aelfgyfu_mead | And here I'd been saying, "But you just don't see that anymore...."

First, something a little tangential but related through RaceFail '09: I've been thinking a lot about when one has a responsibility to speak up and when it's just no use to reply to someone saying horrible things. I've also been thinking about the "I can say what I want" defense, "it's just words," and "if you don't like it, don't read it". I found essay online. It's in an academic context, about teaching ethics to students, but it deals with questions of who should intervene and under what circumstances, and why words have real force and can be aggression:
James Porter, "The Exercise of Critical Rhetorical Ethics". This is on Google Books; I've never tried posting a link to a chapter there before, so I can't promise it will work.

Today Brilliant Husband got a book in the mail addressed to "Resident," which was already odd. It's called The Enemy Unmasked. Guess who the enemy is? The Catholic Church! And so soon after I'd said that real discrimination against Catholics had all but died out! It's kind of funny, really--until Chapter 2, "The Illuminati-Jewish Front." That is so not funny.

I'm posting partly to see if anyone else on my flist has received one. I also want to say a little bit about this outrageous book and how I was wrong to think anti-Catholicism nearly dead. (I knew anti-Semitism wasn't.)

I'm not sure it's proper even to call The Enemy Unmasked a "book"; it's a really long pamphlet. It's a paperback, 151 pages, copyright 2006 by Truth Triumphant (Eustis, FL 32727). It has no ISBN (as an apologist pointed out--that's the old sense of apologist, someone who defends the faith), and in looking for a website, I found one that immediately declares it has nothing to do with this publisher.

Here's the TOC, for the curious:
1: Divine Hand Over the United States . . . 5
2 The Illuminati-Jewish Front . . . 19
3 Criminal Bankers . . . 31
4 Thaddeus Stevens . . . 46
5 Tightening the Noose . . . 61
6 The CFR: Another Jesuit Front . . . 75
7 Vietname: Why Did We Go . . . 87
8 Won't They Ever Stop Fighting? . . . 101
9 Treason in High Places . . . 111
10 War on Terror Planned 135 Years Ago . . . 122
11 The Hand that Still Intervenes . . . 133
12 Divine Hand Over the U.S. Removed . . . 145

What's scary is that it looks like a proper book. It's cheap and flimsy, but it has all kinds of quotations, with partial citations; the citations lack any date, so you can't tell some of these are centuries old, but this masquerades as a scholarly book.

I've breezed through parts of it. I stop when it starts hurting, because I'm not going to let this hurt me (and I hope I'm not hurting any of you by posting on it; feel free to stop reading). It's funny, up to a point. I mean, these slanders about the Catholic Church go back to before Edmund Spenser. The Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon! The Pope wants to rule the world! The Jesuits are a secret organization, and they have their own assassins! (I said, "He could sell this and make money, like Dan Brown!") But now people know about the Jesuits, so the Illuminati are the true secret organization! George W. Bush, who was president when this was written, was under Catholic control; the Pope got him to pass the Patroit Act (unconstitutional!) and declare a War on Terror!

It's hysterical, in both senses of the word: the author is having a fit of hysteria, and I was in stitches at the notion of George W. Bush under the Pope's thumb.

I find it funny partly because, as I've said elsewhere, Catholics really don't experience a lot of discrimination anymore. It still exists, and it's wrong and very hurtful. I know someone who experienced this discrimination in a job interview not that long ago. Didn't get the job. Huge surprise. There are also the many little slights, from Protestants who think we Catholics (yes, I'm a practicing Catholic) are damned to hell to more secular friends and colleagues who think we're misguided, ignorant, and sometimes worse. Mostly, though, these things don't hurt me. I may feel a little sting, but I remind people that I am Catholic, not just born and raised Catholic but someone who chooses every day to continue to be Catholic, and they usually apologize. I got my job. I got tenure. I don't feel threatened. I don't worry for my daughter.

On the other hand, if a lot of people get hold of this book with quotations giving citations that look full (except for those pesky publication dates) and start believing this stuff, we could see a resurgence of anti-Catholic sentiment.

Worse: I did worry for my daughter just a little when she went to a Jewish preschool. It was a fantastic preschool; we would recommend it to anyone in a heartbeat. I had just a little fear that some nut might someday do something there. They took precautions, more than other preschools and daycares. If I was just a little afraid for her in preschool those few years--not enough to give into fear and put her elsewhere, but afraid--how would it be to be afraid in my own place of worship or my own home?

That's where this book gets very unfunny. It does declare that real Jews are not the enemy; in fact, it says, the Catholic Church wants to kill all Jews, because if there are no Jews, there won't be a Second Coming of Christ, and the Catholic Church can continue its reign on Earth forever. (That last clause is a bit funny, but the whole rest of the sentence makes it unfunny.)

The Illuminati (I kid you not, the book says that) are supposedly bankrolled by Jews. And--get this!--there are a bunch of fake Jews out there, like Alan Greenspan, Arlen Specter, and Henry Kissinger (Hughes 30) who pretend to be Jewish so that everyone will blame the Jews instead of the real culprits, the Jesuits!

This still gets too darned close to what I've heard called The International Jewish Conspiracy. A few people still believe in Catholic conspiracies and Jesuit assassins; people don't generally take them seriously. A lot more people believe in the International Jewish Conspiracy (or IJC, as a grad school buddy of mine calls it). People don't attack the homes or schools or churches of Catholics much at all anymore; it's quite rare. Attacks on Jewish homes or schools or synagogues or graveyards, however, still happen. A distinction between "real Jews" and "fake Jews" doesn't do anything to ameliorate the slanders being spread about Jews in this book, because, of course, one can't tell which are which, so it's not safe to trust any of them, right? (The slanders that public figures that they're not even really Jewish are beneath contempt.)

The Anti-Defamation League is probably the best site to visit if you want to learn about anti-Semitism and efforts to combat it, especially educational efforts. Anti-Semitism is alive and all too well. I'm not going to start a recitation of incidents here, because y'all don't need to hear it, do you?

At one level, I'm amused, because the accusations are so far off base they're silly; it reads like parody.

At a more serious level, I'm outraged. Someone can send this to me in my home? Someone can send all my neighbors something that says my Church seeks to destroy Protestantism and kill all Jews? Someone can send everyone something that says many Jews are really Jesuits pretending to be Jews and bent on wrecking the world economy and creating wars?

Apparently, someone can. That doesn't mean I'll keep silent about it.

If you get the book, please let me know--yes, I suppose it's just vulgar curiosity. If you hear people repeating stuff from it and want some facts to reply, please let me know that too, and I'll see what I can do.

Tags: