September 19, 2010

The stability of the Machiavellian Jewish character in high and pop culture

Early Christian anti-Semitism does not really deserve to be given a special label like that, as it suggests some kind of fixation on Jews in particular. Rather it was the standard in-group vs. out-group demonization, with a detail here and there about the out-group members used just to give it a modicum of plausibility, as in any Friend of a Friend tale.

For example, early Christians spread the rumor that Jews engaged in ritual sacrifice, cannibalism, incest, etc. -- but so does every group around the world when they're talking trash about the next tribe over. That's one reason anthropologists have trouble figuring out if some group really practices cannibalism or whether it's just a rumor from informants of a rival tribe.

What today would be called anti-Semitism doesn't look like it gets started until the Ashkenazim cohere as a group -- there are very specific claims about being good with money, controlling lots of money, emphasizing cunning and cleverness over morality, pitting two sides against each other for his own individual gain, viewing nothing as so sacred that it's beyond striking a deal over or profiting from, and so on.

I'm sure there are other less famous examples from a bit earlier on, but one of the first widely known examples of this type of Jewish character in European culture is Barabas in Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. A lot of his image and behaviors are stock, so late 16th C audiences must have already been familiar with this character. True, the character lives in Malta and so was probably not Ashkenazi, but it was common for English authors to project local action onto exotic locations. Marlowe seems to have the northern European Jews in mind.

Well that was way over there and way back then, right? Nope: I watched Aliens for the first time in awhile, and there he is again, even in a work from the modern post-Enlightenment age and in the most Semito-philic developed country outside of Israel. The Machiavellian sell-out / traitor has the laughably British name Carter J. Burke, but he's played by Paul Reiser's quintessentially Ashkenazi stage persona, no matter what movie he's in (like the neurotic Detroit gumshoe in Beverly Hills Cop). I guess there would have been a boycott if he had been named Max Lipschitz and had said, right as an alien was about to kill him, "Look, I know what you're thinking, but let's be rational and negotiate a deal here..."

That's at least four centuries of stability for this character type, and in elite and popular culture. Given how specific the type is, these portrayers must be picking up on something real. The over-representation of Ashkenazi Jews among Nobel Prize winners doesn't mean that the average one is super-brainy, but it still suggests that their average is above other groups' averages. And the social and economic ecology that Ashkenazi Jews were forced into and adapted to may not have required Nobel-level smarts, so it's not like the extreme values were selected for -- just the values around their average, where the person is smart enough to succeed as a tax farmer.

Similarly with Machiavellianism -- this may only represent a small minority of Ashkenazim, and this extreme value may not have been selected for, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that their average in this trait is higher than it is for their host populations, and that this fairly but not excessively Machiavellian level served a member well in the financial white collar ecology that they are adapted to.

I wonder if this is behind the unusually wide diversity of political positions that Ashkenazi Jews hold (they produced both Marx and Hayek -- oops, I meant Mises. I'd better not write so late at night...). If the average one is leaning in the amoral Machiavellian direction, that will reflect badly on someone who leans the other way, so the latter goes even further out of their way to prove their anti-Machiavellian beliefs to the host population. It's like the greater cultural diversity among whites in the south -- you see both rednecks and those who labor to prove their sophistication, lest they be mistaken for one of the bad white southerners. You don't see this so much where the whites are just bland and without embarrassing / bad apple leanings, say in South Dakota. Blacks who have been around lumpenprole blacks for a long time are more eager to prove, in the company of whites anyway, that they're not one of the bad blacks but educated and responsible. And a community-minded Ashkenazi Jew who through extensive personal experience senses the Machiavellian strain within his group will push even harder in the other direction when he's forming his beliefs.

8 comments:

  1. What today would be called anti-Semitism doesn't look like it gets started until the Ashkenazim cohere as a group -- there are very specific claims about being good with money, controlling lots of money, emphasizing cunning and cleverness over morality, pitting two sides against each other for his own individual gain, viewing nothing as so sacred that it's beyond striking a deal over or profiting from, and so on.

    At some point, the question must be asked: what is the difference between those Jews who study the Talmud and those who study the Torah; one is out of Babylon and is "man's tradition" and considered "mystic" - this is what Jesus contended with - having a fiercer aspect; the other is more peaceable and shares a common portion of scripture with Christians.

    One also must acknowledge that the Jews where fierce persecutors of the early church" the Book of Acts is a good indication.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Early Christian anti-Semitism during the Late Roman Empire did involve concerns about Jewish wealth, greed, economic dominance and exploitation, resource and reproductive competition, etc.

    The Jewish population and economic and social presence in the Empire declined after the failed Jewish rebellions in the 1st and 2nd century, but by the 3rd and 4th centuries the Jewish community grew larger and became very prosperous. They dominated the slave trade and were heavily involved in banking, national and international trade, and the law. They also developed monopolies in certain industries such as silk, clothing, glassware, and trade in luxury items.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I wonder if this is behind the unusually wide diversity of political positions that Ashkenazi Jews hold (they produced both Marx and Hayek).

    Do you mean Ludwig von Mises rather than Hayek? I don't think Hayek was Jewish.

    Also I'm not that sure about just how diverse these political positions held by Jews have been. They may appear to be quite diverse but there do seem to be some important features common to them. They tend to promote centralization, whether it's through public bureaucracy and state power or private capital. They also try to prevent gentile host societies from organizing along ethnic lines, whether it's by promoting class solidarity or excessive libertarianism, individualism, atomization, etc.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oops, yes I meant Mises (or I could've added Rothbard as well).

    ReplyDelete
  5. njartist, you don't know what you're talking about. The Talmud if anything is more peaceable than the Torah (see Deuteronomy). It's "anti-goyisms" are sprinkled in but the few relevant sections and are petty by comparison--still, they are very disagreeable. And, just so you know, Jesus practiced and preached Pharisee-influenced customs and teachings. Many of these have been preserved in the Talmud, including the organization of meals parallel to the Last Supper, which is the how traditional Jews feast to this day. As you should know, no where in the Torah is there any explicit or implicit description of such a thing--it is an ingrained tradition recorded and with guidelines provided in the Talmud. All this doesn't mean that Pharisees and modern-day Jews are secret Christians or that Jesus didn't meaningfully break from this tradition, just that you don't have the knowledge, let alone the care, to understand this issue in [what can be reconstructed of] it's original context. For the record, I can read Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew, and, to a much lesser fluency, the "Law Aramaic" of the Gemara. I am not a scholar or formal student of the topic, though, just a curious atheist Jew of sorts.

    ReplyDelete
  6. ...I shouldn't have described the Last Supper as "parallel"--too strong--to the way non-Karaite Jews organize their meals traditionally, it wasn't even indicative of Jesus' meals. Sorry. But doctrinal, stylistic, and practical similarities and parallels between Jesus' Judaism and Pharisaic Judaism (precursor of Talmudic and Rabbinic tradition) as opposed to other streams of the time do exist. I suggest you research a little bit. If you'd like, I can send you JSTOR articles (assuming you don't have access) that you pick to read on the topic of historical Jesus, the historical Pharisees, history-minded interpretations of the Gospel, etc etc. I won't be doing any more homework than that for you.

    PS: the Talmud is hardly "mystic"--it ranges from legal hairsplitting to parables and storytelling, with most of it being somewhat dry to colorful legal commentary. The methods of interpretation are quite unique but generally consistent. And the Talmud Bavli is Babylonian because Israel ceased to be the 'center of Jewish learning' after the Jewish-Roman wars. It was preceded by the Talmud Yerushalmi which was compiled 2 centuries earlier or thereabouts in Israel. And the Talmud Yerushalmi was preceded by the Tosefta and Mishna which were preceded by solely spoken teachings passed down by Rabbis and students and the rulings of the Mosaic court, and, well, who knows?

    Scratch the whole JSTOR deal; just stop speaking out of your ass and you'll be fine.

    ReplyDelete
  7. @ Tiyuvta
    Thank you for your despicable little rant: I hope it cleared your bowels of any obstruction.

    Next time take the comments as a cue to inform; however, thank you for improving relations between the goyim and the Jews.

    ReplyDelete
  8. One of my favorite of these non-Jew Machiavellian-Jewish roles if the Western pulp-writer W. W. Beauchamp in "Unforgiven", played by Saul Rubinek(!). He moved from chronicling the exploits of gunfighter after gunfighter as each proved his prowess over the other, while never having handled a gun himself and being comically unmanly amidst the crude but manly goyim about him. But by simply the character an old English (presumably Norman) name, the stereotype is perfectly acceptable.

    ReplyDelete

You MUST enter a nickname with the "Name/URL" option if you're not signed in. We can't follow who is saying what if everyone is "Anonymous."