“Anti-Capitalism and Anti-Semitism” is an interesting talk because the extraordinarily ethnocentric Mr. Brook really lets his hair down in front of the Jewish audience. [1]

... Was this a barbers’ convention?  What’s his hair got to do with it?

Froggy, “let your hair down” is an idiomatic expression.  It means  to tell your innermost feelings and secrets, what you actually think.

When watching, the first thing you notice is the sign on the lectern (ellipsis in original):

Yaron Brook once told an interviewer:  “we live in an irrational world in which anti-semitism exists.  People hate the Jews.” [2]  In the lecture Mr. Brook takes it for granted that Christians hate Jews.  Indeed Christians invented the idea:  in the Q & A he says,  “I don’t think anti-semitism as a concept exists pre-Christianity. The Christians are the ultimate anti-semites.”

Mr. Brook begins his lecture by pointing out that Martin Luther, Dante (in his Inferno), William Shakespeare (in The Merchant of Venice), and Karl Marx all denounce banking – that is, loaning money and charging interest on the loan – and associate Jews with it.

Mr. Brook then argues as follows.  In the Middle Ages, due to different Christian and Jewish understanding of the word “brother” in the Old Testament, Christians think charging interest on loans is forbidden, forbidden for everyone, while Jews think they can charge interest when lending to Christians. Thus Christians see Jews as evil for charging interest, and resent them. When Jews become prosperous lending money to Christians, Christians resent them even more. Christians never got over it. Hence there is anti-semitism today.  QED.  Anyway that’s his argument.

Mr. Brook begins (grammar silently corrected):

OK, Christians hate Jews and one reason is that bankers make money charging interest, which is forbidden by the Old Testament. Apparently Christians think all Jews are bankers. Mr. Book would have a hard time explaining the Medici of 15th century Florence, Catholics he never mentions.

Mr. Brook then asks:

Mr. Brook continues.  Whenever there is an economic crisis people unthinkingly blame the bankers. He mentions the stock market crash of 2008 and the Great Depression of the 1930s.  He has a point in that ultimately the government was responsible and most people are ignorant of that fact. But are bankers so innocent? Though in some respects the government unjustly restricts their action, in others they voluntarily collude with government to their advantage. Mr. Brook doesn’t allow himself to know this. Even after he points out that:

By the way, you might want to think twice before criticizing Goldman-Sachs:

Sometimes Mr. Brook sounds like he’s living in another country, because the one he talks about sure isn’t America. In what follows is “we” you or anyone you know?

Despite Mr. Brook let’s forget about Jews for a moment. Consider bankers just as bankers. Who hates them in general? When a banker takes advantage of government guarantees and bailouts to enrich himself at the public’s expense, who wouldn’t hate him in particular? Can Yaron Brook tell the difference between all and some, between a class and a subclass, between constantly and sometime?

After a capsule history showing that capitalism rather than charity transformed the world for the better – and it’s true – he continues:

At this point Mr. Brook begins Objectivist boilerplate about self-interest versus self-sacrifice, but someone in the audience immediately interrupts with a question about the superiority of the Judaic ethics over the Christian. He replies:

Right after “Why are Jews so left wing?” and so forth, Mr. Brook launches into an extended laudation of Israel.  He begins by saying that before the Six Day War of 1967 Europeans loved Israel, afterwards they hated it. In what follows, when he says “we” he pretends to be speaking for Europeans:

Mr. Brook continues, again without pause (his misspoken “what” for “why” silently corrected):

Then follows a long stretch of Objectivist boilerplate about the virtue of self-interest and the vice of altruism.

... Objectivist boilerplate?

I don’t mean to disparage Objectivist ideas, Froggy, rather the mindless, formulaic way in which Objectivist phrases are strung together in an argument – a rationalistic argument, seemingly logical but based on false premises – that ultimately has nothing to do with Objectivism.

One would rather hear Objectivist theory from someone who really understands it and is sincere. Mr. Brook might sound good – well, not sound good, his repulsively muscular, loud, pitch-changing voice, by turns pleading and derisive and extrovertly self-righteous, prevents that – but the seeming import of his words at times is good. The trouble is that altogether the words promote a malicious agenda.

Speaking of Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice, here’s Antonio warning Bassanio how ...

Returning to Mr. Brook’s talk, he now begins to lecture us about the virtue of self-interest. Setting aside his purpose of whitewashing Goldman-Sachs and Israel it’s standard Objectivist fare.

He does stumble at one point when he says that he admires rich people for getting rich. As if we ought to admire scum like Michael Chertoff. It only undermines Objectivism to utter absurdities like rich people are good. There are, as Ayn Rand points out, the rich who would rule:

Toward the end of the Objectivist boilerplate, after discussing the value of reason and the mind, and a half-second passing nod to the Ancient Greeks, Mr. Brook revisits the idea of Jews and Israel as moral exemplars:

At one point Mr. Brook says that capitalism has been in decline over the last hundred years. That’s off by half a century because the Civil War was a major turning point towards statism, a hundred fifty years ago. (ARI thinks highly of that war, so one hundred may be the official line.) Then he says:

After more boilerplate Mr. Brook reaches the conclusion of his talk:

According to Mr. Brook Jewish culture considers self-interest a virtue. He insinuates that this self-interest, dating back thousands of years, is the same self-interest identified and illuminated by Ayn Rand, the self-interest that neither sacrifices you to your brother nor your brother to you. Mr. Brook takes advantage of the ambiguity in the word brother, meaning one thing in the ethics of Ayn Rand and something else again in the ethics of Jewish culture, which treats Jews and non-Jews differently, especially their interaction. [10]  Even restricting the discussion of ethics to the Jewish community by itself, sacrifice to “the tribe” is the primary virtue in that community. [7 again]

Mr. Brook spends half his talk passionately declaiming Objectivist boilerplate about the virtue of self-interest and reason. Combined with the other half, his talk ends up being one long paraphrase of  “People hate us Jews for being good.”

Always and everywhere.  In the face of that ridiculous proposition it’s worth pointing out that now and then some Jews aren’t so good, and not just particular individuals but whole groups. Mr. Brook omits the role of some of his Jewish bankers in creating the Federal Reserve. He omits all history of thuggish Jewish behavior, such as the “ecstasy” drug trade, Murder Incorporated, and the Soviet Union. Read about the Bolsheviks, Béla Kun, and Salomon Morel. (The Ukrainians, Hungarians, and Poles haven’t forgotten what Mr. Brook never allowed himself to know.)  Leon Trotsky commanded the Red Army, and for a year in the 1920s Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev shared the rule of Soviet Russia equally with Stalin. Genrikh Yagoda and Leonid Reichman ran the Soviet secret police (NKVD). Lazar Kaganovich led the Soviet enforced famine in the Ukraine. [11]

Speaking of bankers, Jacob Schiff (U.S.), Max Warburg (Germany), Olof Aschberg (Sweden) and other international Jewish bankers were among the leading financial backers of the Bolshevik Revolution. [11a]

Mr. Brook omits the role of American Jewish organizations in passing the so-called Civil Rights Act of 1964 which ended freedom of association, their role in releasing a flood of non-white immigrants into America starting in 1968, and in promoting censorship legislation (so far unsuccessfully).

Mr. Brook speaks of Jewish culture and praises it. You’re allowed to do that, it’s politically correct. But if you speak of Jewish culture and criticize, even when it deserves the criticism you immediately get “anti-semite” in your ears.

To repeat, in some periods of history people had good reason to hate a number of organized Jews because of what they were doing. But Jewish culture maintains that Jews have always been benevolent, good and hated only for being good. Mr. Brook should include self-deception as a large part of Jewish culture. It makes them good liars. [12]

... OH  MY  GOD !!!  Anti-semite!  Anti-semite!  Anti—

OK, Froggy, that’s enough. [13] 

The take-home impression of the lecture:  As a promoter of Objectivism Yaron Brook’s intelligence goes no further than being able to string Objectivist phrases into a rationalistic argument culminating in a foregone conclusion. His self-esteem is uncritical, unthinking self-esteem, like a robot playing pre-recorded messages.  Yaron Brook and the others at ARI, boasting of being selfish, give selfishness a bad name.

Mr. Brook has finished his talk and there’s now a question and answer period.  The first question is about Israel, the Palestinians and Europe. In answer Mr. Brook says that it is leftists who criticize Israel and that their motivation for doing so is evil.

Two comments:  A man’s motivation for making a statement doesn’t determine the truth of the statement. For example, Noam Chomsky might say the sky is blue because blue is his favorite color, still the sky is in fact blue. Second, many critics of Israel are old-fashioned conservatives – paleoconservatives – not leftists. Rather than caring about Palestinians particularly, they care about Americans and want their government to stop sacrificing them to Israel.

From the end of Mr. Brook’s reply:

The second question in the Q & A is about what to call Palestinians. In answering, Mr. Brook soon becomes enraged and shouts:  “That’s not the problem. The problem is they want to kill us. I don’t care what they call themselves.”   After calming down:

Besides these Q & A  and the ones quoted in our review of the talk proper, two others stand out.

In answer to a question Mr. Brook replies:  “I didn’t say [the Muslims] weren’t anti-semitic, I said the Christians were worse.”  After mentioning repeated persecutions of Jews in England and Germany:  “The more objective we are about what the history actually says, the easier it is to fight our enemy.”  That is, Christians. Given Mr. Brook’s support for Third World immigration (including Hispanics, most of whom are Catholic), “Christians” is a stand-in for the real enemy:  white Gentiles.  Destroy them politically and Jews will be safe – some Jewish leaders have made that creepy argument. [17]

In answer to another question  (the past tense reference to Mr. Peikoff is as uttered):

The effect of Yaron Brook’s crazy Bible study session will be to alienate everyone except similar chauvinistic Jews.  It won’t fool anyone else.

At the time of the talk Mr. Brook had been president of ARI for 14 years. His talk can serve as an object lesson on what a fraud that organization has become. In increasing degrees of focus the people at ARI are neoconservatives, [19]  cultural marxists, [20]  and Jewish activists.