Mentor's Response to Anderson, "A more wicked assertion to put into print

[Natalie Severn]

Quite right, Natalie, otherwise he would not have admitted that he was a racist:

'In saying that he was a Polish Jew I am merely stating a definitely ascertained fact. And my words are meant to specify race, not religion. For it would outrage all religious sentiment to talk of the religion of a loathsome creature whose utterly unmentionable vices reduced him to a lower level than that of the brute. '

Caz,
Methinks he doth protest too much----I wonder if Anderson himself had a problem down below?

[Robert]

Strictly speaking solitary vices are - er - solitary, but that's nitpicking.

[caz]

Just on a small factual point - as far as I know there is no evidence that Aaron Kozminski masturbated in public, only that he "practised self-abuse".

Good point, Chris. And thanks for the correction.

Of course, had the wretched man practised his utterly unmentionable vices utterly privately, as pretty much everyone else in the world aims to do, the knowledge of it would not have become public property.

We're talking about Aaron here, but no doubt AP will apply it equally to Anderson, concerning the vice of publicly abusing others for accidents of birth, like race, nationality, class or mental capacity, instead of keeping his views to himself.

Love,

Caz
X

[Sam Flynn]

If you refuse to acknowledge anything about what countless authors and experts say...Dan

Dan, perhaps you can direct Sam and myself to just one of these countless authors and their examples of institutionalized anti-Semitism in the LVP....

...and while you're at it, Dan, perhaps you can find some evidence that they were "as bad if not worse" than is alleged of their modern Metropolitan Police counterparts. That was, after all, the assertion, made by AP, to which I was responding. Speaking as one who lived near the Broadwater Farm estate in the mid-80s, I'll stand corrected, if rather surprised, if AP's suggestion turned out to be true.

[Howard Brown]

If you refuse to acknowledge anything about what countless authors and experts say...Dan

Dan, perhaps you can direct Sam and myself to just one of these countless authors and their examples of institutionalized anti-Semitism in the LVP....

Thanks !

How

[Cap'n Jack]

That's right, Martin, a thinking racist will always have a rational explanation for their views.
I experience this all the time, when people in my social circle discover that I am a half-breed, I see their noses crinkle in shock and horror at the thought of a half-baked wog at their dining table, but when they further discover that my grandfather was a wealthy prince, godson and bodyguard of Queen Victoria then they kiss me on both cheeks and urge me back to their table with utmost haste.

[fido]

An excellent and perceptiver posting by Stewart drawing attention to the adjective "low-class".
I thought everyone was aware that Anderson's remarks about Jews upset the Chief Rabbi so much that he communicated with him,and on learning Anderson's quite extraordinary beliefs about the Jewish race and religion, concluded that he was in no way antiSemitic, though theologically eccentric. The two men then became to some degree friends.

In a nutshell, Anderson believed, literally, that the Devil was the lord of this world, and as soon as a church became institutionalized (owning property and paying employees, giving iyself rules of governance) it fell under the Devil's sway. Everyone, he thought, could see that this was true of Roman Catholicism! But evangelical and anti-Catholic churches were equally under the Devil's sway and would sooner or later be visibly as corrupt as Rome. The Jews, however, represented a special problem. Nobody (Anderson thought) could imagine that they had successfully evaded the rule of the Devil. But there were all those promises made to them in the Old Testament - which fundamentlist Anderson believed to be literally true; and they didn't come with a proviso "You are my Chosen People... Until you are so corrupt or have so wickedly refused to accept my Messiah that I cast you off." The promises were made to Abraham and his seed for ever. And so somehow Christians had to respect the (practising) Jews as God's chosen people. (Obviously a non-practising Jewish masturbator like the Ripper had deliberately disinherited himself, though Anderson doesn't specifically say this is what he meant by sayying he referred only to the suspect's race and not his religion). Of couerse we may object to the Victorian class consciousness that made Anderson accept the friendship of the Chief Rabbi and probably have no objection to old established Sephardic aristocrats - (he had almost certainly suported or voted for Disraeli in his day) while despising poor immigrant Ashkenazim. Selective antiSemitism did indeed run riot through the whole of English society in some respects until Hitler successfuly nmade it unfashionable.
As for Major Smith's intervention - here my expertise is inadequate to confirm with certainty the suggestion that Anderson was perfectly correct to say that Polish and Russian Jewish immirants, with experience of police endorsed pogroms under the Czars, would never trust the police whom they basically hated and feared. 20 years later the Houndsditch anarchist robbers impressed and shook London criminal society by their casual willingness to shoot policemen and bring down the wrath of God nad the siege of Sidney street. The characters of Smith and Anderson - the one extremely worldly and debonair, the other Puritanical and judgmental, both vey competitive and insistent on theior own achievements, made some clashing between them almost inevitable. Smith was friendly with Lushington and the worldly vicar of St Botolph's. And Smith, of the two,is the one who can be shown to be consistently inaccurate and unjustifiably boastful (claiming, e.g., that no man living knew more about the ripper case than he).
The editor of the Jewish Chronicle? essentially he seems to me the sort of writer who would today equate antiZionism with antiSemitism. Brave antiZionist Jews who don't imagine that God gave a lot of travelling Mesopotamians everlasting title to take away Palestinians' land and dominate them for ever are still likely to be accused of self-hating antiSemitism.
And finally, I agree with those who are unhappy about the word institutionalized. I accept without question that the police then and now - and the whole of English society then - was riddled with racism. But that's not the same as having it institutionally built into the laws and constutution of the Police. I think it a great pity that recent Police Commissioners accepted th word. They should have accepted the blemish and strengthened the non-racist institutions and rules of govenance of the various forces and services.
All the best,
Martin F

[Dan Norder]

What I very much doubt is whether the police back then discriminated and maltreated the Jews, to an extent equal to or exceeding the alleged "institutionalised" racist behaviour of their counterparts today. I've seen absolutely no evidence that supports that assertion.

Then go read some history books for crying out loud. It gets tedious seeing you pronounce your ignorance as if it were somehow proof that you were right. If you refuse to acknowledge anything about what countless authors and experts say, that's your problem, not everyone else's. I know that it's popular here for so many people who know nothing about the basics to try to declare themselves right unless someone takes the time to explicitly proven wrong, but you've been around long enough that you should know that nonsense doesn't fly.

[Natalie Severn]

So, Caz, if I catch your drift right, he wasn't anti-semitic, or a racist, just a complete and utter bastard with no redeeming feature whatsoever?
I'll settle for that.

.....and I"ll stick with Mentor"s response to Anderson on this one.

[Cap'n Jack]

So, Caz, if I catch your drift right, he wasn't anti-semitic, or a racist, just a complete and utter bastard with no redeeming feature whatsoever?
I'll settle for that.

[Chris]

... a man (albeit without naming him) who was so ill that he ate from the gutter and masturbated in public ...

Just on a small factual point - as far as I know there is no evidence that Aaron Kozminski masturbated in public, only that he "practised self-abuse".

[Sam Flynn]

My question would be why Anderson thought it was remotely necessary, helpful or in the public interest to 'state' anything at all, whether it was his belief or even a simple matter of fact?

Well, he did have a book to sell, Caz, and he wouldn't have been the first or the last person to introduce a dash of corroborative detail, intending to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. Besides, these were somewhat melodramatic times, and "black-hearted villains", "fiends" and "raving maniacs" were part and parcel of the narrative vernacular.

[caz]

Hi All,

My question would be why Anderson thought it was remotely necessary, helpful or in the public interest to 'state' anything at all, whether it was his belief or even a simple matter of fact? It was surely the man's mental state alone that had supposedly made him this loathsome creature who indulged in utterly unmentionable vices that could extend to murdering and mutilating a series of unfortunates - not that he happened to be Jewish as opposed to Gentile, Johnny Foreigner not Johnny English, low class not high, or unemployed rather than a schoolmaster who went over the edge.

If Anderson's words could not reasonably be interpreted to suggest that such unbalanced creatures were only to be found among low class Polish Jews, then I'm not sure his greater crime wasn't prejudice against the mentally ill. If the man was supposedly caged in an asylum because he was too ill to be convicted and hanged, then all the stuff about him being a low class Polish Jew, whose family had tried - and obviously failed - to shield him from Gentile 'justice' because that's what people like that do, was just cruel and inflammatory for no other reason than to boast that the police had succeeded despite the obstacles put in their way.

Presumably the suspect's family would not have shielded him for long if they were terrified that he might knife one of them in the night. But they would have had plenty of reason to fear that if they turned him over to the police to deal with, the only kind of 'justice' he could expect would be a rope round his neck, no matter how feeble-minded he was found to be. That would have had little to do with race and everything to do with having no trust in the system not to convict an innocent man or impose an unfair punishment on a guilty one.

The police were certain that justice was or would be done when Evans, Bentley, Kiszco and Stagg were served up to them on a plate - all a bit on the 'simple' side and none of them actually responsible (whether in a legal or literal sense) for brutally murdering the victims involved. If Anderson's suspect was a Kiszco or a Stagg, why wouldn't his family have wanted to protect him, not believing him capable of the ripper murders?

It strikes me as a little bit ironic that in 2008 it's still considered fine to call people bonkers or nutjobs, and therefore Anderson only gets accused of racism, when the bigger sin may have been to publicly condemn a man (albeit without naming him) who was so ill that he ate from the gutter and masturbated in public - whether he was the ripper or not. It's no surprise if he wasn't picked up on this at the time, and he could not have known that very few serial killers would go on to be judged unfit to be tried.

Love,

Caz
X

[Cap'n Jack]

Quite right, Natalie, otherwise he would not have admitted that he was a racist:

'In saying that he was a Polish Jew I am merely stating a definitely ascertained fact. And my words are meant to specify race, not religion. For it would outrage all religious sentiment to talk of the religion of a loathsome creature whose utterly unmentionable vices reduced him to a lower level than that of the brute. '

[Sam Flynn]

We must always take into account that what we do here is receptive to a world audience, and that some us may well be promoting the most vile and untoward prejudice.

I trust you meant "inadvertently promoting", AP?