Jonah Goldberg on Marx’s Jew-Hating Conspiracy Theory

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2019

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist.”

So wrote the intellectual father of Communism, Karl Marx, in his “On the Jewish Question.” Though descended from rabbis on both sides of his family, his father had converted to Lutheranism, and Marx absorbed the classic anti-Semitic tropes that slandered the Jews as wicked and usurious. In fact, argues Jonah Goldberg in the pages of Commentary, Marx “hated capitalism in no small part because he hated Jews.”

In this podcast, Tikvah’s Jonathan Silver sits down with Goldberg to discuss his April 2018 essay, “Karl Marx’s Jew-Hating Conspiracy Theory.” In a conversation that touches on everything from medieval history and political theory to economics and psychology, Goldberg makes the case that Marxism is less a vision of economics, and more a conspiracy theory in which a Jewish bourgeoisie exploits global labor to satisfy its own avarice. Karl Marx’s progressive vision of a world after capital is a secular utopia, and so, in this discussion, Goldberg will help us follow the Marxist logic from this utopian premise: if the Jews are the exploiting, moneyed interest in society, then antipathy against the Jews is redemptive for society. In that way, Marx’s ideas offer a template for anti-Semitism, a repackaging of mankind’s very oldest bigotry, that endures to this very day.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble as well as “Shining Through the Rain” by Big Score Audio.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Though descended from rabbis on both sides of his family, Carl Marx's father converted to Lutheranism,
0:14.5	and Marx himself absorbed the classic anti-Semitic tropes that slander the Jews as wicked and usurious.
0:22.9	My guest today is Jonah Goldberg of National Review, the American Enterprise Institute,
0:28.2	an author of Suicide of the West. And in the pages of commentary magazine last year,
0:33.2	Jonah argued that Marx hated capitalism in no small part because he hated the Jews.
0:39.4	Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver. The essay that structures our
0:44.9	conversation this week is Jonah Goldberg's April 2018 commentary essay, Carl Marx's Jew-Hating
0:52.1	conspiracy theory. Our conversation ranges from medieval history and political
0:57.1	theory to economics and psychology. You'll hear Jonah make the case that Marxism is less a vision
1:03.9	of economics and more a conspiracy theory in which a Jewish bourgeoisie exploits global labor
1:10.0	to satisfy its own avarice.
1:13.1	Karl Marx's progressive vision of a world after capital is a secular utopia,
1:18.0	and so in our conversation, Jonah will help us follow the Marxist logic from this utopian premise.
1:24.0	If the Jews are the exploiting, moneyed interest in society, then antipathy against the
1:30.1	Jews is redemptive for society. In that way, Marx's ideas offer a template for anti-Semitism
1:36.7	as a repackaging of mankind's very oldest bigotries, a template that endures to this very day.
1:43.5	If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe
1:45.7	on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or Spotify, and please leave us a five-star review. Those
1:51.6	reviews really help us reach more listeners and grow this community of ideas. We'd love to hear
1:57.0	your feedback on this or any other of our podcast episodes, and we welcome your email
2:01.6	at podcast at tikfafund.org. To learn more about our work at Tikva, you can visit our website,
2:08.0	tikfafund.org, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Here now is my conversation with Suicide
	...

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