A relatively new title has been bandied about a lot lately - "Esau's Tears" by Albert Lindemann. (Cambridge University Press, 1997) I finally obtained a coherent review and would like to share it with you:
Albert Lindemann's "Esau's Tears" is a remarkable book. It is the first objective university study of Jewish influence in the modern world.
For decades, "reputable scholars" have maintained that any discussion of organized Jewish power is part of the "conspiracy theory" of history. Although Lindemann explicitly disavows any conspiracy analysis of the Jews, he states as his thesis at the outset that ***relations between Jews and non-Jews can only be understood in terms of reaction and counter-reaction to real aspects of behaviour***. And, further, those real aspects of behaviour are ***precisely*** what constitute the age-old "Jewish question."
Such a thesis is bound to be highly revelatory, because delving into real aspects of behaviour uncovers a deluge of information which has never previously been worked into a coherent pattern. Lindemann's methodology is to do a country-by-country survey of evolving Jewish power in Europe and the New World from the time of the French Enlightenment through the conclusion of the Second World War and the so-called "Holocaust".
A constantly repeated theme of these pages is the complexity of anti-Semitism, the variations of circumstances from country to country and the impossibility of reducing anti-Semitism to glib and simplistic formulae. The chapters on Jews in Bismarck's Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire are particularly worth reading. It was in precisely these two contiguous, closely related areas that the growth of Jewish power in the 19th century was most phenomenal.
German Jews were widely perceived as pushy, aggressive and ostentatious. These sentiments were echoed in many cases by the more perceptive Jews themselves who urged moderation on their fellows. A particularly egregious example of the type of Jew who generated tensions was the Jewish historian, Heinrich Graetz, who had the audacity to claim that any cultural standing Germans had, they owed exclusively to the Jews. Graetz was an extreme example and not representative of all or even the majority of Bismarckian Jews but does illustrate Professor Lindemann's point that anti-Semitism cannot be understood {apart} from real Jewish behaviour.
In Austria-Hungary, Jewish predominance and arrogance were even more amazing. Jewish control of the Hapsburg economy was so complete that the liberal parties coined the expression that "anti-liberalism (economic liberalism) was anti-Semitism." The Viennese press was run almost entirely by Jews with the attitudes typical of the times. In the words of the renowned English expert, Wickham Stead: The Neue Freie Presse
". . . is owned, edited and written by Jews, and appeals in the first instance to a distinctly Jewish community of readers, many of whom, like the bulk of its non-Jewish readers, suspect it of aiming constantly at influencing the Stock Exchange. {They} profess disgust at its chronic unfairness. . . and persistent audacity of its particular conception of Jewish interests."
The overrunning of Budapest by Jews was so complete that towards the end of the 19th century fully 25% of the city's population was Jewish. This Jewish pattern of complete takeover was not duplicated in all countries, however. In France, Jewish predominance was much less complete. England and America with their much smaller Jewish populations and their traditions of Manchester economic liberalism was far less fearful of Jews and the possibility of an alien economic takeover. Indeed, in the eyes of many conservatives, Americans and Englishmen were quintessentially Jewish in their money making and upward mobility.
The chapters of "Esau's Tears" bearing on Czarist Russia require close reading. The dual nature of Russian Jewry, fabulously wealthy on one hand and horribly impoverished in the other, is expertly delineated. The exaggerations of Russian pogroms, particularly the famous Kishinev pogrom, make for excellent historical revisionism. Lindemann shows in detail how the Jews deliberately exaggerated their losses in the pogrom and how through biased scholarship, continuing to the present day, they have tried to foster the myth that Czarist authorities were responsible for inciting the pogroms. This is extremely unlikely, given the Czarist fear of a general upheaval against the propertied classes.
The impoverished Jewish masses are frankly acknowledged as the source of the Marxist revolutionary agitation which threatened the Czarist regime. This may surprise the reader who has been taught that accusations of Jewish involvement in Communism are "Nazi propaganda."
The chapters on European history, 1917 - 1945, are arguably the most significant in the book. Lindemann acknowledges and abundantly documents the overwhelmingly Jewish preponderance in the early Soviet Union. To this reviewer's knowledge, this is the first time that any university press volume has ever candidly dealt with this still verboten fact of history. Lindemann most emphatically does not blame all Jews for Marxism but he does concede the obvious - the horrible spectacle of a Jewish dominated mass murder machine in former Czarist Russia was responsible for the "fantasies" of Jewish world power prevalent at the time. Esau's Tears also makes clear that the rise of fascism and National Socialism in the between-the-wars era was directly related to fears of Jewish revolutionary activity.
Professor Lindemann's analysis of Adolf Hitler makes for a refreshing change from the usual one-sided caricatures of a "madman". Although some of the sources used, such as Hermann Rauschnigg's "Voice of Destruction" are clearly unreliable, "Esau's Tears" nonetheless paints a portrait of a real human being.
Among other things, Lindemann shows that Hitler was by no means unfavorable to all Jews. He demonstrates that Hitler had a preference for certain Jewish singers and entertainers, as well as being generally favorable to the Viennese Jewish doctor, Eduard Bloch, who treated Hitler's dying mother, Klara. Der Führer also made an interesting distinction between Germany's relatively cultured native Jews and the "Ostjuden" from the east who so filled Dr. Goebbels with loathing. (The reader of "Esau's Tears" will recall that precisely the same distinction was made by many German Jews themselves during the 19th century and particularly after the First World War, when huge numbers of radical Polish socialist Jews swarmed into Berlin.)
Lindemann in his chapters on the rise of Zionism acknowledges that the basic premise of this doctrine was the presumed incompatibility of Jews and non-Jews. However, he does not explore at all the massive collaboration of Germany's Zionist leaders with National Socialist Germany beginning almost immediately after Hitler's ascension to power. One has the feeling that this topic might be too sensitive in an age in which the true pedigree of the "only democracy in the Middle East" is still so little known.
One of the recurring themes of "Esau's Tears" is that the provable differences between Jews in various countries worldwide disproves any "conspiracy" of Jews to dominate the world. The fact is undoubtedly true, the conclusion is more debatable. One major deficiency of "Esau's Tears" is the non-discussion of the extremely powerful Jewish national and international organizations. These organizations are to be found in all lands of the west and regularly convene conventions with delegates from around the world. Their impact on national and international politics is staggering.
The actions of World Jewish Congress Chairman, Edgar Bronfman, in singling out Austrian President, Kurt Waldheim, as a so-called "Nazi war criminal" is one example among many. The actions of the various Jewish international organizations in demanding reparations for failure to "rescue" Jews during "The Holocaust" is a sure source of anti-Semitism which needs to be addressed, if not in "Esau's Tears", surely in a later volume.
The main deficiency of "Esau's Tears" - and it is an entirely understandable one - is the acceptance of the "six million" myth. There are limits to what even the most courageous academic dares publish. But this is no reason to avoid the volume. "Esau's Tears" contains a vast wealth of material, more than sufficient to cause the thinking reader to ask himself: "Why haven't I been told these things before?"
But that is a question worth asking when dealing with all things Jewish.
Thought for the Day:
"Because emotions often rule heads, it takes time for the obvious to emerge."
(Doug Collins in "Here We Go Again!", p. 97)