Gad Saad: The psychological deficiencies behind Jew hatred
Rather than blaming the 'diabolical Jew' for everything, hateful people should look inward
A powerful psychological phenomenon that I first learned of during my first semester as a doctoral student at Cornell University was the self-serving bias. It is a pervasive manner by which most people ascribe causality to their successes and failures in life. Specifically, the great majority of individuals ascribe successes internally and failures externally.
For example, if you are a student who obtained high grades in your most recent semester, you will likely conclude: “Well of course I performed well. I studied hard and I am an intelligent and motivated person.” On the other hand, if you performed poorly, you would make the following attribution: “My professors were useless and unfair. They did not evaluate my knowledge and talents properly.”
In any case, the self-serving bias caters to two fundamental needs that people have: 1) to protect their fragile egos; 2) to understand the world using simple rules of causality.
The astute reader might be asking at this point, “What does the self-serving bias have to do with Jew-hatred?” Well, imagine if you could attribute all of your individual and collective failures to one external cause: the scheming, parasitic, diabolical Jew. In one easy swoop, both of the latter needs have been met. Are you struggling financially due to your fiscally irresponsible spending? Perhaps, but it is so much more satisfying to blame the Jews. Who controls the banks ergo the economy? The Jews! Are you a struggling actor yet to receive your breakout role? It is certainly not because you are a talentless hack. This would require that you attribute a failure internally. It is so much more psychologically satisfying to blame your failure externally. After all, who controls Hollywood? You got it, the Jews! Your wife is cheating on you with the hunky neighbour who works as a landscaper. Well, she probably got the idea to do so by consuming internet porn. Who controls the porn industry? The Jews!
That these deranged faux causal links are erroneous is immaterial. As long as the Jew-hater constructs a “plausible” narrative that places the Jew at the causal centre of the calamity, the job is done. The culprit has been “identified.” This hateful reflex of faux causality is so pervasive that I have coined a fun game in its honour titled, “Six Degrees of Jew.” The game proceeds as follows: For any given calamity (e.g., a frog just died in the Amazonian jungle), you have to find a way to blame the Jews in six or fewer “causal” steps. Try it. It’s fun!
Why though are the Jews so often blamed? Of course, the answer is complex and multifactorial, but a historical commonality is that Jews have always been a market-dominant minority, to use Yale Law Prof. Amy Chua’s term. In other words, they are often a disproportionately successful group within a wide range of cultural ecosystems, and yet they are always a minuscule minority in those societies. Success breeds envy. Covetousness and envy are such pervasive features of the architecture of the human mind that they are specifically referenced in the Ten Commandments and the seven deadly sins.
Cultures that honour accomplishments in education, art, literature, philosophy, science and medicine among many other human endeavors are going to yield highly successful individuals. Those who consider obtaining good grades as a form of white supremacy are less likely to yield successful individuals. Hence, rather than blaming one’s failures on the diabolical Jew, look inward. Liberate yourself from existential hate. Assume personal responsibility, work hard, do good, focus on enriching the world, and you will likely achieve success.
