| 0:37 | Intro. [Recording date: November 27, 2025.] Russ Roberts: Before introducing today's guest, I want to mention something important about when it was recorded. This week's episode is about trying to understand violence against Jews and those who justify it. I want to alert listeners that it was recorded before the horrific attacks on Jews celebrating Chanukah at Bondi Beach in Australia--which is why you will not hear it mentioned. It was recorded weeks before that tragedy. I also plan to post some additional thoughts about today's thought-provoking episode at my Substack, Listening to the Sirens. Feel free to check that out as well. [Note to parents listening with young children: This episode contains topics that may be disturbing and also contains some adult language.--Econlib Editor.] And now, on to today's guest. Today is November 27th, 2025, and my guest is renowned physicist, David Deutsch of Oxford University. David, welcome to EconTalk. David Deutsch: Hi. Thank you for having me. |
| 1:32 | Russ Roberts: Our topic today isn't the interesting books that you've written: The Fabric of Reality, The Beginning of Infinity. We're going to talk about a theory of yours about why Jews are hated. I'm a little uncomfortable with this topic for an episode of EconTalk. Many of you who are not Jewish may ask, why is this interesting? Why is it important? But, I think at a minimum, you will get an understanding of your Jewish friends and neighbors that you didn't have before, and what's happening in the Jewish community these days. And, maybe something else as well--a better way of understanding how the world works. I want to start with a story. In 2004, Mel Gibson made the movie The Passion of Christ. It was a controversial film for a number of reasons, but many Jews and Jewish organizations felt it demonized Jews. It showed Jewish mobs, sinister Jewish leaders, a reluctant Pontius Pilate, implying that the Jews played an outsized role, if not a decisive one, in the crucifixion. At the time the movie came out, I had a position at the Mercatus Center, which is part of George Mason University where I was at the time. And a number of the staffers at the Mercatus Center approached me: They were puzzled by the response of Jewish organizations to the movie, and they asked me if I would hold a lunchtime session explaining Jewish attitudes. And, these were young men and women who worked as support staff for the scholars in the Center. A number of them were religious Christians. I confessed I hadn't seen the movie. I confessed I had no intention of seeing it. But I also said I'd be happy to get together and talk about why I thought Jews were uncomfortable with the movie. So we sat down over lunch, me and 10 to 15 people in a seminar room. And, I said: Jews historically had been accused of deicide, of killing God--that is, Jesus--and that didn't seem historically accurate. The Romans crucified him. But, the main reason I said that the movie made Jews uncomfortable was that it wasn't the historical accuracy of what happened to Jesus--which is, after all a bit murky--but rather how the charge of deicide had been invoked to justify murdering Jews over time in history. For example, I explained, when the Crusaders went to the Holy Land in 1096 to Jerusalem to liberate the city from Muslim control--to kill the infidels as they saw it--they stopped along the way in France and Germany and killed thousands of Jews. A different kind of infidel. Just for practice, I guess. So, in Speyer, in Worms, in Mainz, in Cologne, in Trier, and Metz--they robbed Jewish homes and synagogues. They forced people to choose between conversion to Christianity or death. And they carried out massacres, killing thousands of Jews in 1096 in these different cities. Thousands. There's a debate historically how many thousands, but it was thousands. Now, there were a number of motivations. One was to punish Jews for killing Jesus. So, when a movie came out--Mel Gibson's movie, blaming Jews for killing Jesus--it makes us Jews a little uneasy, let's say. So, I was explaining this, and at some point in this very brief history lesson--not much longer than what I just said, maybe even shorter--I stopped and I looked around the room and I saw something extraordinary. Most of the 10 to 15 people around the table weren't looking at me. They had averted their eyes. Many were literally studying their shoes. They were looking down. They looked extremely uncomfortable. When I asked what was going on, their answers made clear that they had never heard of this aspect of the Crusades. They knew nothing about it. And, now that they had heard of it, they were deeply ashamed as Christians for the behavior of their Christian predecessors. Now, I'd learned about the Crusades at some point--elementary school, middle school. My teachers never mentioned the murder of Jews during the Crusades or sometimes called the Rhineland massacres of 1096. Why would they? It wasn't even a footnote worth putting at the bottom of the page. From the vantage point of history, it's not even a sideshow. But, from the vantage point of Jewish history, it was an epic tragedy that mirrored so many similar events throughout our history. Every summer, during the Jewish month of Av, which usually falls out in the Gregorian calendar in August, sometimes July, religious Jews in 2025 fast for 24 hours, eating and drinking nothing, and recite special poems and prayers that commemorate and lament tragic moments of Jewish history. And there are way too many of them. It begins with the destruction of the two temples of Jerusalem and includes what are called pogroms, events like the Crusades where a rowdy mob is whipped into a frenzy by Jew hatred and sets upon Jewish homes and businesses, and synagogues, setting fires, raping, murdering, and looting. It began 2000 years ago with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. It continued throughout the Middle Ages with Crusades and various blood libels. The false accusations that Jews needed blood from gentile children to make matzahs for Passover--a particularly ugly lie given that Jews are forbidden to consume blood of any kind. This persecution and murder continued through the Khmelnytsky massacres in 1648, in what is now Ukraine, when tens of thousands of Jews were murdered--tens of thousands--by marauding Ukrainian Cossacks; to the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 in Bessarabia, part of the Russian Empire, where roughly 50 Jews were murdered, hundreds injured, thousands left homeless. Through Kristallnacht in Germany in 1938, when hundreds or maybe thousands of Jews died in a single night, 267 synagogues were set on fire, many burned to the ground, 7,500 Jewish businesses were vandalized and looted, Jewish homes invaded, plundered, numerous cemeteries desecrated. To the Holocaust, with six million dead; through October 7th when something like 800 Israeli civilians were murdered, women were raped, houses burned to the ground by Hamas, and 251 people were abducted and held in tunnels for hundreds of days. Those are just the famous ones, among Jews. There are dozens--dozens--of other examples where Jews throughout history were murdered in significant numbers by their neighbors on what are called pogroms--mobs, whipped into a frenzy. So, the Crusades, for Jews, they're not some kind of weird little historical moment. And, I think it's hard for non-Jews to understand how these historical episodes are part of Jewish cultural DNA. We don't forget. And it would be foolish to forget. Vigilance is a good idea. We remember because we fear that this time is unlikely to be different. |
| 9:02 | Russ Roberts: And that brings us to you, David. You have an unusual perspective on this long history of Jew hatred and violence against Jews, which you call the Pattern. So, I'd like you to describe what that is, and you're also free to react to my little story and introduction if you'd like. David Deutsch: Yeah. Well, there are a few things in your story that I would actually disagree with. Russ Roberts: Go ahead. David Deutsch: I don't think it began with the destruction of the Temple. I think it began long before then. And, one of the remarkable things about it, which made me start thinking about it, is the way it has been consistent over millennia, unlike almost any other meme that I can think of. So, that's one thing. Secondly, you mentioned the Crusaders massacring Jews because the Jews killed Jesus. And, I think it's the other way around. I think the impulse to massacre Jews came first, and the Jews killing Jesus was an excuse invented afterwards, after that impulse, in order to legitimize it. And, the fact that this excuse absolutely doesn't make sense, that is the beginning of what I want to understand, the pattern I want to understand--which is not the pattern of pogroms and massacres. Those are things that only happen occasionally. The thing which happens all the time, which I call the Pattern, is the impulse to legitimize hurting Jews, which is the reaction of the other people, for example. The pogroms and so on almost always are a bottom-up phenomenon. They come from the people, not from the authorities. We're sort of misled by the fact that in the most famous examples, like the Holocaust and the Inquisition, it was top down; but far more often, it was bottom up. Sometimes the authorities tried to stop it. Sometimes they didn't care. Sometimes they approved retrospectively until it got too out of hand and cities were being burned down and that kind of thing, so then they tried to stop it. But, it was a moral perversion to legitimize hurting Jews, usually not to the extent of actually doing so. That was the normal state of affairs, and it continues to be the normal state of affairs in our society today. This is the thing that's very hard to point out. Therefore, I also don't think it's hatred. You called it Jew hate. I think Jew hate is another one of these symptoms of it which arise occasionally, but are not typical. The thing is, this impulse to legitimize hurting Jews conflicts with a lot of other morality that exists in various cultures, not least Christian cultures. So, it has to be accommodated because it's not going to go away by itself. I think it has been diminishing very slowly over the centuries, but it has to be incorporated into the worldview, into the normal worldview of societies. So--who was it?--Saint Augustine said, 'Yes, Jews have to suffer, but they must not be killed.' That was a piece of advice he gave to some ruler of some country who had asked him for advice. And, from his point of view, it was a pro-Jewish thing to say, because he wanted to take for granted the legitimacy of hurting Jews, but make that consistent as far as he could with other moral ideas that he had. The way that the Pattern works is that the actual violence--the pogroms as you put it--the pogroms break out not when people believe the Pattern more or less, or whether it grips their minds more or less, because I don't think the Pattern changes much over the timescale of a lifetime. It's when there appears to be a threat to the Pattern: when the moral rationalizations don't seem to be working and the society seems to be going the other direction, that's when the violence breaks out. So, for example, with the Enlightenment--with the 18th century Enlightenment in Western Europe--and again, with the rising of the Anglosphere in Britain, well-meaning people thought, 'Oh, well, this is going to be the end of antisemitism. This is going to be the end of Jew hate,' because just as it's the end of witch burnings and all sorts of other forms of violence and other forms of discrimination and so on, it's going to go away. It did not go away. It got worse. And, in my explanation of this, that is normal. It got worse because the legitimacy of hurting Jews for being Jews was being threatened by another current of morality in society, which was the Enlightenment. And so, there were ups and downs over the centuries. But, the other great moment when the opposite happened to what people thought would happen, is the foundation of Israel. The Zionists thought that once they had a state and had the legitimacy of a state for existing, where there were all sorts of taboos against using violence against a state that had been introduced in international law and world morality, that the Jews could then settle down and be a nation like any other, which didn't figure in the fantastical inventions of the people. But they were wrong. The reverse happened. And so, every other country like India and Pakistan, and dozens of countries which were founded at the same time, and all of them gained increased legitimacy for their own thing. And, unfortunately, people like the Kurds suffered the backlash of that because not getting a state meant that nobody cared about their sovereignty or their integrity. But, with Israel, it was the other way around, as it always is. So, yes--what was the other thing? Oh yes, so, hatred. Yes. |
| 17:41 | Russ Roberts: Well, hang on. We'll let it out, this little--I want you to clarify this a little bit. And maybe you can't. I would just say that, I'm fascinated by those addenda and corrections to my little historical narrative, and I'm intrigued. The puzzle remains: Why would the world--in its incredible diversity, cultural diversity--why would the world in its cultural diversity, its economic diversity over time and over space at any moment in time, who would think of legitimizing the murder of a particular group? Why would that be of a thing in the air? Why should there be such a pattern? I agree with you empirically. There appears to be such a pattern, and what you've just added is quite fascinating about its response to other moral and cultural trends. But, how does this get started? Where does it come from? It's insane. David Deutsch: It's certainly insane in the normal meaning of the word, but I don't think the sufferers from it are particularly insane by any other standard. I think the Pattern is, in some degree, present in almost everybody. One used to say: Well, almost everybody in Europe and the Near East. But since the globalization of ideas, it's really almost everybody anywhere in the world. Normally it's at a very low level and does not give rise to violence or persecution, or anything like that. It just gives rise to rather indirect things, like how people respond to the small amounts of violence that are still occurring. So, it's something that is inexplicable at that level, as well as the level of violence. So, where it comes from, why it exists, I'm afraid I don't know, as you guessed. I don't know where it comes from; but I think it's more important initially to understand what something is than to explain why it is. For example, it was necessary to understand that the planets move around the sun before Newton could come up with the reason--an inverse square law. It would have been impossible to come up with the inverse square law to explain Ptolemy's cosmology. And, I think the standard way of thinking about the persecution of Jews or the violence against Jews and that kind of thing, while trying to force it into the mold of other forms of irrationality, like racism or fear of the other, or envy. And people say, 'Of course, people envy Jews, and they hate people that they envy.' First of all, people don't always hate people that they envy. Secondly, they didn't always envy Jews. Just before the Enlightenment and before the emancipation of Jews, the stereotype of Jews was that they were primitive, superstitious people. That's why Voltaire said he hated them. He particularly hated Jews because they had not accepted the Enlightenment. Then when Jews accepted the Enlightenment, people switched around and said that they were foreigners infiltrating society and becoming rich and becoming powerful, and so on. Even though there were still places where Jews were poor and downtrodden and not very advanced at all. And, most of the Jews whom the Nazis killed, for example, were below average income, although the Jewish shopkeepers in the Polish villages were perhaps a little better off than the peasants. But they were not better off than the elites who then justified murdering them. But, let me just say this, too: I don't think the origin of it--you said, 'Where did it come from? Where did it come from 2,500 years ago?' That's the earliest that I can find sort of evidence of it. I don't think we need to know that because I don't think the vast majority of people who are gripped by the Pattern have any idea about that. They don't know where it came from. They don't know what attributes of the Jews initially--or whatever, randomness or whatever--initially led to it. There's sort of a Freudian impulse to go to the psychological root of the phenomenon. But, I don't think it's true in psychology, and I don't think it's true in understanding history either. It's a persistent phenomenon, and it's remarkably persistent. |
| 23:22 | Russ Roberts: Yeah. But, you're a man of science. Not just a man of science. I like to think of myself as somewhat rational, but you're a very serious physicist who has made many, many serious contributions to our understanding of the world and to the discipline of physics. And, to just posit something that seems without any rationality--I mean, economists would say things like, 'Well,' and you hear this argument, 'the Jews would have positions of power or economic success.' And so, of course, it was in the incentive of various groups to push them out or to bar them from certain professions, or to force them into particular occupations where they wouldn't have to compete with them, and so on. And, I accept your point that that argument is lovely as far as it goes in some particular country and some particular century. But it can't be a good explanation for the whole phenomenon, which is a deep--very simple, by the way--insight, fantastic application of Occam's Razor. I mean, it's a beautiful place to start. But you've got nothing else for me, other than--and I'm giving you a hard time for fun, about something that's not funny. But, you're basically saying--I'm just going to try to repeat it in my own words and for people who are hearing this for the first time and their head is kind of reeling, maybe. You're saying that throughout almost all of civilization and certainly over the last thousand years, 2,000 years, 2,500 years, people are comfortable with the idea that Jews deserve to die. David Deutsch: Deserve to be hurt. Russ Roberts: To be hurt. Or, beat up, brutalized, or murdered. It's such a strange idea. And, so many people listening are going to say, 'Well, I don't feel that way, and I don't know anyone who feels that way. Sure, there are people who are critical, say, of Israel, to take an important example, but they don't want Jews to be killed. They're just offended by what Israel does, say, against Gazans. And, that's what's explaining what's going on now.' And, you're saying, if I understand it correctly, and I want to give you a chance to clarify, you're saying, 'No, no, no, no, no. That's a smokescreen. That's a red herring, that's a distraction. It's in fact, causation runs the other way.' In their desire to hurt Jews, they'll cook up a reason: Oh, this time it's Israel. Another time it's deicide. Some other time it's economic exploitation. It's: Jews are landlords, they're exploiting the poor renters, and that's why we looted their shops. They stabbed us in the back at World War I--that was the German explanation. If you said to a Nazi in 1938, 'Why did Kristallnacht happen?' they would say, 'Well, the Jews deserved it. They ruined the country back in World War I.' And then, Jews, by the way, respond very, quote, "rationally" and say, 'No, no, no. We served in the German army. We were decorated. We were decorated at a higher rate than the average soldier.' Fill in the blank. I'm making that up. I don't know if it's literally true. But it's sometimes true in these stories that the facts literally don't make any sense. So, you're just saying that something twisted in the hearts of human beings, is a lack of empathy for a particular group of people to the point that they are comfortable with them being hurt and might even urge it on or carry it out themselves. David Deutsch: Yeah. Well, carry it out themselves is very rare. As you said, there are dozens and dozens of cases in history, but that's over thousands of years. Russ Roberts: True. David Deutsch: So, normally, it's a matter of legitimizing. Not of hurting Jews. It's a matter of legitimizing hurting Jews. You mentioned the stabbed-in-the-back myth at the end of World War I in Germany. But, that myth carried over to England as well. And, an English newspaper--I've forgotten the name, Morning Post or one of the main English newspapers--carried an account of Jewish perfidy in World War I, which kind of reversed this. So, they didn't say, 'Wow, the Jews helped us by stabbing the Germans in the back. We should thank them.' It was, 'The Jews caused the war and prevented it from stopping.' Whereas the Germans were saying, 'The Jews caused the war and made it stop.' By the way, contradictory in itself. And, this is--the illogicality of the accusations that are formed as rationalizations of the Pattern is itself a characteristic of the Pattern. It's a bit like the phenomenon of cults or religions. Cults and religions often have credos--shibboleths--where to be a member, you have to assert something illogical. And it's a badge of membership. Russ Roberts: Yup. David Deutsch: So, in some situations, the more illogical the shibboleth is, the stronger it becomes as a badge of membership. So, another kind of illogicality, similar to the World War I in Germany, Britain, and then in America, by the way, Henry Ford and Father Coughlin. Russ Roberts: We're hearing it right now because America gives $4 billion--which is a large number to me, but not a large number to Israel or to the United States budget--because Israel accepts $4 billion in foreign aid, which is used to buy American arms and has strings that it--it's basically a subsidy to American weapons manufacturers. 'Because of that, America is being ruined.' That's a very common meme in the Internet right now, and it's irrational. It doesn't make sense. David Deutsch: It is, as are many other things in this complex of ideas. Russ Roberts: I just want to say, by the way, I'm against American aid. I was against it when I was living in America. Now that I live in Israel, I'm still against it. I don't think America should be giving aid to Israel. Israel's GDP [Gross Domestic Product] is about $550 billion dollars. The $4 billion it gets through the United States, it could easily finance on its own, and I think it should. So, I just want to get that in. Sorry, carry on. David Deutsch: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's an irrelevant issue, and I think everyone knows it's an irrelevant issue. So, a similar thing--another one that just came to my mind. Again, there are dozens and dozens of these things. Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, wrote three books about how bad the Jews are. I haven't read them, but I understand that they are very virulent. And, I know that one of the things he says there is--and he repeats a very common trope at the time--that Jewish doctors kill their patients. So, one version-- Russ Roberts: They're non-Jewish patients, presumably-- David Deutsch: They're non-Jewish patients. Sorry. Yeah, quite right. Yes. One of the versions said that they have a pact that they must kill 1 in 10 of their gentile patients. I think Martin Luther didn't say how many, but the University of Vienna said that it was 10%. So, that was a common form of the libel. But, Martin Luther pointed out, without himself realizing what he was saying, he pointed out as a kind of, 'Look how irrational we are,' he was kind of saying, 'because we know that they do this, and yet we still hire them as doctors.' Now, he was pointing out something which is perfectly true. And, again, a more widespread thing at the time was that Jews were expelled from various cities for various imaginary crimes. And then, a few years--at most a generation--later, they were welcomed back in. And, it wasn't that people said, 'Oh, they didn't commit those crimes.' They just said, 'Oh, well, the Jews can come in now. They'll be useful in X, Y, and Z, in trade, in medicine, and whatever.' Russ Roberts: Finance. Yeah. David Deutsch: Finance, yes. Oh, yeah. Well, there was the thing that only Jews were allowed to participate in finance. Officially. Of course, in reality, everyone participated in finance; and the Medici were not Jews. |
| 33:13 | Russ Roberts: I want to give an example from the current moment to both get your reaction and challenge my own skepticism about your thesis. And again, I have to say, there's something deeply offensive about your claim. It's disturbing. It is unacceptable. And yet, in fact, for most of my life--we are the same age; I'm 71, you're 71--we've lived in a time with very little overt examples of violence against Jews. Trivial amount through most of my life, trivial amount of any kind of antisemitic words, anything. But, people would say, 'Oh, but antisemitism, it's like a virus. It just kind of mutates and spreads.' And, I'd say, 'That's not a satisfying answer as a social scientist.' And, it's hard to understand how it could be true. So, I've always been skeptical of it. Until the last two years, with the war in Gaza. And, I want to give an example from modern times. And, listeners, I'm not going to name names, and you can speculate all you want, and I'm not going to confirm or deny anything, but I follow a number of people on Twitter, on X, who have millions of followers. These are smart people, deeply thoughtful, interesting people. Some of them are extremely talented. Most of them are highly educated. Until October 7th, I would have said they are incredibly rational, nuanced, and sophisticated thinkers in weighing evidence, and so on. And yet, since October 7th, the following is true--and it's a small number of data points, in my own personal experience; but I know they are representative of a larger group--these folks have never said anything about the hostages. They have said nothing about Israel's horrible moral dilemma of having 250 of their citizens kidnapped and dragged into tunnels. They've never suggested what Israel should do, instead of what they claim is genocide. They use the word 'genocide' to describe a terrible tragedy, but it's a tragedy of war, not what was defined as genocide recently, until recently. They only post anti-Israel--they post about a few things. But, when they post about Israel, which is regularly, they only post critical things, many of which are not true. I don't mind if they post things that are true [?about?] Israel: many things it's done that I'm ashamed of, that Jews are ashamed of, that deserve criticism. That doesn't bother me. You can argue that Israel has made a terrible tactical error in responding the way it does. You could say it's made a moral error. That's fine. I'm open to any of that if you make an argument. But, a significant portion of what they post are lies. When those lies are uncovered, they never apologize. They never tell their followers, 'Oh, I exaggerated. I posted a video claiming that it was a video of Jews--of Israelis--on a tourist trip to watch the bombing of Gaza. That actually didn't happen. There weren't any, and I probably shouldn't have posted it.' That doesn't happen. They just put it up. And, I'm not going to detail all the things I think are dishonest. Again, I don't mind, people don't agree with Israel, disagree with Israel. This has nothing to do with that. This is a relentless posting of grotesque things that are not true, demonizing Israelis. And I wrote one of these people because I know them well. And I said, 'You know you're endangering me and my children. I don't mind if you're critical, but by demonizing me,' which is the Pattern, 'by saying that I am a savage, that I am a supporter of genocide, you are justifying hurting me. You are justifying hurting my children. Please don't do that. Be nuanced. Be critical. But please do not only post things, many of which are not true.' Now, we got into an interesting back and forth about what's true and what's not true, and that's a discussion for another day. But, this phenomenon of a thoughtful person who I respect, posting relentlessly critical things of Israel--until I talked to you, David, I liked to think that, 'Well, they just have so much empathy for the Palestinians,' and they struggle because their feed, like my feed, has been programmed to make me happy or really mad. Those are the two things that your feed on social media does: it either is designed to make you feel comforted or enraged. So, of course, those, so they got a bad feed. They've watched too many videos that aren't true, and as a result, that's all they see. And, their love for the poor Palestinians, which I also empathize with--the people of Gaza, I think it's a terrible tragedy, what they've endured since October 7th at the hands of Israel. But, their own leaders have, I think, bear immense, if not most, of the moral responsibility for their faith. But, we can debate that. But, I like to think, well, this person who is acting on the Internet--and I'll say someone publicly, Tucker Carlson, whose theories of the world continue to morph into stranger and stranger conspiracies about Israel and Jews--they're just so compassionate. They're so empathetic for the state of the Palestinian people, which I can relate to. So, it's not so surprising that they're anti-Israel right now. But, you're saying that's really a misreading of what's going on. You want to elaborate on that? Or agree with--am I getting this right? And, I have to say, even though I don't like your theory, it does explain this perverse behavior of people I know are rational everywhere else. David Deutsch: Yes. Well, I'm not going to say whether I like the theory or not, because I think that is irrelevant. I'm interested in what's true, and I try to pursue what's true, rather than what I like to be true. By the way, before I get onto your friends who are consumed by the Pattern, I just want to point out that Jews are not exempt from the Pattern. Russ Roberts: Correct. That's true, too. Yeah. David Deutsch: And, I'm not referring to only to so-called self-hating Jews, who, they're a category by themselves, like Neturei Karta or those kind of people. I'm talking about ordinary people--as you say, rational people, caring people. And, again, I'm not going to name names, but Jews, Israelis, everybody, there is no category of people who are immune from this--I don't know what you call it, a mind virus. It's not like other instances of that kind of thing. So, I hesitate to use generic categories for it. Russ Roberts: It's not a conspiracy theory about some--yeah, it's different. David Deutsch: Yeah. Yeah. It's very different. But--but--I don't think that the people you're talking about are moved by compassion or empathy. I don't think they have that. Claiming to have that is, again, a rationalization. You can easily tell, as is often pointed out on social media and so on, that if they were empathic or compassionate, they would be compassionate with other Palestinians. For example, the ones who are being mistreated in other countries or who are expelled from other countries. And some-- Russ Roberts: Or with other tragedies in the world that aren't related to Jews. They don't say a word about them. David Deutsch: Yes, exactly. But the most extreme example of this is that they don't care about other Palestinians. They don't care about Palestinians who are being killed or harmed or hurt by people who aren't Jews. That never appears in the public discourse. So, it's not compassion. |
| 42:20 | Russ Roberts: But, don't you find it kind of condescending? I do. But it's growing[?] on me. Isn't it a kind of condescending to say--and people say about me all the time, they say, 'Well, he's a Zionist, so he's an idiot.' So, what you are suggesting is that when I look at these people I respect or used to respect and I'm trying to understand their behavior, there's a certain--I mean, it's not really cheerful, but there's a certain smugness of saying, 'Well, they've got this disease and they can't help it. It's pitiful, it's sad, but they're just misguided beyond--' They're in the throes of a mental illness, is what you are effectively saying. It's a disturbing way to look at other people. David Deutsch: It would absolutely be illegitimate to look at other people like that in the course of an argument. If somebody says, 'Israelis have committed genocide in Gaza,' to reply to that by saying, 'You're irrational'-- Russ Roberts: Yeah, 'You just hate Jews.' Yeah-- David Deutsch: That's an invalid argument. That's an ad hominem argument. Which should not be used in any circumstances, especially not ones where people's lives hang in the balance. So, when one is making an argument for or against some proposition, one can't use the attributes of the person putting forward the argument as part of your argument. Russ Roberts: Correct. David Deutsch: That's not legitimate. Russ Roberts: Correct. David Deutsch: But, nevertheless, irrationalities do happen. And, this isn't the only irrationationality going around. I have been on the anti-irrational side of several different arguments. And, when I say that, for example, inductivism is a philosophy that is incredibly seductive and which enters into people's worldview when they don't know--they would deny that they are an inductivist. And, I have to--I can't say, 'Yes, but you secretly are.' I have to say, 'This thing you are saying is false.' Never mind whether it is, quote, "inductivism." Nevermind that. I will argue against your particular position. That's if I want to argue with them--which I often do if they are careful thinkers who, in other respects, I have reason to understand arguments and change their point of view according to them. |
| 44:58 | Russ Roberts: So, let me ask you a related question. Early in this war, in Gaza, many people complained that Israel is doing a very bad job with what is sometimes called hasbara--which means communication, making its case--and that Israel needed to do a better job. And obviously, the world's opinion was spiraling out of control negatively against Israel 'because Israel was doing such a poor job.' This is an old story. It goes back 77 years. People have always said Israelis are blunt. They are overconfident; they are dismissive of others. A form of the Pattern already. But, that, of course, this is a cultural flaw of Israel, is one of the reactions. And, I've never believed that. It's not clear that it would make any difference. However, I'm on X, that's the social media platform I spend too much time on. I've recently started removing it from my phone. I put it back on again. It's like smoking. It's an addiction. And then I take it off for a while--which is good, by the way. Like smoking and stopping smoking, every cigarette unsmoked is probably a benefit, health-wise. It may have other costs. So, on X, there's this war that goes on. And, I look at it sometimes from 30,000 feet. Here's the war. Somebody says something that's not true. Again, I don't want to debate whether some of these things might be true or kind of true, but let's say it's an actual--a misstatement of fact. So, the hasbara people pile on and correct so and so. Is this a reasonable thing to do? Should we continue to play whack-a-mole with people who are the most crazy victims of the Pattern? Or should I just say, 'Well, they're a little bit crazy--or maybe very crazy--and that they're victims of this mind virus. I'm not going to waste my time trying to dissuade them or to dissuade others.' But, what's your thought on that? David Deutsch: Well, you made several points there. First of all, as far as the hasbara goes--even before that, let me say that the fact that anti-Jewish rhetoric has risen, even among people who do not themselves participate in persecution or violence against Jews, that always happens. That's a feature of every pogrom. Again, it's an odd feature of pograms: that, the result of it is that bystanders side with the perpetrators rhetorically, even if they don't join in. Which most of them do not. So, that's one thing. The fact that this rising always happens and has got nothing to do with Israel or its public relations or anything like that. Having said that, I think that Israel's public relations, as well as the well-meaning efforts of Jewish organizations or anti-antisemitism organizations, it's not that they have got bad PR [Public Relations. It's that they have the wrong theory of what they're conflicting with. Russ Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. Explain. Explain. Russ Roberts: They think it's an education problem. David Deutsch: Yeah. Yeah. Or, that this is a form of prejudice or a form of racism and a form of--there are all these things that it's blamed on. Russ Roberts: A few good workshop sessions will clarify things and clear this up. Russ Roberts: Get the right facilitator in there. David Deutsch: Whereas, I think--I don't know how to do this. I'm not a public relations person at all. But, I can't help thinking that if they had the right theory of what they are combating, they would do better at combating it. And, I think there's no single answer to whether one should respond to factual falsehoods. I sometimes do on X; and it's because I'm thinking of the people who are just new coming to this--a 16-year-old who has just gone on X and suddenly encounters this torrent of facts saying that there was a Palestinian state that the Israelis invaded in 1948--just to say, 'Well, that isn't true.' And, then to point out--and usually the allegation comes along with some emotional taint as well. So, then I often also point out that what's really happened is that this person is legitimizing hurting Jews for this. And, it wouldn't be a valid legitimization even if it were true. But it isn't true. Like, you know: 'The Jews killed Jesus' is not--people pretend to believe, or rather make themselves believe because it's part of their religion, that a crowd of Jews filled the square in front of Pontius Pilate. And when he said, 'Who shall I kill?' They said, 'Kill Jesus, and we'll take the responsibility for His blood on us and our children.' Now, first of all, crowds don't speak in unison. Secondly, if they did speak in unison, no crowd in history has ever said that they and their children should be punished to the nth generation. Russ Roberts: Yeah. David Deutsch: No one has ever said that. That scene didn't happen. It was made up for the purpose of being an illogical allegation that it was a badge of membership--in this case of Christianity--to endorse. So, now, this applies also to Jewish people who are gripped by the Pattern. By the way, I think 'gripped' is perhaps the wrong word because most people in whom the Pattern is part of their psychological makeup, which by the way, included me before I began to realize what's going on. Most people are not overwhelmed by the Pattern. The moment of being overwhelmed by the Pattern is quite visible. It's when the person can't stop talking about Jews. As Douglas Murray has pointed out. And that's when people say, 'Oh, this is a mental illness.' But, it's not a mental illness. It's an irrationality. In that respect, there are many other irrationalities that are like that. And, I mentioned inductivism, which is one that I have [inaudible 00:51:56]-- Russ Roberts: It's not one of the worst, I would just suggest. There are others that are worse. David Deutsch: Right. But, this one is particularly harmful politically. It is a thing that can destroy cultures. It can destroy empires. So, for that reason, it is important to combat it. But, combating it doesn't necessarily mean eradicating it as a moral perversion. Because, for example, I said that its clash--the formation of the state of Israel was one of the enemies, one of the great enemies of the Pattern. And, it, in fact, exacerbated the Pattern at the time, as did the Enlightenment. But, the Enlightenment and the formation of Israel are good things. And, similarly, the Anglosphere is a very good thing, but it is the place, as Max Nordau pointed out in his address to the first Zionist Congress, which I always recommend to everybody-- Russ Roberts: We'll link to it-- David Deutsch: Right. The Anglosphere is the place where all these things that he talked about in the way that the emancipation of the Jews was hypocritical and led to the opposite, and so on. That didn't happen in the Anglosphere. Notably. But it's not because people got less, quote, "antisemitic." It's because the actions of hurting Jews conflicted with the actions required by the Anglosphere morality. And, that is why Britain was an exception to--I must always say, and the Netherlands--and Britain and the Netherlands were an exception to the upsurge of pogroms and antisemitic persecutions that followed the Enlightenment. And then, to America, it was a bit too early for Nordau to mention America as well, but if he were speaking today, he would say, 'And, America.' |
| 54:56 | Russ Roberts: Explain that again. Say that again about Nordau's thesis and why England was different. David Deutsch: Yes. So, he said, and I think this is extremely perceptive of him at that time, 1897-- Russ Roberts: This is 1897-- David Deutsch: Yeah. He said, 'You would think that the era when the Jews were emancipated, when they got to be allowed for the first time to participate in society, to [inaudible, crosstalk 00:54:46]'-- Russ Roberts: Come out of the Ghetto-- David Deutsch: Yeah. 'Get out of the ghetto, attend university, engage in business, become bankers, and so on, that this would just normalize the age-old pattern, but it made it worse. And, that's because the people implementing the Enlightenment, building Enlightenment polities were not sincere,' as he puts it. Whether they were sincere or hypocritical or not, I don't know whether one can say that in regard to unconscious ideas, unconscious motivations. But, anyway, they weren't. Britain, which was the last major European country to emancipate the Jews legally, that was precisely because they were serious. They waited to emancipate the Jews until they had resolved the conflict of the ancient patterns of persecution, the conflict between that and the new ideas of the Enlightenment and the Anglosphere, as we would now call it. Once they resolved that in the middle of the 19th century, then they emancipated the Jews. And it was no big deal. Even though a little bit before Gladstone--the Great Liberal--was railing against emancipating the Jews, allowed. But, even then, he was railing against allowing them into Parliament as MPs [Members of Parliament]. There were Jews who were ready to be MPs who would have been voted in and who weren't allowed by the rule that you had to swear on the Bible--on the New Testament. So, that requirement was lifted at the time when the country was ready to accept that conflict between some of their previous values and some of their present values. So, that was how England was different. And still is different. And, the fact that people still believe nonsense that they see on the Internet has got nothing to do with that, because they do not enact it. The Pattern is a moral perversion which takes the form of compulsively legitimizing--legitimizing, not enacting--hurting Jews for being Jews. And, that can go up and down in a society. But what people do, especially in strong societies like the Anglosphere societies, what people do is more regulated by their political and social traditions than by their gut morality about different people. Russ Roberts: That's fascinating. And, I have to say, my earlier unease with your claim is softened by your observation about that people in the grip of this increasingly focus on the Jews. That would be true of--to take a modest historical example, Adolf Hitler. But, it would be also true of people in today's world who--puzzling it seems, as you point out, and as I'm pointing out with my examples from social media--it's all they write about sometimes. And increasingly, to the extent it's not all they write about, the proportion grows over time. And, I will say, since the return of the hostages and the least temporary, mostly end of the war, some of the worst posters and re-posters that I'm talking about have quieted down. But others have ratcheted it up. |
| 59:38 | Russ Roberts: Let me ask you a question about how to respond--well, I'd like to turn to the general question--how to respond to this. I'm pretty sure you're an atheist-- Russ Roberts: And, I am a practicing Jew. You can't see it on Zoom, but I'm wearing a kippah, and I do my best to lead a serious Jewish life in the normative sense of Orthodox Judaism. So-called modern Orthodox would be my flavor, more or less. In the face of this reality, would you favor--I asked the same question of Sam Harris, by the way, who is also a very famous atheist, as I think you are. It's a funny phrase, 'famously atheist,' but, meaning: It's well known. It's not, like, a quiet thing I'm broaching here. Isn't the solution to the Pattern, the right response to the Pattern given your atheism, favoring assimilation? So, Herzl in 1897, beginning before that, but certainly in the first Zionist Congress, is making the case for a Jewish state where we'll have a haven, a sanctuary, we'll be safe. Hasn't turned out quite that way. You could debate whether it's been good for the Jews or not. But, that's one answer. You could argue historically it's not been a complete success. I have to admit that. But, a different answer would be: Let's go the opposite direction. Instead of creating a home for this crazy group of people who are--stand out in every society they're in--which is also interesting--and are identifiable, despite the fact that they have mostly in the West, look a lot like the people around them; but it doesn't matter. So, it's not a skin-color thing in the West, somehow. Shouldn't the solution just be to fade away? If you're any kind of utilitarian--I'm not, but you might be, and many are--shouldn't, isn't the solution to this horrible suffering that comes from the Pattern, just get rid of Jews? Not exterminate them, God forbid, but: Let's fade into the woodwork. Let's change our names to less Jewish names. I'm Roberts, used to be Rabinowitz. That's a step in the right direction. Take off your kippah, don't keep the Sabbath. Just merge, baby. That's another way to cure the disease. Instead of debating people that they shouldn't hate us, let's just stop existing as a distinct category. Do you feel that way, ever? David Deutsch: Absolutely not. So, I think that this idea that assimilation is the solution to pogroms was believed by many people in the 19th century and was tried by many people, and the place where this extermination of the Jews began was the place where they were most assimilated-- Russ Roberts: Yeah, it's awkward-- David Deutsch: in the whole of Europe. Russ Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. David Deutsch: Probably the second choice, if you'd been told in 1900 that some time in the coming century the Jews of Europe will be--one of the nations in Europe is going to try to wipe out the Jews--the first choice of most people would have been France. Russ Roberts: Yeah, the Dreyfus--. David Deutsch: Germany, perhaps Austria, would have been second, third. If you allow Russia as part of Europe, they would have said Russia or Poland. Russ Roberts: Poland. Yeah. David Deutsch: They would not have said Germany. Germany was the place to which Jews fled during the pogroms of the First World War. Even though the Kaiser was deeply gripped by the Pattern; but that didn't affect the policies of the state. So, the Jews took refuge in Germany. Then France would have been the place where what was called antisemitism, which, by the way, I think is a very misleading name-- Russ Roberts: Terrible word, yeah-- David Deutsch: in several ways. That's one of the reasons why I decided to choose a different name. Because, that it's a pattern, I think nobody can deny. So, then came the Dreyfus Affair, when the whole of France rose up against this one guy, just this innocent guy, just because he was a Jew. And, Herzl saw this and, having previously been an assimilationist, he was like, 'Okay, it's not going to work, guys. We need some other kind of solution.' And, that was the thing that converted many Jews. But, still a minority. The majority of Jews, some of them, I'm sorry to say, were themselves gripped by the version of the Pattern which was common among Orthodox Jews at the time: either that Jews had been expelled from the Holy Land, or from Judea, or whatever you want to call it, for their sins, and they haven't finished expiating them yet. So, Zionism. Or, they would say, 'Jews should not go back to Judea until the Messiah comes.' In other words, never. If you'd asked them, 'Do you have anything against Jews?' they would have said, 'Of course not. We're loyal to Jews. We have compassion with all Jews, even the ones who are not devout,' and so on. Zionism did not succeed well amongst Jews. The great majority rejected Zionism. But, you mentioned Israel and whether it was a success. Several hundred thousand Jews were saved from the Holocaust-- Russ Roberts: Absolutely-- David Deutsch: because of the Jewish national home, as it was then. And then, several hundred thousand more were saved from persecution, and in many cases, extermination, again because of the existence of Israel. Russ Roberts: Yeah. I didn't mean to say it was literally a mistake. I just--it did not fulfill its expected destiny. Russ Roberts: And I have to quote, I think it's Amos Oz, who said: When he lived in Europe, they said, 'We don't want you here,' or they tried to kill us. So, then we created the State of Israel. Once we got there, they said, 'Go back to where you came from.' David Deutsch: In both cases--I'm sorry to keep repeating this, but it is counterintuitive, so I have to repeat it--those were rationalizations. Both 'Go to Israel' or 'Do not go to Israel,' all those things are rationalizations. And, in its extreme form, the Nazis did not originally, at the beginning of the Holocaust, try to murder all the Jews. They tried to expel them because that was a way of hurting them. And, the rest of the world joined in and said, 'Right, well, Jews are not allowed to leave the Nazi jurisdiction.' Why? If you'd asked them, they wouldn't have said, 'Because it is fitting for Jews to suffer,' as Saint Augustine would have said; but the underlying impulse was the same. The world clubbed together to prevent the Germans from expelling Jews from Germany and from the countries they conquered. And that's why they embarked on killing them, because they couldn't leave the situation as it was. It would have been unthinkable to people who were very gripped by the Pattern. |
| 1:08:07 | Russ Roberts: Let's talk about the West for a minute--which is a vague term, but there's some shared understanding of what that means. A few days ago was a remarkable event. Actually, it's not remarkable. It's become relatively commonplace. At the Park East Synagogue, which is an iconic building in Manhattan, there was a protest as Jews entered--and presumably some non-Jews entered--to attend an event at the synagogue. It was an event to encourage people going to Israel. I should say that to make it clear, that I understand people could think that's a bad thing. I don't. But, okay, that's a legitimate position to hold: that you don't think people should be encouraged. Fine. And the way it's encouraged in different parts, over the Green Line, etc., etc. But, let's look at what people said. They didn't say people shouldn't be encouraged to move to Israel. They chanted, 'Death to the IDF [Israel Defense Force].' Interesting. 'Globalize the intifada,' which to me means promote the murder of innocent civilians. There are people who interpret that phrase differently. I will give them their due. 'We don't want no Zionists here.' 'Resistance, you make us proud.' 'Take another settler out'--meaning, 'Kill people who live in disputed parts of Israel,' although some people would say that includes all of Israel. And my--I was going to say my 'favorite'; I can't use that word--but we have video of a woman screaming, 'Go kill yourself. Do the world a favor and effing kill yourself.' But, she didn't say effing. 'Go kill yourself. Do the world a favor and effing kill yourself. Slit your throat. Do that, please. I beg you.' It's hard to imagine a more dramatic example of the Pattern. In this case, legitimizing a person hurting themselves. But, the anger and rage of this person, it's scary. And the people who were tearing down hostage posters in the early days after October 7th--with glee. With glee, laughing as they did it. And, I'm looking on these videos. Jews would say, or passersby, many of them were Jewish, but maybe some of them weren't, 'Don't do that. Don't do that.' And, the people would just laugh at them and tear the poster down. And I'm thinking, remonstration--wagging your finger--is not the right response in that setting. I have trouble saying what the right response is, but what are we supposed to do? Allegedly, we believe in freedom of speech. Is there some speech, especially when tied to the threat of violence to the--this happens on college campuses way too often in the last two years. The implication is--it hasn't broken out into actual violence, very rarely. A few times, yes, tragically. But most of the time, it's just intimidation. It's just basically saying, 'Your life is in danger, Jew. Know it. Be aware of it.' And I'm curious, first of all, what you think the West could respond and how they might respond, and then how Jews should respond to this. David Deutsch: The things you're describing are part of the fact that there is a pogrom underway--this time a worldwide pogrom. And, it includes strong manifestations, both in Britain and in America, which is sad because pogroms haven't occurred in those countries for hundreds of years. The Pattern has, but not pogroms. What do you do? So, first of all, note that what this is all about is legitimizing hurting Jews. That's what's going on when somebody tears down a poster and accidentally laughs and mocks the people who are hurt by this, in order to hurt them. That is what it's about. That's what tearing down the posters is about. It's not about helping Palestinians or anything like that. And, also, to legitimize hurting the hostages. So, when you say--and I forget who you said this about, but whoever it was, they don't mention the hostages. Well, the reason they don't mention the hostages is because the hostages' plight is legitimate in their system of morality. So, it doesn't enter into the moral weighing-up. When you say, 'What should the Israelis have done?' What should the Israelis have done about what? Nothing bad was happening. Sorry. Nothing illegitimate was happening. It's very common for people to actually oppose the violence, but insist on its legitimacy. So, they would say, 'I'm not in [?favor?].' Far from them, themselves, participating, they would say, 'People shouldn't do this.' Even Abbas and Arafat would say on occasion, 'Terrorism--these actions are wrong because they set back the cause of the Palestinian people.' They don't say they are wrong because hurting people is wrong, because they're constrained to say that, in this case, hurting people is right. Russ Roberts: It's a tactical error. Yeah. David Deutsch: Yeah: It is the right thing, morally; but tactically, it happens to be that we shouldn't do it on this occasion. And, now, what should Jews do about it? That's another tactical issue. I think even now, when many Jews are considering emigrating from Britain to America or from Britain to Australia or from Britain to Israel, or from Israel to America, and so on, people have to do what they think is best in their own lives. But it's not going to affect the pogrom. The pogrom will die away if it--I don't want to prophesy, but what normally happens is that pogroms die away, but the Pattern does not. So, I keep looking for signs. And, at the beginning of the pogrom, I was tweeting every so often: 'The pogrom is still worsening. The pogrom is still worsening.' A couple of times recently, I've tweeted that the pogrom seems to have peaked. So, I'm hoping that this peak comes before a decline. The decline is usually slow. The onset is usually very rapid. And, this has been just like almost every other previous instance: the Crusaders you mentioned; the anti-Jewish, the French philosophes all simultaneously becoming antisemitic, as it was called later, after emancipation. This was all the similar thing. And, this time, it's also been a similar thing. And, I haven't noticed it getting worse in the last few months. |
| 1:16:02 | Russ Roberts: Let me close with one more challenge and get your response. It's a fascinating thesis. There's much to recommend it as an outside observer. But, you know, there's a flip side to the Pattern, it seems to me, which is--I'm interested in lots of things, but every once in a while, I find myself pulled in to fighting the Pattern. Way too often. Part of me says, like I mentioned earlier, 'Just take X off your phone, off your computer. Stop. Lead your life. Love your wife. Love your children. Help your neighbor. This is a fool's game.' But, there are other times where I say, 'If I had said that in 1935 in Germany, I would have been culpable.' And, this is a moment where I think people have to stand up. I would just add--parenthetically, because I haven't said it in this conversation--that many, many people, many of you listening, many, many people around the world have stood up for the Jews, have showed tremendous empathy for Israel. You write me and say you're praying for me. You write me and say you hope I'm okay. You write me and say you're sorry this is happening. As 60% of our students are shuttling back and forth between Gaza, Lebanon, and trying to understand Plato, Homer, and Shakespeare here at Shalem College. So, it is a little more complicated than we're saying. But my point is, is that I don't want to be consumed by responding to the Pattern. I don't want to spend the rest of my, I hope, productive days foolishly getting worked up over something that is somewhat inevitable. And, in a way, there's a temptation to say, 'This has to play out,' like you're suggesting. But, the other response is a little scary, and I want to just touch on that and get your reaction. The other response is that, first of all, this is a different moment in history. We have a country, with one of the best armies in the world. We have a place to go. It's fraught with its own insecurities, but this is not the same as in the past. And someone said--I forget who it is, I apologize, we'll link to it: 'How do you feel about a tank with a Jewish star on it?' 'Well,' this person said, 'better a tank than on my sleeve where I'm marched into a death camp.' So, the Pattern, in today's world--unlike in the past where the Jews bowed their heads and took the blows from the truncheons and the guns and the violence of the mob--now the Jews have a way to fight back. And, what has happened in the last 6 to 12 months has been quite extraordinary in military history and what Israel has done to its local nations that are its enemies--Iran, Hezbollah, Houthis, and so on, as well as Hamas. But, out in the rest of the world, in the diaspora, I see everything ratcheting up. And that crowd in front of the Park East Synagogue, while there were these people yelling these slogans, there were Jews on the other side yelling back, and you could understand that they probably were pretty enraged. And, I've seen my own reaction emotionally to certain things like people tearing down posters. If we're not careful, we're headed toward some kind of crazy war between Jews and Jew haters outside of Israel. Are you worried about that? Isn't it worrisome to believe in a syndrome that is inevitable, that drives people crazy, and the only thing I could do, therefore, is fight back: they're my enemy? David Deutsch: Well, the short answer is no, I'm not afraid of that. Although, as I said, I can't prophesy. It's always a possibility because things are going to happen that have never happened before and so, you know, anything could happen. But, one of the things that has never happened before, to my knowledge, is that there's an enormous upsurge of anti-Pattern feeling among non-Jews, more than ever before. I was just in a conversation on X the other day about the 1930s. And, I pointed out that in the 1930s, in Britain, in the lead-up to the White Paper and the betrayal of the Balfour Declaration and the siding with imprisoning the Jews in Europe, and the just common antisemitism, as you could call it, of the upper class in Britain--Chamberlain and co.--there were people like Churchill. And, there's this chap, Wedgwood, who I hadn't heard of before, but he was a descendant of Josiah Wedgwood, the potter, who [inaudible 01:20:47]-- Russ Roberts: Wedgwood has a street here in Jerusalem. It's a mile from here. Russ Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. So, it's 'Vedgvood' here. David Deutsch: Right. Vedgwood, Wedgwood. Okay. Yeah. Well, he was remarkable. And there were a handful of remarkable people, both Labour and Conservative, mostly Labour. But Wedgwood was a Liberal. But, there was nobody, not one person prominent in Britain, who was vitriolic in support of the Jews, not one. There were people who were critical of the government. There were people who were saying we should do more. There were people who were saying, 'It's shameful we don't do more'--and a handful of people. But, there was nobody who did things like, say, Douglas Murray is doing now. Not one. Whereas now--well, it depends how prominent you mean--but there are several very prominent ones and dozens and dozens of slightly less prominent supporters of the Jews, who are not giving up. So, it's not a matter of the mob outside and the Jews inside fighting back. By the way, that did happen occasionally. Not that it did them any good, but that did happen. But, non-Jews seeing what is at stake--and by the way, even Christopher Hitchens, who was anti-Zionist and anti-Israel, realized what antisemitism is, that it's a danger to civilization. Russ Roberts: There's an incredible clip of him expounding on that, that I just saw yesterday. We'll try to find it and post it. David Deutsch: Yeah. I retweeted it again recently. So, yeah. I think during his life, he understood more and more and more, and it's a pity he died when he did, because I would have liked to speak to him and tell him about the Pattern. Because he was trying to, like everybody, force the phenomenon into a predefined slot--in his case of imperialism and racism and protecting minorities, and that kind of thing. Whereas it's got nothing to do with any of those. Those are all excuses. But, anyway, there are living prominent people. And, I, again, mustn't prophesy, but I can't imagine this pogrom getting much worse without making the opposition to it more virulent as well. |
| 1:24:32 | Russ Roberts: Yeah. All I was saying is, and I want to make this clear for anybody who misunderstood what I said before: I don't want to become like my enemy. I do not want to have an obsession. But if my survival is at stake and my children's survival is at stake, it's hard to be calm about it. I don't want to lower myself. I don't want to degrade and corrode my soul in the same way that I think some of my enemies have turned out, but I also don't want to be naive and ignore what is, I think, a real danger for the first time in my lifetime. But, I love your point. We do have allies and not just military allies--we do have that as well. But we have intellectual allies who are on our side. So, that's some comfort. Russ Roberts: My guest today has been David Deutsch. David, thanks for being part of EconTalk. David Deutsch: Thanks for inviting me. |
A world-class physicist makes a shocking claim: across 2,500 years and every kind of society, there has been a recurring moral exception carved out just for Jews--the idea that hurting Jews is, in some sense, legitimate. Most of the time, this doesn't erupt into pogroms. Instead, it lives as a background permission: a readiness to excuse, minimize, or rationalize hurting Jews when it does occur. Listen as Russ Roberts talks with David Deutsch of Oxford University about what Deutsch calls "the Pattern": a persistent, global impulse not primarily to attack Jews, but to justify attacks on Jews--socially, politically, or physically. The stated reasons shift with the era--deicide, moneylending, "cosmopolitan elites," Zionism--but the underlying permission structure remains disturbingly constant. Unsettling, challenging, and clarifying, this conversation may change how you understand antisemitism--and the moral fault lines of our civilization.
READER COMMENTS
Thomas Leonard Knapp
Dec 22 2025 at 7:05am
I wouldn’t call the supposed moral exception “recurring” — over time, minority groups, especially those in diaspora situations, ALWAYS get attacked. It’s a continuing, not recurring, pattern, and it’s not unique to Jews.
What IS unique to Jews is that the ethno-supremacist movement which uses them as human shields against criticism, while pretending to represent them — Zionism — has enjoyed far more success than its recent moral/ideological equivalents like the Ku Klux Klan or Nation of Islam.
Russ Roberts
Dec 22 2025 at 7:55am
Would you like to share your definition of Zionism? It is evidently very different from mine.
Mike S
Dec 24 2025 at 9:01am
Ethno-supremacism = refusal to be marched into gas chambers.
Bob Niederman
Dec 22 2025 at 8:42am
Dear Russ, I don’t get what was special about saying that Jew Hatred is a “pattern”. Whatever else could it be? What is novel about this idea? How does calling antisemitism a “pattern” help us deal with it?
Was the point that it’s not racism, not jealousy, not Jew hatred? My theory is that Jews, above all other peoples, have a unique story they tell about themselves. This story is so powerful and so unique and so ingrained that it is impervious to the stories other cultures tell about themselves. This irritates all people because they want conformity to their culture. Jews do conform. But they don’t give up their identity. This is special. Moslems don’t conform and therefore create a crisis in the West which believes in freedom of religious expression. Since Jews conform they are welcome. But since they are different, they create grit in the system. They stand outside. They have a way of operating that majority culture has difficulty understanding. And they are prominent and powerful. This causes consternation. If you add Moslems who hate Jews to the mix, and you add a war where Jews are relentlessly pounding their enemy with no articulated vision of a positive future, you have a recipe for disaster.
These may be some components for the current eruption of the pattern. I think we should close down emigration from Moslem countries, create a positive vision for the future of Gaza that includes Jews and Moslems, and build out local Jewish defense forces that protect synagogues and Jewish people on the street. Jews should not feel helpless in America!
Bob Niederman
Ryan Proctor
Dec 22 2025 at 12:58pm
The novel point is that it’s a moral tendency that has deeper roots than the typical explanations of envy, scapegoating, racism etc. The pattern is enacted first and then followed by post-hoc justification of many kinds including the ones listed above. Deustch is also careful in pointing out that it’s a tendency to legitimize (not commit) hurting (not killing) the jews for being jews (not for any other post-hoc reasoning).
Gregory Gingeleskie
Dec 22 2025 at 7:07pm
Russ,
Thank you for a thoughtful and affecting discussion. The scale of the Jew hatred we are witnessing globally is both heartbreaking and morally indefensible. I was especially struck by the emotion in your introduction; it conveyed the seriousness of this moment in a way that analysis alone cannot.
One clarification stood out to me, even if it sits somewhat adjacent to the main argument. It is historically accurate to say that Roman authority carried out Jesus’s execution and that crucifixion was a Roman punishment. But it is historically incomplete to suggest that Jewish leadership played no causal role. The New Testament depicts some Jewish authorities pressing for Jesus’s arrest and handing him over to Roman power, along with a local crowd, certainly Jewish, though not representative of Jews as a whole, being mobilized or acquiescing. None of this justifies collective guilt across generations, nor does it excuse antisemitism. Acknowledging limited responsibility is not the same as assigning collective guilt, and pretending otherwise muddies the history.
More to the point, there is a deep irony worth noting. In the United States, in my observation, Jews have historically been among the most fully assimilated groups in civic terms, embracing law, education, merit, pluralism, and universal rights; the very norms that once limited antisemitism here. Today, antisemitic energy is increasingly concentrated among groups least aligned with those norms, whether imported from illiberal cultures or generated internally by ideologies that reject universal standards altogether. Jewish assimilation did not fail; it succeeded so thoroughly that it now exposes where those civic norms themselves are eroding. It seems to me a rise in Jew hatred is an early indicator of the collapse of universalism in a society and the fact that we are now seeing this across the entire west should be cause for significant concern for all.
Nick Ronalds
Dec 22 2025 at 10:44pm
The surge in anti-semitism since the October 7 massacre is both shocking and mystifying. Deutsch and Roberts noted the swamp of falsehoods about Israel circulating on X, but the deeper failure has come from institutions that are supposed to know better: major news organizations and elite universities. The New York Times, Reuters, and the AP repeatedly framed Hamas claims as fact or near-fact. And at Harvard, 34 student groups issued statements on October 7 itself that denounced not Hamas but Israel—a pattern that appeared again at Columbia within days. Jewish students at both campuses were harassed and intimidated while administrators mostly stood by.
This post October 7 eruption has modern antecedents. A double standard toward Israel has been evident for decades. The United Nations has adopted far more resolutions condemning Israel than the rest of the world’s nations combined. Believe if you like that Israel deserves criticism, but it strains credibility to argue that its sins outweigh those of China, the Soviet Union, Syria, Sudan, Venezuela, Uganda, or Cuba—regimes responsible for mass starvation, political terror, ethnic cleansing, and other crimes on a scale that dwarfs by orders of magnitude anything Israel has done.
I find Deutsch’s historical examples less convincing. Anti-Jewish violence before the Enlightenment was real and horrific, but the entire world was vastly more violent. The Romans crushed rebellions everywhere. The Crusaders slaughtered Muslims, Eastern Christians, and Jews alike. The Albigensian Crusade wiped out entire populations of Cathar “heretics.” The European wars of religion killed millions. In that world, brutality was general and indiscriminate; Jews were often singled out, but they were also victims within a broader culture of coercion and massacre.
What makes the modern wave so disturbing is that it appears in societies, including our own, that claim to be educated, secular, tolerant, and committed to equal treatment. Yet hatred of Jews now spreads through universities, media outlets, and street protests with shocking speed. To echo Russ, criticism of Israel is fine. But the fabrications and double standards give the game away. It’s anti-semitism masquerading as criticism.
So the real question is the one Deutsch raises but cannot answer: where is this coming from? Why is anti-semitism acceptable to people who claim to reject bigotry in all other forms? It’s a disturbing puzzle, and not an idle one. The mass murders at Bondi Beach in Australia and the murders at Brown suggest that this problem is escalating ominously.
Avram Levitter
Dec 23 2025 at 7:21am
I think the point about the pre-Enlightenment isn’t “things were more violent then and Jews, like other minorities, faced violence”, it’s that even in that era, the way the violence towards Jews was framed was part of “the Pattern”. Plenty of people then believed “convert or face penalties (including death)”, and plenty of people then also fundamentally believed “conversion should happen through peaceful means and without coercion”. What was different about anti-Judaism was that the former group, for whom punishing an infidel should have been plenty justification, still went out of their way to give an extra explanation as to why Jews deserved it. And the latter group carved out an exception for Jews, because they still wanted to believe they were distinct from the “convert or else” group.
Nick Ronalds
Dec 23 2025 at 8:15am
Perhaps. And I do think Deutsch’s “pattern” is useful in pointing out the weirdly adaptable justifications for hurting jews. But did the Romans and Babylonians come up with such special justifications? I wonder.
Tom
Dec 23 2025 at 4:48pm
Nick: In the Old Testament, Esther 3, the Persian king Xerxes had a viceroy who wanted to destroy the Jews who had been conquered and exiled into Babylon by a previous Babylonian (Nebuchadnezzar II) named Haman. Haman schemed to have Xerxes destroy the Jews due to a personal slight by an Israelite. Haman (Esther 3:8) said to the king: “…their laws are different from those of all other people and they do not observe the king’s laws so it is not in the king’s interest to let them remain.” Haman asked Xerxes that the Jews be destroyed and that he would pay ten thousand talents of silver to those who carried out the destruction. The king agreed and said Haman could do as he pleased.
It’s just one example of many persecution crises in the OT but thought it might answer part of your question. Clearly Haman had a personal issue (about which much is speculated) but he felt (following Deutsch’s “pattern”) he could justify extermination of the Jews for reasons already legitimated in the dominant culture. It doesn’t end with persecution (Haman’s scheme is upended by Esther) but it was a near-run thing.
Nick Ronalds
Dec 24 2025 at 7:31am
Thanks Tom, a fascinating story.
David Curtin
Dec 24 2025 at 5:11pm
The Romans were pretty tolerant of the various different religions which they encountered as their empire grew (a major exception of course was the cult of Ba’al in Carthage, because it involved child sacrifice, which was too barbaric even for the Romans). Their attitude toward the conquered was, “You can keep worshiping your gods, that’s fine. But we’re going to build a temple to Jupiter over here.” Their problem with the Jews (and later the Christians) was that they considered *their* god to be the *only* god, and all other gods were false. Failure to recognize the Roman gods, particularly as the deceased emperors were proclaimed gods by the Senate, was seen as not only insulting but seditious, or at the very least unpatriotic. The Romans were pretty pious and superstitious, and did not want their gods disrespected.
Dr G
Dec 23 2025 at 10:54am
Three points –
(1) I want to ask David: what’s the control group? David (correctly) says that there is a long and tragic history of violence and persecution against Jews. A first-order explanation for this is something broadly human: our tendency to form in-groups and out-groups, and to gain status within our in-group by harming or justifying harm to the out-group. That’s deeply human, and clearly tragic. But David further claims there is something unique and specific about violence toward Jews. I heard many tragic examples, but I’m not sure what the evidence is that this pattern is categorically different. If the claim is essentially quantitative, that there’s simply more of it in the case of Jews, then we need comparisons.
The sexual exploitation and violence against women has existed across virtually all cultures and dates back to the first people. Entire cultures in the Americas were wiped out. People were enslaved and brutalized on the basis of skin color. Religious and ethnic wars were waged across the globe for centuries. Maybe those cases are excluded from this analysis because they’re gender-based, or outside the relevant geography or time period, or because the groups involved are too large? It’s not clear to me.
But if you look through the lens David set (religions in Europe and the Middle East a few thousand years ago), what is genuinely remarkable is that they are all gone – Zoroastrianism, Mesopotamian polytheism, traditional Egyptian religions, Greek and Roman polytheism, Celtic and Germanic religions. Gone. Some disappeared through violence or legal suppression or assimilation. The Jewish people, by contrast, survived, and often thrived, as a minority over an extraordinarily long span of history. That endurance itself demands explanation.
(2) Russ spent a fair amount of time expressing surprise that people say cruel lies on X and don’t apologize. My initial reaction was that this is like going to a grocery store and being shocked they sell food. Russ offered caveats: the people he follows are smart, serious, respectable thinkers… but then cited Tucker Carlson. A big part of Tucker’s job is to attract attention by saying inflammatory things, usually about minorities. If you thought he was a serious, fair-minded intellectual until he happened to target your group rather than someone else’s, that may reflect a cognitive bias rather than a sudden change in his behavior.
(3) Toward the end, Russ described a protester shouting horrible things at Jewish people and spoke about feeling a moral obligation to confront that hatred, to refuse silence and complicity. What struck me is that the protester would likely describe her own actions in almost identical moral terms. She (likely) believes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, and that failing to protest as aggressively as possible would make her morally complicit in genocide. You obviously disagree with her beliefs. My point isn’t that the beliefs are equally valid, but that both sides see themselves as resisting an existential evil. That dynamic makes rational conversation extremely difficult.
Damian Park
Dec 28 2025 at 8:59pm
A great comment! My thoughts were similar as well.
David Henderson
Dec 29 2025 at 4:20pm
“What is the control group?” is a great question.
Great interview also, but this is the unexplored question.
Ben Riechers
Dec 23 2025 at 1:53pm
One truth that was highlighted in your interview is that people look to leaders and influencers to justify / rationalize their actions: good or bad. Unfortunately, we are easily swayed to follow our worst instincts, setting aside the constraints that come from the values we say we hold. And living up to the virtues we admire are too often important to us only when virtuous acts generate acclamation from our community. Is my observation cynical, skeptical, or realistic? If true, we all have a responsibility to challenge people who may or may not realize that their words are providing justification for others to act destructively.
I believe all humans are emotional beings with aspirations to be rational, or to at least be respected as rational. Wisdom, at least relative to self-knowledge, seems to come from an acknowledgement that reflects how what we said, did, or failed to do was not rational, logical, or reasonable relative to the values we say we believe.
It isn’t a problem of understanding logical reasoning. The scientific method that pairs inductive and deductive reasoning is something every parent of a 5-year-old has experienced. The parents say that they believe (and probably do believe) in treating everyone fairly, followed by the 5-year-old pointing out that her older brother got five cookies while she received only three.
Somehow this interview reminded me of one of your baseball podcasts. I didn’t find the exact one I was looking for, but I remember it closed with something along the lines of you asking about the percentage of relevant information we know in a sport flooded with metrics and a relatively controlled dataset. The answer was 1% or a very tiny percentage.
I think your episodes on baseball are relevant to what is going on here. People aren’t making rational choices. It’s nearly impossible. People who are following the crowd, joining in protests, or participating in riots have a way of finding righteousness in those actions. Righteousness is all the rationalizing people need to bring out their worst instincts.
Atheists sometimes promote the idea that we would have reasoned our way to the enlightenment without the morals embodied in the Ten Commandments handed down to us by some “magic man in the sky.” The world has spoken and continues to say that such a premise is irrational.
Nick Ronalds
Dec 23 2025 at 2:19pm
Upon further thought, I think David Deutsch is too hasty in dismissing envy and resentment as a driver of antisemitism. He gave as a counter-example that many of the pogroms were against Jews who were not particularly prosperous compared to the elites in their societies. But Deutsch also says that pogroms are bottom-up phenomena. If that’s true, then the relevant comparison isn’t between Jews and elites but between Jews and their neighbors. Pogroms were then initiated by (plausibly) envious neighbors, not the elites, even if the elites stood by.
Thomas Sowell wrote an article, “Are jews generic?”, arguing that you find similar animus against overseas Chinese, Lebanese, Igbos, Marwaris and immigrant groups in Africa and elsewhere. These are groups that fill or filled economic intermediary roles and hence often attracted resentment because of perceived economic success and lack of “productive” contribution in others’ eyes. This fits with tribal intuitions . We evolved in small bands in which inequality was perceived as suspect or evidence of hoarding and duplicity. (That tribal intuition also helps explain the widespread suspicion of capitalism and successful businessmen, whether or not they’re minorities.)
I admit Sowell’s thesis doesn’t explain why the state of Israel is so widely reviled by some even in advanced democracies. It’s a small country fighting for its survival. It’s a thriving, pluralistic (and multi-ethnic) democracy with a dynamic, innovative economy. By any fair criteria it is admirable. So no, envy and economic resentment don’t seem to be the full explanation.
Jared Szymanski
Dec 23 2025 at 3:41pm
Is anti-semitism a thing outside the West? In South Asian, East Asian or African countries where Jews are a much smaller minority are they persecuted the same as in the West? I wonder if the human tendency for tribalism – Us vs Them mindset – needs a minority group large enough to be a pervasive presence in order to function. Jews fit that niche in Western societies, but are they unique or are there minority groups in other parts of the world that are similarly persecuted?
Jews have been successful at maintaining an identity across millenia, and maybe there is some survivorship bias because other persecuted minorities have ceased to exist and we therefore don’t consider them when we think about hatred directed toward minority groups.
As a Latter Day Saint (aka Mormon), my faith tradition has some experience being a persecuted minority, although not nearly to the breadth or depth of Judaism. Like Russ, I wonder what is the appropriate response to such persecution. It doesn’t seem to go away if we ignore it, but if we fight, it gets worse.
Jeremy Brown
Dec 26 2025 at 9:41am
In Asia, many Muslim countries have a strict anti Israel anti Jew policy .. Maldives, Malaysia and Pakistan .. Indonesia, the largest Muslim country is thawing in it’s relationship
JSH
Dec 23 2025 at 4:30pm
But why? Why is the phenomenon of anti-semitism so widespread across regions and time? Driven by jealousy? Because wherever jewish ppl land they do well?
Mike S
Dec 24 2025 at 9:08am
I share some of the concerns expressed about the empirical basis for asssrting the Pattern’s uniqueness. A larger fear is that the exceptionalism is self-reinforcing — I fully expect a post soon to the effect that “there’s no need to explain why it’s ok to harm Jews, the fact that they’re the only group to be so universally despised over millennia proves they deserve it.”
David Curtin
Dec 24 2025 at 5:01pm
Longtime fan, first-time commentor. This was an especially excellent episode. I don’t know if it truly brought me any closer to understanding something so perplexing as the world’s oldest and most abiding form of hatred, but that’s the way it is with inexplicable, irrational things. Mostly I wanted to write to add my voice to those who have been telling you; I am sorry this is happening. I try to do my little bit to stand against it and confront it when I see it (only online, so far). May the Jewish nation survive and flourish despite this, as they have for so long.
Nick Ronalds
Dec 25 2025 at 4:06pm
Well said. This is an important topic because of its implications for human nature, in particular the human proclivity to harbor ill will and inflict harm on others. It has already been widely addressed (I see from a quick search) by people like Karl Jaspers (“The Question of German Guilt”), Theodor Adorno (“The Authoritarian Personality”), Zygmunt Bauman (“Modernity and the Holocaust”), not to mention George Orwell, Milgram, Primo Levi, and quite a few others, including the work of psychologist on dark triad (or tetrad) traits. And there’s Dawkins idea of memes and their propagation. Isn’t someone out there who knows these works well and can put it all together to shed light on “the Pattern”?
Za
Dec 24 2025 at 6:27pm
I was disappointed by the “exceptionalist” framing of the conversation. I grant that history isn’t experimental and there’s no guarantee it has a particular form.
That having been said, I felt like there was repetitive message in the conversation that “antisemitism” was on some base level simply “insane” and “inexplicable”.
If there’s not an explanation to seek, then from a Socratic (Agnes Callard style) perspective, is there a conversation to have?
If there’s a phenomena that’s difficult to explain, then ought’n’t one look for similar patterns with which to compare?
My intuition is that we ought to consider *identities* with similar properties.
It seems indisputable that anti-semitism is quite old. If we accept that, then we’re necessarily accepting an initially obvious corrolary that Judaism is quite old. But maybe there’s something less obvious going on there. Maybe something that’s remarkable about Jewish Identity is its AGE.. and maybe THAT fact has explanatory power.
Isn’t it there an arguable explanation that anti-semitism is NOT remarkable for a strong coherent identity of the age of Judaism?
If explanation is the intent of the conversation as Callard argues it should be, and Deutsch claims it is, then why not consider that explanation?
Doug Iliff
Dec 24 2025 at 10:42pm
“To the excellences of other peoples the egotism of a Roman is a blindfold, impenetrable as his breastplate. Oh, the ruthless robbers! Under their trampling the earth trembles like a floor beaten with flails. Along with the rest we are fallen— alas that I should say it to you, my son! They have our highest places, and the holiest, and the end no man can tell; but this I know— they may reduce Judea as an almond broken with hammers, and devour Jerusalem, which is the oil and sweetness thereof; yet the glory of the men of Israel will remain a light in the heavens overhead out of reach: for their history is the history of God, who wrote with their hands, spake with their tongues, and was himself in all the good they did, even the least; who dwelt with them, a Lawgiver on Sinai, a Guide in the wilderness, in war a Captain, in government a King; who once and again pushed back the curtains of the pavilion which is his resting-place, intolerably bright, and, as a man speaking to men, showed them the right, and the way to happiness, and how they should live, and made them promises binding the strength of his Almightiness with covenants sworn to everlastingly.“
— from Ben-Hur, by General Lew Wallace, published in 1880.
While subtitled A Tale of the Christ, it is a realistic, sympathetic, and rational portrayal of Jews under Roman domination. The problem is that there are a growing number of Romans among us; alas, some of them are Christians. When Charlton Heston, portraying Judah Ben-Hur in the classic 1959 film, said “And I felt his voice take the sword out of my hand,” he was feeling what all of us should feel. But some do not.
Nick Ronalds
Dec 26 2025 at 8:15am
This Dec. 22 article from Compact magazine is very apropos to this whole topic: https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-return-of-the-jewish-question/.
Winston
Dec 27 2025 at 11:56am
Although I enjoyed this episode it has a lot of problems. Deutsch states: “I’m interested in what’s true, and I try to pursue what’s true, rather than what I like to be true.” Makes sense considering this is the moral heart of his Popperian worldview: scientific, moral, and civilizational progress comes from error-correction. No explanation, however morally appealing, is exempt from scrutiny. No belief is protected simply because it feels righteous.
Which is why I find it curious that he argues Anti-Semitism is not grounded in rational causes but is a recurring civilizational pathology. Any attempt to explain hostility toward Jews in terms of economics, culture, religion, or power is treated as morally dangerous rationalization. The intent is noble. Anti-Semitism is real, destructive, and indefensible. But Popper would have rejected this move immediately.
A few points.
1) Deutsch collapses explanation into justification. To describe why some non-Jews historically feared or resented Jewish influence is not to endorse that fear. Yet, Deutsch treats any such explanation as illegitimate simply because it could be abused. That is not critical rationalism; it is moral pre-emption. Popper warned that shielding explanations from criticism is how bad ideas survive.
2) Deutsch’s “pattern” functions as a non-falsifiable theory. Anti-Semitism is explained regardless of time, place, or circumstance. Any counter-evidence is absorbed into the pattern; any alternative causal account is dismissed as rationalization. Under a Popperian framework, this is a fatal flaw. A theory that explains everything explains nothing. Deutsch would condemn this move instantly if it appeared within any other context. Economics, climate science, history. Yet he deploys it here?
3) Deutsch refuses to examine a central historical variable: Jewish moral universalism. Judaism, whether religious and secularized, has long asserted that moral law binds all people, that truth is obligatory, and that law stands above power. In modern form, this becomes human-rights universalism, persistent moral critique of societies, and normative pressure across cultures. To many non-Jews, especially those rooted in traditional or civilizational frameworks, this has felt like cultural or moral imperialism. That perception may be wrong, distorted, or exaggerated. But, hard to claim it’s irrational by definition.
This is the problem. Deutsch’s move is not merely theoretical. Contemporary anti-Semitism on both the right and the left is intellectually shallow. It’s driven by tribalism, conspiracy, and historical illiteracy or inaccuracy. It makes up facts. But Popper’s central warning still applies. Suppressing explanation does not eliminate error; it entrenches it. You don’t correct irrational Anti-Semitism by suppressing criticism of Jewish culture or Israel or by saying “Anti-Semite, Anti-Semite, Anti-Semite!” This is the same reason the term “racism” has lost all meaning. It’s an explanation for everything wrong in certain sub-cultures.
Would just have preferred it if Deutsch could be consistent when examining a topic that is critical to his “identity.” If Deutsch was truly interested in “what is true rather than what he would like to be true,” then his own Popperian framework demands a harder, less comfortable position. Anti-Semitism is morally indefensible, yet not epistemically inexplicable. Some perceptions of Jewish influence are wrong, distorted, or malicious, but they must be examined, criticized, and falsified rather than placed beyond inquiry. This current approach seems more like protectionism than critical examination.
Jon
Dec 29 2025 at 10:15am
The thing that makes Jew hatred persistent and special is that Jews have survived in many places for thousands of years. Few people will bother to hate a group that is just in a distant land.
If you want to do an Armenian genocide, you must go to to Armenia. If you want to attack Kurds, you need to go to Kurdistan. If you want to find Jews to hate, we have been in many places.
Roger McKinney
Dec 31 2025 at 12:58pm
Hatred of Jews began before Christ because they constantly rebelled against Rome and caused bloody wars. Read Josephus.
Europe despised commerce and considered it more immoral than prostitution. So the relegated commerce to Jews, who then became wealthy and inspired envy against them. Envy is still the main cause of antisemitism. The Muslim world treated Jews and Christians the same way Europe treated Jews. Both prospered in commerce and ignited the envy of Muslims who regularly murdered them and stole their property.
Hrvoje Serdarušić
Jan 2 2026 at 7:19pm
I’ve been a long-time EconTalk listener (for many years, and almost my only podcast), which is why I think an important theological point deserves clarification here — especially regarding Matthew 27:25, Isaiah 53, Augustine, and Nostra Aetate.
Matthew 27:25 (“His blood be on us and on our children”) is not a doctrine of collective Jewish guilt. Historically, it refers to a limited crowd, not “the Jewish people,” and rhetorically it uses covenantal language common in Second Temple Judaism. Read in isolation, it is easily misused; read within the biblical canon, it is not condemnatory.
Crucially, the New Testament itself presupposes Isaiah 53, where guilt is not assigned to a people but borne by one: “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6). The theological logic is substitution and redemption, not collective blame.
This is exactly how Augustine of Hippo understood the Passion. Far from promoting antisemitism, Augustine argued that Jews must not be killed or persecuted but preserved as witnesses to Scripture (City of God, XVIII, 46). His framework interprets the Cross as universal human sin transformed into salvation.
Finally, this line of interpretation is authoritatively reaffirmed in Nostra Aetate (1965), which explicitly rejects any notion of collective Jewish guilt — then or now.
For these reasons, attributing antisemitism to Augustine or to works drawing on this tradition (including Gibson’s Passion) reflects a theological misreading rather than the actual content of the tradition itself.
Independently of all this, I have done a deeper personal examination of conscience prompted by this episode, and I remain grateful — both for this discussion and for the many years of thoughtful conversations EconTalk has provided.
Victor Gilinsky
Jan 7 2026 at 7:00pm
Maybe the man is a world=class physicist, but his ideas on hatred of Jews are looney. The notion that vicious hatred of Jews came first and the idea that they killed the Christian God was a later rationalization is simply nuts.Antisemitism is a feature of European Christian society kept alive by the churches. It didn’t appear in other parts of the world. After Jews were released from their isolation and entered the professions and business a new kind of antisemitism of resentment appeared.The situation today that is described as antisemitism is almost entirely a response to Israel’s horrendous behavior to the non-citizen Arabs under its control. The fundamental problem is that the Jews have taken over someone else’s country and have treated most of them like dirt. Imagine someone comes to your house and says it’s their house and you can temporarily occupy the back rooms.The claim that Jews occupied the land 2000 years ago is ridiculous, Imagine applying that principle in other parts of the world. There is no solution without an end to the idea of Jewish supremacy, now incorporated in Israeli law. But that would just be the beginning. For no it seems impossible.
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