Setting Trotsky Free
Go home to your Jews and tell them that I am not a Jew and I care nothing for Jews and their fate. - Leon Trotsky, to Jewish delegation, 1921 There has never been so blunt a "non-Jewish Jew" than Trotsky. Yet inevitably, after communist, the first thing that comes to mind when people think of Trotsky is "Jew." If Trotsky didn't want to be considered a Jew, shouldn't we honour his wish? I raised the issue in a conversation with one of the more erudite anti-Semites trolling the Internet: Somehow every Jewish communist is representative of Judaism’s essence, every Jewish liberal is representative of a Jewish plot, but their Gentile equivalents get to be individuals with their own personal motivations. His reply: Either you are very poorly informed or being intellectually dishonest. Clearly, even those rabid anti-culture nihilists of the “Frankfurt School” were consciously attempting to advancing Jewish group interests. As was Jacob Schiff, capitalist and suppor...