The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

by Douglas Murray

For instance, who would have expected even a generation ago that it would be acceptable for a liberal magazine to pose the question, ‘Are Jews white?’ This wasn’t National Geographic a century ago, but The Atlantic magazine in 2016.40 The question arose because of the dispute over where Jews might come in the oppression hierarchy that is being assembled. Should Jews be regarded as being high up in the oppression stakes, or can they be seen as benefiting from some privileges of their own? Do they benefit from white privilege or not? Once such questions start to get asked is it surprising that some people will come up with ugly answers? At the University of Illinois in Urbana some leaflets turned up on campus in 2017 which offered their own answer. They presented a hierarchical pyramid, at the bottom of which were the ‘99 per cent’ who were oppressed by the alleged top 1 per cent. But the leaflets asked whether the top 1 per cent oppressing everyone else were ‘straight white men’ or ‘is the 1 per cent Jewish?’ The authors seemed to know the answer, arguing that Jews were the primary holders of ‘privilege’, concluding that ‘Ending white privilege starts with ending Jewish privilege.’