Editorial Change

After some negotiations, John Wear has agreed to help out with running Inconvenient History. Right, now, this seems to materialize in such a way that almost all contributions are written by him. This is not sustainable in the long run, as such a monoculture is not only dangerous. It will inevitably lead to an early burn-out syndrome for John, and will make Inconvenient History less interesting to our readers. Hence, again, anyone out there who wants to submit papers, please feel free to do so.

Apart from John’s many essays, this issue also includes Part One from Thomas Dalton’s latest book titled Eternal Strangers: Critical Views of Jews and Judaism through the Ages. It quotes and discusses many ancient texts dealing with “the Jewish question” (whatever that entails). While citing passages from historic texts on this issue is one thing, using it to conclude that the Jews are the enemy of mankind, and that actions ought to be contemplated to fight this enemy, is another thing altogether. On page 149 of his book, Dalton writes:

“There are at least seven phases of action that one could reasonably pursue, if one were willing to take the Jewish question seriously. These seven are: educate, identify, isolate, quota, penalize, tax, and evacuate.”

His suggestion of identification merely involves adding a “(J)” behind the printed or displayed name of any person of public relevance who is a Jew. That’s not quite as bad as giving them a Yellow Star or a subcutaneously implanted “Jew Chip,” but once a society gets on a bandwagon of tagging certain minorities, where will it end? Dalton’s last step – “nations may have to consider revoking citizenship and expelling their Jews” – is a clear violation of CODOH’s prime directive not to allow the expression of views on its platforms that advocate, promote, justify or condone the violation of anyone’s civil rights. Some of the other measures suggested by Dalton probably violate that directive, too, depending on how we define civil rights. Since Castle Hill is not CODOH, Castle Hill could and did publish Dalton’s book anyway. However, both entities are managed by me, so it’s a little bit of a bundled affair of conflict of interest.

Dalton’s books on the Jewish question sell better than his books on the Holocaust. This indicates that the demand for passionate answers to complex questions of the present is much higher than for dispassionate research into historical issue. I am not surprised. It moreover points to the fact that a lot of people like scapegoats. Again, looking at the history of mankind, I am not surprised.

After Dalton’s text had been set, edited, proofread and prepared for printing, I asked Dr. Dalton to suggest a text for the back cover of the book that we could also use to advertise it. In that text, he included a suggestion that a physical solution to the Jewish question might be necessary. With this, he may have hinted at his suggestion to expel the Jews from every country. But the way it was phrased, it could also be misunderstood to mean wholesale physical extermination.

Giving Dr. Dalton the benefit of the doubt, let’s assume this referred to expulsion. If, hypothetically speaking, every country turned hostile toward the Jews to the point where they expel them from everywhere, where would they be expelled to? What chances would an Israel have to survive in a sea of all of humanity being hostile? Would the Jews retreat to Mars?

I have accompanied Dr. Dalton over many years on his journey from a curious Holocaust Skeptic to a fervent anti-Judaic warrior of the pen. I tried to convince him that turning rhetorically against Jews in general is merely aggravating the problem he is trying to solve, but he disagreed, just like Hitler did.

The back-cover text of Eternal Strangers does not include the phrase in question. I deleted it as soon as I read it. Dalton never complained, and we never talked about it.