on their behalf is not going to endear the public to any of their defenders. It’s that simple. It isn’t rocket science.
Frank
February 06, 2011
There was an old lady who had an answer once…what was it she said?!?...oh yeah,“go back to Russia and Poland, where you came from, ‘jew’”...“chosen ones”...please. I think Revelations 2:9 hits it on the head!