By Howie Silbiger
It never seems to matter what Jews actually do. A Jew can build a business from nothing, work insane hours, save every dollar, take every risk, and if he makes it, the anti Jewites will say he is part of some shadowy machine controlling the country. Another Jew can barely get by, need help from the community or the government, and suddenly he is a parasite draining the system.
Same Jew hatred, different outfit. There is no winning in a game that is rigged before it starts.
If Jews go to university and become doctors, lawyers, professors or business owners, they are elitists. If they live in poor neighbourhoods, they are abusing the system. If they blend in, they are hiding. If they dress like Jews, they are refusing to integrate. If they support Israel, they have dual loyalty. If they do not support Israel, they are still somehow part of the same Jewish conspiracy.
At some point, you have to stop pretending this is about Jewish behaviour, because obviously it is not. It’s about Jews.
That is why the accusations never have to make sense together. Nobody seems embarrassed by the contradiction. The same Jew can be accused of being too rich and too cheap, too powerful and too weak, too separate and too involved, too foreign and too influential. It is not supposed to be logical. It is supposed to stick.
David Duke, the former Klan leader, pushed the old line that Jews dominate the media and international banking. That is how it always works. The successful Jew is never allowed to be a person. He cannot just be someone who worked hard, got lucky, built something or made good choices. He has to be part of a machine.
Louis Farrakhan has been selling his own version of that poison for decades. “Satanic Jews,” Jewish power, Jewish control, all of it dressed up like some brave political truth. It is not brave. It is lazy. It gives people a villain so they do not have to think too hard.
Nick Fuentes does not even bother dressing it up much. He has praised Hitler, mocked the Holocaust and built a following among angry young men who want to be told that their failures are not their fault. There is comfort in that kind of hate. It explains everything. It asks nothing of the person believing it.
And then there is Tucker Carlson.
Tucker has turned “just asking questions” into a business model. He does not always have to say the ugliest thing himself. He can bring on the people who say it, smile at them, flatter them, let them talk for two hours, and then act stunned when people notice what he is doing. According to Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon, Carlson once asked him to take him “off the list.” Off what list? The secret Jewish list? The one where Jews apparently sit around after mincha deciding who gets cancelled next?
It would be funny if it were not so ugly.
This is the scam. They accuse Jews of secretly controlling everything. Then, when Jews object to being smeared, that objection becomes the proof. Say Jews run the media. A Jew says that is anti Jewish garbage. Then the answer comes back: see, they are trying to silence me.
Nice little setup.
Silence becomes guilt. Anger becomes guilt. Success becomes guilt. Poverty becomes guilt. Israel defending itself becomes guilt. Israel showing restraint becomes guilt. A Jew speaking up is proof of Jewish power. A Jew staying quiet is proof that the Jews are hiding something. There is no version of Jewish life they are willing to accept. That is why the “rich Jew” and the “welfare Jew” can live side by side in the same sick imagination. One is stealing from the top. The other is stealing from the bottom. One controls the banks. The other drains the treasury. One is too polished. The other is too backward. One is too assimilated. The other is too religious.
The point is not accuracy, the point is accusation.
For years, decent people tried to tell themselves this sort of thing belonged to men in white hoods or lunatics standing on street corners with photocopied garbage. That was never true. The costume changes. The script does not. Now it comes through podcasts, campus rallies, street marches, influencers, professors, political grifters and people who swear they have no problem with Jews. They just have a problem with Jewish money, Jewish donors, Jewish influence, Jewish schools, Jewish neighbourhoods, Jewish security, Jewish grief, Jewish memory and the Jewish state.
But Jews themselves? Never, of course not.
The same people who say Jews control the world also seem furious that Jews are afraid. They talk about Jewish power, then mock Jewish schools for needing guards. They talk about Jewish privilege, then shrug when synagogues need police outside. They talk about Jewish influence, then say nothing when Jewish students hide their kippahs or Jewish businesses are vandalized.
So what are we supposed to be? The all powerful puppet masters or the soft target everyone thinks they can punch?
The answer is that they do not care. They will use whichever version works in the moment. That is why arguing with them often feels like a waste of breath. You can show them history, and they will call it propaganda. You can show them dead Jews, and they will ask what the Jews did to deserve it. You can show them poor Jews, and they will say it is staged. You can show them successful Jews, and they will say it proves the conspiracy. There is always an answer because the answer was decided before the question was asked.
Jews are not hated because they are rich. Jews are not hated because they are poor. Jews are not hated because they are religious, secular, Zionist, non Zionist, visible, quiet, loud, successful or struggling. Jews are hated because Jew hatred is useful.
It gives failures someone to blame. It gives extremists a villain. It gives cowards a cause. It gives political movements an easy target. It gives stupid people a theory of everything, and it gives Jew haters permission to hate while pretending they are just telling hard truths. That is why Jews need to stop playing along with the game. We do not need to apologize for Jewish success. We do not need to hide Jewish poverty. We do not need to prove, over and over again, that Jews are human beings and not characters in someone else’s conspiracy theory.
We know what this is, they know it too. The Jew was never really on trial for what he did, the Jew is always on trial for being a Jew.
Howie Silbiger is the host of The Howie Silbiger Show on truetalkradio.com and Politicla Hitman on israelnewstalkradio.com. He is the editor in chief of The Montreal Jewish News.
