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Francisco Gil-White: The politics and antisemitism


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APRIL 19, 2013

Iyyar 9TH OF 5773

ט 'אייר ה' אלפים תשע"ג
  
Francisco Gil-White: The politics and antisemitism

For Jewish Link 18 April 2013 in Ponder, Reportaje0 Comments


MAY SAMRA

Francisco Gil-White, PhD in anthropology from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), is the author of a theory about the origins of racism which won the New Investigator Prize of the prestigious Human Behavior and Evolution Society. Shie collaborated with Gilbert, the witness Shoah (Holocaust) Mexico's most important, and his son Aaron Gilbert, in the production of The Last Survivor, an important witness Shoah. His research on the political history of the West and the role of anti-Semitism is the subject of a course-open to the public, who teaches at the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM) from May. We interviewed him on the subject of their course, the details of which are available at the following link:

http://desarrolloejecutivo.itam.mx/extension/html/app-progDetail.aspx?cvegen=13282&origen=Pagina

SAMRA MAY: I understand that you are about to teach a course at ITAM related to policy issues and antisemitism.

FRANCISCO GIL-WHITE: Yes, the course is called "The Political History of the West and Anti-Semitism," and begins on May 8, with a duration of 10 weeks.

MAY SAMRA: Are you open to the general public or only ITAM students?

GIL-WHITE FRANCISCO: To the general public. It is a diploma course, or any person, whether or not the ITAM student can enroll. We picked a night time for people who work can attend.

SAMRA MAY: What is the course?

FRANCISCO GIL-WHITE: This course covers the geopolitics of the Western powers, the conflict between Islam and the West, and especially the Arab-Israeli conflict, to thereby better understand the likely consequences of the current problem to our future freedoms. But I want to heed the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. He said: "If you want a present than the past, study the past." If we want a present (and future) different, one must understand the 2nd World War and the way they built the postwar world in the West. These events are written in larger processes, but it is hard to see unless you consider the big bosses of Western political history in the last 2500 years, from the empires grecomacedonios to the present day. That we do in the course.

SAMRA MAY: And the anti-Semitism?

It is a central theme of the course, because the Jewish culture and religion, as discussed in this course, have played a central role-and yet-unrecognized in intellectual and political liberation of the Western peoples. The course examines the central role of the Jewish people, and looking at it causes violent antisemitism.

MAY SAMRA: Are you saying that Jews are persecuted for releasing? Is not it ironic that you say?

FRANCISCO GIL-WHITE: That looks askance, but it is understood. There are those who seek to oppress us all, and are special enemies, for obvious strategy of those who have the talent to deliver. The argument, then, is that due to liberal and egalitarian temper of the Jewish tradition, the oppressors in the West have always promoted anti-Semitic propaganda in their efforts to prevent the Jewish people play their role liberating. It demonizes the Jewish people to try to oppress everyone.

SAMRA MAY: What evidence supports this thesis?

FRANCISCO GIL-WHITE: Actually the 20th century provided the most dramatic demonstration. The instigators of the 2nd World War sought slavery of all, and killed more than 60 million people to achieve their goals of subjugation. Famously, had a special hostility to the Jewish people. First, anti-Semitism used strategically to promote fascism and so generally remove the freedoms of all. And the huge effort they made to exterminate European Jewry suggests that they considered the biggest obstacle to their goals of oppression.

But not all. What happened in the 2nd World War very old patterns repeated. Throughout Western history, the main enemies of the Jewish people, responsible for organizing anti-Semitic mass killings have also been responsible for depriving the vast majority of Westerners of their freedoms, and of violating their rights.

MAY SAMRA: Much has been said that Judaism is the "canary in the mine," that the pursuit of the Jews is a pursuit of all. But you're proposing a different argument to the "scapegoat." According to you, antisemitism is functional for the oppressors, is an ideological tool for widespread oppression.

FRANCISCO GIL-WHITE: Right. And as we understand it, we are easily manipulated, and each generation succumb to anti-Semitic propaganda again, and cooperate with the processes that enslave and destroy us.

SAMRA MAY: But how is it that the Jewish people plays a liberating?

FRANCISCO GIL-WHITE: In the Exodus tradition, the Torah, ie the Law of Moses, the body of rules that defines Jewish identity is rooted in a slave revolt against an Egyptian king, and the law in fact appears as the culmination of the revolt. So much care is designed to protect the most vulnerable and poorest of society is a utopian law to prevent ordinary people can be oppressed and trampled again. The Law of Moses is the law of the freed slaves. Since antiquity, Judaism has taught that ordinary people have rights and that is sin oppress.

SAMRA MAY: So the Jews have been persecuted for political reasons?

FRANCISCO GIL-WHITE: That is the thesis. Anti-Semitic propaganda may use many arguments on the surface, and these may change in different places and times, but the underlying reason is always political. We see it from the beginning. The Greco-Roman military aristocracies of old had created societies organized around external war to procure huge crowds of slaves brutalized daily, whose work represented the basis of the entire economy. For these companies, the preaching of Moses, demanding freedom and social justice, was a terrible threat and indeed abound Roman aristocrats writings clearly expressing the perceived problem. It is no coincidence that the Roman Empire to exterminate the Jews in the first and second centuries, a Holocaust in proportional terms, according to historians, including Jews murdered more than Hitler.

MAY SAMRA: The course then examines the parallels between anti-Jewish attacks through the centuries, and the political consequences for all Westerners?

FRANCISCO GIL-WHITE: Precisely. In this course we analyze how the politics of the West throughout the centuries has been the result of a confrontation between two western heritage, the Roman and Hebrew, and how the modern movement towards liberalism, equality, and democracy are the result of Jewish values ​​that have become increasingly important. We have failed to recognize it yet, much less thank in due proportion to the Jewish people for his role freeing us all as we continue blinded by anti-Semitic propaganda, but the historical pattern is actually quite clear. Without the Jewish people have no modern democracy, which the enemies of freedom, the reactionaries powerful, they do, have always understood.

SAMRA MAY: Thank you, Francisco. Just one more question. What is your religious background?

FRANCISCO GIL-WHITE: I am a Catholic family, and was brought up Catholic. My interest in this subject is as an anthropologist and historian focused mainly on the issue of racism.

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