Finanskrise og jødehat

Boston Review har en artikkel om det seiglivede jødehatet som selv i dag blomstrer opp når banker og finans er inne i blidet.

Merk at det er flere demokrater som skylder på jødene, litt overraskende i og med at et overveldende flertall av jøder stemmer på demokratene og at alle 15 jødiske medlemmer av senatet er demokrater*. Det kan jo være at republikanerene i større grad vil skylde på myndighetene og derfor ikke har tid til å tenke spesielt på jødene.

We carried out a simple but powerful experiment. Participants in a national survey were randomly assigned to one of three groups. All three groups were prompted with a one-paragraph news report that briefly described the Madoff scandal. The text was the same for all three groups, except for two small differences: the first group was told that Bernard Madoff is an “American investor” who contributed to “educational charities,” the second group was told that Madoff is a “Jewish-American investor” who contributed to “educational charities,” and the third group was told that Madoff is an “American investor” who contributed to “Jewish educational charities.” In other words, group one did not receive any information about Madoff’s Jewish ties; group two was told explicitly that Madoff is Jewish; and group three received implicit information about Madoff’s religious affiliation. In a follow-up question, participants were asked for their views about providing government tax breaks to big business in order to spur job creation.

The responses of the members of the three groups are revealing and disturbing: individuals explicitly told that Madoff is a Jewish-American were almost twice as likely to oppose the tax cuts to big business. Opposition to tax cuts for big business jumped from 10 percent among members of group one to over 17 percent among the members of group two, who were explicitly told about Madoff’s Jewish background. This difference is highly significant in statistical terms. The implicit information contained in Madoff’s charitable history also produced an aversion to big business, but to a lesser degree, with opposition to corporate tax breaks in this case increasing to 14 percent.

This result is most likely not a coincidence. First, when we examine the results of the experiment on Jewish voters, we find that respondents had the exact same policy preferences in all three groups. In other words, the information about Madoff being Jewish only had an effect among non-Jews. Furthermore, we examined how the experimental groups answered questions on a set of other proposals that did not deal with the business sector, but rather with federal support for state governments or with tax breaks for the middle class. On these other issues, no differences were observed in the way members of the different groups responded, suggesting that anti-Semitic sentiments may particularly affect views on wealthy institutions

Nyttig lesning som minner oss om hvor utrolig vanskelig det er å befri seg helt fra gamle fordommer og forestillinger som ligger og lurer og springer til liv igjen på atavistisk vis. 

*hvis man regner med både Lieberman og Sanders og forutsatt at Franken erstatter Coleman