Johann Hari has a very interesting, often disturbing, interview with G Gordon Liddy (Link via Andrew Sullivan). I’m still reading and processing it. But one part interests me in part because I’ve been researching it for my you-know-what which rhymes with hook. Hari refers to Charles Lindbergh as a “notorious anti-Semite.” Now, perhaps Hari is being overly clever in his choice of words with his use of “notorious.” Lindbergh may have been notoriously anti-Semitic in the sense that it is and was widely believed he was anti-Semitic. But the facts are more complicated.

In his public speeches and comments during the run up to WWII, Lindbergh mentioned Jews in just three paragraphs in just one speech in Des Moines. In that speech he noted that Jewish and British Americans (and capitalists) were pushing for intervention. Lindbergh treated the Jewish position as entirely rational — even if it was against what he thought to be American interests. Lindbergh’s attitude toward Jews was, again, complex. But the basic point is that he saw them as an unmeltable ethnic group for the American melting pot. I think Lindbergh was wrong on several fronts, of course. And — as Lindbergh biographer A. Scott Berg has argued — I think one could call him an anti-Semite but only if you define anti-Semitism not as hatred of Jews but as the belief that Jews are “different” or “the other.”

Indeed, the historical evidence that Lindbergh was a typical, virulent, anti-Semite is wanting, to say the least. Lindbergh’s own daughter credibly corroborates this. I’ve only just started Phillip Roth’s “The Plot Against America,” but on this score I think Roth starts from an unfair, flimsy and even childish premise given the dangers of real anti-Semitism out there (as opposed to a half century ago in an alternate universe). But as I am very interested in getting to the bottom of this point for the book, if anyone cares to correct me (preferably with facts and evidence), I’d love to hear from you.