Bernie Madoff: Lightning Rod for Anti-Semitism?

First, full disclosure: Bernard Madoff is in my extended family, and many in my family were victimized by his fraud. While I've shared close airspace with Bernie less than 10 times in my life, I've grown up knowing other headline-making Madoffs, and have always found them to be people of virtue and integrity.

But this post isn't about Bernie Madoff, the figurehead of immorality; this is about Bernie Madoff, the lightning rod of anti-Semitism. The Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman said on December 19, "Jews are always a convenient scapegoat in times of crisis, but the Madoff scandal and the fact that so many of the defrauded investors are Jewish has created a perfect storm for the anti-Semites."

Comments collected by the ADL from Florida newspapers The Sun-Sentinel and The Palm Beach Post alone shock the senses:

"The SEC is filled with Jewish gatekeepers who routinely turn a blind eye to Jewish financial bandits...It's no conspiracy that the Jews are the source of all financial troubles in the world."

Madoff is "just another jew money changer who robbed everyone... Jews worship only one god -- money. They are taught to hoard money from age 13."

Haha, this whole story reads like a holocaust story with the poor jews once again as victims, even though most of them have been getting paid BIG TIME by his fraud over the past 30 years."

It takes less than a handful of mouse-clicks to further validate Foxman's point. Following are user comments I've personally collected, knowing that some of these and many more have been deleted by their host newspapers:

The New York Daily News

I will never do business with jews. No one has even become enriched doing business with them or hiring them as employees. They will undermine you at every step and look to cause dissension because this is how they've always prospered.

The fact remains that ten years ago, when suspicion of Madoff's activities were first reported to the SEC (and that body took no action), its chairman was Arthur Levitt, Jr., who led the agency from 1993 to 2001. And he's no Catholic. I'm not an anti-Semite, but let the facts speak for themselves....

The Jewish Journal

In every country they have ever lived in many Jews have tended to be white-collar criminals. That is an indisputable fact. Somewhere between 40-50% of America's billionaires are ethnic Jews even though they are only 2-3% of the the overall population -- that makes me wonder how many other Madoffs are lurking amongst these people...

The New York Post

Jews rule the world financially because they have that fire in their belly about going out there and making money.

You must realize that the Jew wants our people to perish. That is why you must leave those who have brought you nothing but war, inflation, and discord. For thousands of years the Jew has been destroying the nations.

Wait, that last one wasn't from The Post; it was a quote from German newspaper publisher Julius Streicher, a diehard Nazi who was executed for war crimes in in 1946. (You can see how I made the mistake. In terms of blogging, men like Streicher and Charles Coughlin were decades ahead of their time.)

L.A. Times columnist Joel Stein didn't help matters much this month when he set out to prove that "Jews totally run Hollywood." Stein was disputing a recent survey from the ADL showing a possible decline in the number of people believing Jews control the entertainment industry.

Stein's name-by-name accounting of how many entertainment titans are Jews reveals only what is self-evident: that many entertainment executives -- yes, a disproportionate amount -- are Jewish. They're also, by and large, white, male, and rich. But the phrase "Jews run Hollywood" isn't usually a statistical comment so much as an implication of conspiracy, and I find that ridiculous. There just aren't enough Hanukkah and Purim blockbusters being made to back that up.

Having grown up in an America of the last forty years, and not the previous, I don't have much of a real-world connection to anti-Semitism.

Growing up in Texas, I once had a fellow sixth-grader look me in the eye on a cafeteria line and say, unprovoked, "F--king Jew."

I had the honor of meeting and working with Holocaust survivor and Oscar winner Gerda Weismann Klein, and that was deeply inspiring.

Four years ago, during the holiday season, I publicly supported my local school district's decision to prohibit the singing of overtly religious music as part of celebratory, non-curricular school events. I was interviewed by the Associated Press about it, and it was fed to major media outlets, thirsty to make use of their fancy "War on Christmas" graphics and promos. I found myself the subject of quite a few news stories and blogs. Many offended bloggers made intelligent counterpoints, but some singled me out as a self-entitled Jew who wanted to rid the entire world of Christmas.

Even then, I saw the blowback as part of a reasonably civil debate -- not a resurgence of pure anti-Semitism -- with maybe a few bad apples also getting their say.

But Bernie seems to have awakened an orchard, or at least violently shaken the tree. The stirring of widespread latent anti-Semitism must feel frighteningly familiar to those who lived in Europe during the 1930s. And it should be just as alarming to us as well. While deleting waves of anti-Semitic rants from comment forums is a rational move, it also sweeps them under the rug.

"The Bradley Effect", while a dispelled myth, made us look deeper into the dark corners of American culture. What will "The Madoff Effect" have? Will it cause us to recognize and fight a broader existence of anti-Semitism, or will it just feed a growing prejudice? Only our national character hangs in the balance.

Follow Joel Schwartzberg on Twitter: www.twitter.com/joeljest

Comments

[UnknownSoldier]

Joel,

Bernie Madoff is not going to stop people from visiting the J-E-W-I-S-H doctor, nor will he stop people from seeking out their J-e-w-i-s-h lawyer if they need legal help and so and so forth.

As a black man I stopped getting offended a long time ago when white people automatically assume that basketball is my favorite sport.

[Shake-A-Spear]

Right on, bro! Even the most rabid anti-semites beg for the ministrations of "Jewish doctors" when their cancer tests come back "Positive." At that point the docs would have every right to turn 'em down, but they never do. Has that story ever been told among the "rabids"? And what's the use of telling it? Anti-semites will go on being anti-semites even to the point of cursing God for making them resort to treatment by "semitic" doctors! Go figure, as we're wont to declare in resigned exasperation..

[Shake-A-Spear]

Come now: it was ever thus and you're documenting the obvious. I wish Bernie Madoff were something other than grist for the anti-semites but no rational arguments or discourse wil change the minds of those you quote and their ilk. So get over it and live with it -- and be the best person you can be. Let the anti-semites wallow in their hatred. You -- and Foxman -- ain't gonna change them!

[UnknownSoldier]

Totally agree

[Joel Schwartzberg - Huffpost Blogger]

Okay, so at exactly what point does one stop putting up with evil and intolerance (since you're all saying it's futile) and start outing it? Doesn't history sometimes show that standing idly isn't always the best way to protect oneself? I'm not so naive to suggest a blog post or a press release can defeat fear-born hatred, but is there no value in saying, "hey, this is more widespread than previously thought."

[AngelaQuattrano]

I think we have become distracted by the enormity of the crime and the "Jewish factor" and completely missed what ought to be the message: Con men pushing bogus investment schemes work churches all over the country to fleece people who they know they will trust them because they are also members, or claim to be.

I know a guy who got caught in a ponzi scheme that way. He and his wife lost a couple of thousand in some bizarre plan at his church that was pushed as some kind of combination investment and charity scheme. It was money they could ill have afforded to lose.

What did he learn? He learned that to make big bucks from a ponzi scheme, you have to get in early and get out before it crashes, which leads to my other "missed message": People who invested in the Madoff ponzi knew the payback was unreasonably high, and they assumed that there was something illegal going on, like insider trading. As long as people are willing to look the other way when the law is broken for their benefit, they will seek out schemes like this.

I feel sorry for these victims, well kind of. They all broke the cardinal rules of investing: Don't put all your money in one place, don't put money you can't afford to lose in a high-risk investment, and don't involve your money in a scheme you think is illegal.

[johaster]

Holland became a world class nation because of the enormous influx of persecuted immigrants. Jewish people had a great and benevolent influence, Spinoza, the philosopher of enlightenment, being the greatest of all. It is the hallmark of enlightened nations, such as the Dutch republic and, later, the United States to harbor and protect more intelligent minorities and judge them on merit rather than race. The Jewish people are blessed (or cursed) with higher verbal intelligence. In a merit society one, therefore, finds them in the highest positions, where they may do great good or evil. There is nothing racist about this, it is just scientific fact. If nations are in peril they tend to regress towards tribal and religious bigotry. It is hard to believe that the Americans, who just elected a black man as their president, will regress in this way. If this happens, modernity may be in grave danger and the future will look dark indeed.

[LeftLeanWing]

There will always be someone who will highlighted every single identity point of a person during a scandal. This is not a good indicator of a rise in anti-semitism. It just means that those that have always practiced it have access to blogs and keyboards too.

I also believe that some of what passes as anti-semitism is actually semitic-envy.

[themodernleader]

Most American Jews are like most Americans: driven to succeed while keeping the bill collector from the door. It is also true that Jews, similiar to some other groups within America, after joining an organization conjoin to gain previlege and control of the organization. In some institutions this overt and covert activity is seen by other members of the organization as conspiratorial and underhanded. And anti semitism becomes a clear and present menance. This perception does great harm to the mission, mandates and goals of the various organizations and to the reputations of its entire membership.

[willfarnaby]

"will never do business with jews. No one has even become enriched doing business with them or hiring them as employees."

Well, Boopsie, then I'd say Jewish people may tend to make very good business people.

While the _nation_ of Israel is hardly blemish-free - to understate - what nation is (some much worse than others)?

But this entire notion of race is utter rubbish. There is, in fact, no such thing as different, distinct "races".

As I understand it, historically Jewish people tended, historically, to be barred from a number of occupations (serving in a government, military, etc., for example), so they tended to become merchants, what we'd now call 'professinoal', etc. So, there's irony... often completely unappreciated irony.

It ultimately boils down to people as individuals. Some of good, some are bad, some are monstrous.

[myangeldog1]

Oh give me a break....lose the labels, and what it boils down to is that people are people......period. Give people credit for doing good and punishment for doing wrong......it's that frikkin' simple.

[thiswayout]

What is anti-semitic about inquiry? If there is commonality there is reason to inquire. Where would scientific research go if it didn't follow commonality, patterns, trends? If we don't inquire why Jews predominate in financial and white collar crime, media ownership, entertainment hosting and other areas where they do predominate, then what's to be learned about how it happened? Isn't this a branch social science? Why is it "anti-semitic to pursue this one particular line of inquiry? If all avenues of inquiry get frozen up by fear of a charge of "anti-semiticsm" then there is not freedom of inquiry. Maybe that's why the SEC didn't investigate Madoff...fear of being charged with anti-semitism!

[therealtruthteller]

You guys never fail to amuse me, never. Yes, I am anti-Semite, too, ROFL!!!

[StanCohen]

Quoting comments from web sites is a ridiculous form of evidence -- you can always find antisemitic comments.

I think Jews need to overcome their excessive fear and reaction to anti-semitism.

Yes, there are great Jewish criminals, and we are more than over-represented in the financial sector. But we are also over represented in the social work sector. And any claims that greed and being a criminal is a Jewish thing is just ridiculous. We're just overachievers, and sometimes that results in an Einstein and other times in a Madoff.

Instead of taking the antisemites seriously, we should laugh at their absurdity. By ringing the alarm bells and bringing up the Holocaust we only encourage the lunatics and help make being antisemitism attractive to alienated people seeking attention.

Antisemitism in this country, at this time, is just a refuge for lunatics, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, flat-earthers, white supremacists and the like. The best thing we can do to fight them is to further marginalize them -- I would argue that the show South Park has done 1000 times more to fight antisemitism than the ADL has.

Stan

[balrog221]

We must become not anti-semetic, but instead anti- religious. Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Evangelicals and Mormoms should all be exposed as frauds, Athiests should crawl out of the closet and expose the threat that we face from all of the zealots.

Why is any religious entity entitled to a tax break? To prostheltize their mythical fantasies. Want to balance the budget? Let's start by rolling back the entitlements of the church synagog and mosque.

[ImmanuelKant]

I must believe we can survive this in the 21st Century. Anti Semitism is ignorance. I converted from Catholicism to Judaism long ago in Los Angeles. This conversion required extensive study not just a proclamation of faith after learning a few principles. My conversion was based in my experience with associates who were Jew. They all lived the golden rule not just recite it. My associates represent the majority not the minority Madoff types. I believe most understand this.

[Metoyer]

Wasn't the philosopher Kant prone to making derogatory remarks re Judaism?

[ImmanuelKant]

Yes he was. He was also the man that said we must make decisions based on truth. Decisions based on lies are doomed to failure.

[Truby]

How about some focus? He swindled many people out of billions of dollars. He is a crook, last I checked they come from all cultures and religions.

[Absintheforall]

No, I think you are wrong. I don't see anti-semitism raising its ugly head here. Madoff stiffed his family, friends and assorted international fatcats, that's all. He did not slyly engage in a conspiracy to ripoff the "Goyim". It is *you* who is injecting ethnic poison into this debacle.

It used to be a truism that Irishmen were rednosed boorish drunks. It took years before society realized that it wasn't just Irishmen who fit this stereotype, but men (and even women) of *many* ethnic identities.

So, please just lighten up.