Anti-Semitism, said August Bebel, was the “socialism of fools.” Murray Rothbard has responded similarly to the reckless imputation of anti-Semitic motives by neoconservatives and their clients, saying that “Anti-anti-Semitism has become the conservatism of fools.” The non-responsiveness of journalists and intellectuals to the gentile-bashing of Alan Dershowitz suggests that the problem underlined by Professor Rothbard goes well beyond neoconservative America. Public tolerance of Dershowitz as an angry victim of white Christian society may be a measure of American willingness to put up with anything lest one be seen as insensitive. Watching Dershowitz on television and then reading his autobiography Chutzpah, I was struck by his deft manipulation of a particular image, that of an aggrieved member of an immeasurably victimized group, the victimization of which is somehow the inexpiable fault of white heterosexual Christian males. Curiously, it is never made clear who the victim is. It is not all Jews, for Dershowitz vents his contempt on German Jews and on those of his coreligionists who made it in America before him and whose names do not seem, at least to his ear, sufficiently Jewish. In fact, the only Jews he would admit as fellow victims are those who share his unutterable indignation against goyim and who support the present Israeli settlement policy on the West Bank. Dershowitz insists that the displacement of Palestinians is a “fifth-rate human rights issue” and that any criticism of that policy is only a mask for anti-Semitism or Jewish self-hate. Not surprisingly, he does support continued sanctions against the government of South Africa.

Another criterion of being an authentic Jew, for Dershowitz, is the willingness to embrace gay rights as a Jewish concern. In Chutzpah we learn that, unlike Poles who were “selectively murdered” by the Nazis, homosexuals were genuine victims of Nazi genocide. Homosexuals also shared the Jewish fate of being marginalized, again unlike the Poles who are presented as Nazi accomplices. Unfortunately, for this exercise in political correctness. Hitler killed two million Polish Catholics, a far greater number of victims than one can reasonably come up with for liquidated gays. Besides, unlike Polish Catholics, homosexuals swelled the ranks of the early Nazi movement, particularly the SA. The most important Nazi filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, was a crusading lesbian and celebrant of black Africa.

But Dershowitz’s book is not about facts, any more than Mein Kampf. It is an extended diabolization in which, as in Hitler’s ravings, the victimizer stands out always more clearly than the victim. And the victimizer is whomever Dershowitz happens to dislike and decides to present as an anti-Semite. When he comes to black anti-Semitism, he dismisses it as based on misunderstanding about the causes of discrimination. Jesse Jackson, by definition, cannot be an anti-Semite, because he is not an American white Protestant, Polish Catholic, or a member of any other group that Dershowitz sets out to diabolize. One is also impressed by the sweeping character of the condemnations. WASPdom is relegated to the outer reaches of perdition because Dershowitz felt socially uncomfortable as a law student at Yale and because no establishment firm gave him a job upon graduation. Former students of mine have expressed the same complaints against Eastern European Jewish liberals who only hire their own kind in law firms and universities. Are they, too, justified in venting their hate in print—or in reaching for the Aryan equivalent of Chutzpah?

Having known real holocaust victims, it is doubtful that Dershowitz and his self-pitying friends have shared their fate. Those real victims know the difference between murderous thugs and Episcopalian law professors who may or may not have snubbed the abrasive Dershowitz on an elevator. Nor did our self-proclaimed hero suffer continuing degradation at the hands of American Christians, many of whose families fought against Nazi Germany. To the contrary, Dershowitz has benefited conspicuously from American Christian society, far more than yours truly who nonetheless thanks this country for giving his father refuge from real, not imaginary, Nazis. Reading Dershowitz I was reminded of the rhetorical question posed by Joe McCarthy in what I would like to believe was a sober moment: Why have those born with silver spoons in their mouths repaid this country so badly? Though Dershowitz worked for that silver spoon by putting those he knew were murderers back onto the streets, it seems in any case that America did well by him. Certainly he could not have come so far from his humble Brooklyn origins if American gentiles were even half as prejudiced as he suggests. Invariably he skirts this issue by praising America as an open-ended or deconstructed First Amendment or as something being resocialized by the Anti-Defamation League. Yet it is still a predominantly Christian Western country that puts up with him and rewards his insults with money.

My own sense of things is that Dershowitz would clean up his act if goyim were not such wimps. If American Christians and American Jews tried to build a relationship on mutual respect, Dershowitz would be forced to confine himself to professional activities. Though it is hoped that a less permissive criminal law system would deprive him of that option as well, he may be less offensive in the classroom or courtroom than as a victimological autobiographer.