Hilaire Belloc

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (July 27, 1870 - July 16, 1953) was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. His style and personality led to the nickname, "Old Thunder".

Belloc and Accusations of anti-Semitism

Belloc had been charged with anti-Semitism, and the issue of his attitude to Jews is still raised by a few. For example, Norman Rose's book The Cliveden Set (2000) poses the question of whether Nancy Astor (see Cliveden set, for the context), a friend of Belloc's in the 1930s until they broke over religious matters, was influenced by him against Jews in general. Rose asserts that Belloc 'was moved by a deep vein of hysterical anti-Semitism'. What is the evidence for this? It is not disputed that he was repeatedly critical of the influence some Jewish people had on society and the world of finance. He is, however, consistently defended by some, as not an anti-Semite.

Related Topics:
Anti-Semitism - Jew - Norman Rose - Nancy Astor - Cliveden set - Finance

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There are a number of grounds on which Belloc has been deemed by some to be anti-Semitic and not concerned to conceal his views. His association with G. K. Chesterton and Cecil Chesterton is one, though inconclusive since they themselves were not anti-semitic per se; the somewhat unworldly G. K. Chesterton expressed views (for example in The New Jerusalem, 1920) about the separateness of Jews by culture and religion which must have been offensive to some (any given statement will always be offensive to someone), Cecil having died in 1918. Belloc's tendency to allude to Jews in conversation, in a seemingly obsessive fashion on occasion, is noted by A. N. Wilson's biography.

Related Topics:
G. K. Chesterton - Cecil Chesterton

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The journalism of Cecil Chesterton for Belloc's publication Eye-Witness at the time of the Marconi scandal is more substantive. One Jewish member of the government, Herbert Samuel, was accused and no evidence was ever shown of his involvement (as against that of Rufus Isaacs, who was cleared by Parliament but had a case to answer). Private Eye, the British satirical and investigative magazine that is in a sense a remote descendant, has similarly been in the past been called anti-Semitic, a charge more easily deflected by editorial policy in the absence of any equivalent of distributism, the economic theory proposed by Belloc and the Chestertons.

Related Topics:
Marconi scandal - Herbert Samuel - Rufus Isaacs - Private Eye - Distributism

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Belloc's own book The Jews (1922) sets out his views in his own words. It has been construed both as supporting the case that Belloc had no animus against Jews, and as a statement of the historical view that Jewish integration 'inevitably' causes friction. It could be argued that these are two parts of a consistent non-anti-semitic view, and that Hilaire Belloc was saying the same thing, at the time. Indeed, in his book, he does a fair job describing a cycle of Jewish Tragedy because of the suffering of the Jewish race. Far from anti-semitic, the work sympathetically documents the history of Jewish persecution and has even been cited positively by Jewish historians who acknowledge Belloc's accomplishment is identifying a cycle of persecution and coining the phrase 'The Tragic Cycle' of anti-semitism. Belloc wrote, 'It has been a series of cycles invariably following the same steps. The Jew comes to an alien society, at first in small numbers. He thrives. His presence is not resented. He is rather treated as a friend. Whether from mere contrast in type ? what I have called "friction" ? or from some apparent divergence between his objects and those of his hosts, or through his increasing numbers, he creates (or discovers) a growing animosity. He resents it. He opposes his hosts. They call themselves masters in their own house. The Jew resists their claim. It comes to violence.

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It is always the same miserable sequence. First a welcome; then a growing, half-conscious ill-ease; next a culmination in acute ill-ease; lastly catastrophe and disaster; insult, persecution, even massacre, the exiles flying from the place of persecution into a new district where the Jew is hardly known, where the problem has never existed or has been forgotten. He meets again with the largest hospitality. There follows here also, after a period of amicable interfusion, a growing, half-conscious ill-ease, which next becomes acute and leads to new explosions, and so on, in a fatal round.' Hilaire Belloc, The Jews, Butler and Tanner, London, 1937, pp. 11-12.

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Belloc also wrote, 'The various nations of Europe have every one of them, in the course of their long histories, passed through successive phases towards the Jew which I have called the tragic cycle. Each has in turn welcomed, tolerated, persecuted, attempted to exile ? often actually exiled ? welcomed again, and so forth. The two chief examples of extremes in action, are, as I have also pointed out in an earlier part of this book, Spain and England. Spaniards, and in particular the Spaniards of the Kingdom of Castile, went through every phase of this cycle in its fullest form. England passed through even greater extremes, for England was the only country which absolutely got rid of the Jews for hundreds of years, and England is the only country which has, even for a brief period, entered into something like an alliance with them.' Hilaire Belloc, The Jews, Butler and Tanner, London, 1937, p. 215.

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Aside from the conjecture based on a patchwork of statements here and there, the anti-Semite argument does not work anymore and the issue now seems settled. These accusations come from critics not so much appalled by Belloc?s occasional injurious statements, but by either their secret loathing for Belloc?s clarity in elucidating historical truths, the diversity and scope of his knowledge, simple ignorance of his works, hearsay, jealousy, guilt by association (see Chesterton comment supra) or, of course, that general anti-Catholic sentiment which secularity continuously revels in. Contrary to the standard anti-Semite label, the biographer Michael Coren wrote:

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"Belloc?s polemics did periodically drift into the realms of bigotry, but he was invariably a tenacious opponent of philosophical anti-Semitism, ostracized friends who made attacks upon individual Jews, and was an inexorable enemy of fascism and all its works, speaking out against German anti-Semitism before the National Socialists came to power." Coren, op. cit., p. 212.

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