The latest ad in support of Michigan Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is a case study in antisemitic tropes. It blatantly blames Israel and its supporters for the current price of eggs and bananas.
Such a scurrilous libel is nothing new.
In recent times, this lie has been used to blame Israel for the war with Iran and the red-green riots in Paris. Almost a century ago, Adolf Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany losing World War I and all of Germany’s other ills.
Hitler didn’t invent the trope. He was channeling Karl Lueger, the turn-of-the-century mayor of Vienna whose political platform combined blaming the Jews for Vienna’s problems with a program of social reform. The origin of this noxious libel is still older. Karl Marx was the doyen of the movement.
We must not be fooled by this toxic antisemitic trope or the false promise of socialism as a solution.
Social welfare is a foundational element of Jewish law and tradition. From an early age at home and in school, Jews are imbued with the belief that we cannot be indifferent to the plight of others and are duty-bound to help those in need.
This ethic is expressed in many aspects of our lives. It’s hard to imagine a Jewish community that doesn’t have a variety of charitable and benevolent organizations affording people the opportunity to volunteer and do good deeds. There are also many individuals who are personally engaged in helping people on a less formal basis. They do this work quietly and consciously avoid publicity.
The ethic of social responsibility is also an integral part of life here in the United States. This is reflected in its many government social welfare programs and private charitable organizations, which provide a safety net for those in need. Charity is unquestionably a part of the American psyche.
Thus, our economic system is not pure capitalism. It might better be described as a free market economy combined with a social welfare system. So, it’s puzzling to hear that we have a barbarous system of hyper-capitalism, the Jews are to blame, and the only remedy is to replace it with socialism.
The truth is that, whatever the problem, socialism isn’t the cure.
Historically, the socialist system has proved an abject failure. The depravities it engendered are legion. Many millions in the Soviet Union died of hunger in the famine caused by Stalin’s program of forced collectivization. Many tens of millions did so in the self-induced famine caused by Mao Zedong’s so-called “Great Leap Forward.”
These tragedies of epic proportions were avoidable. They were the unfortunate but predictable results of central planning and socialism. The Venezuelan people are just the latest victims of this inherently dysfunctional system.
The failure of central planning isn’t merely a matter of poor execution. No man-made plan can reliably account for the immense complexity of an economy and the countless human interactions within it. Because it is impossible to fully map or predict economic behavior, successfully preparing and executing such a plan would require an all-knowing, all-powerful, omnipresent being.
Thus, socialism pretends to, but can’t actually take the place of God. As the popular Yiddish expression goes: Man plans, and God laughs.
It is unrealistic to expect everyone to become selfless and act against self-interest. Most people would likely avoid working hard because they would only receive the same rewards as those who choose not to do so. Without incentives, output tends to decline across the board. Leaders and technocrats in a socialist society are no exception; they often take more simply because they can.
There is nothing wrong with everyone freely striving to earn more and rewarding people for their creativity, ingenuity or working harder or better. Why is sameness a worthy goal? Indeed, one of the most majestic aspects of humanity is its diversity.
The socialist vision appeals to the base instinct of malevolent envy that’s antithetical to the Tenth Commandment. Rather than enabling everyone to be raised up, it takes from those who have more, so everyone will have equally less. Those in charge of a planned economy have the same human foibles as others, but without the behavioral checks and balances implicit in the free-market system.
Socialism is not the answer to the price of bananas and eggs. But neither is blaming the Jews.
