The Golem Rises

I love the horror genre, as several articles I have written for this fine site can attest. I have loved it for as long as I can remember and have long sought to gain a strong appreciation of what the genre can offer. There are many things I enjoy about horror, but if I were to focus on just one aspect, it would be how the genre reflects the fears of a particular society. In this sense, horror is an inherently political genre.

If you want to see this play out, just look at the science-fiction/horror films of the 1950s. It is no mistake that the decade that first dealt with the threat of nuclear Armageddon produced so many films about monsters created by nuclear testing – good examples include, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Them!, or Tarantula. In the 1950s, and for the first time in its history, the United States was facing a possible conflict where its two oceans would not protect it from weapons that could level a city in seconds. And, those films served as a way for that society to address that new fear.

This is a phenomenon that is not unique to the United States. During the same time American cinema was going through its nuclear craze, so was Japanese cinema. Although, for obvious reasons, the Japanese took a far darker tone. The American films took the position that, although awesomely destructive, nuclear technology could be used for good. Conversely, the Japanese saw no way out of the nuclear age but carnage. Though working with basically the same subject matter, and often making their own versions of each other’s films, because of the differences between the American and Japanese cultures, especially in relation to nuclear weapons, two different themes arose.

One of the most fascinating examples of this theme can be observed with the Jewish folktale of the Golem of Prague. The story is set in 16^th century Bohemia, where, upon hearing rumors that the Jews of Prague will soon either be expelled or killed, chief rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel (an actual historical figure) creates a clay monster, the titular Golem, to protect the city’s Jews. Eventually, the rabbi loses control of his creation, and the Golem goes on a murderous rampage before finally being stopped. The story has been filmed several times, most famously in 1920 (The Golem). That version is a major classic of German expressionism, along with Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

What the Golem represents is a particular Jewish fear. In The Golem, we can see how Jews understand their own creations can (and almost always do) turn on them. As the pattern goes, the Jews create some force to defeat the antisemites, especially when they are White Christians, but due to their hubris, they believe they have far more control than they actually do. That control they think they have is just temporary and when they lose control of it, it turns on them. The story is Jewish culture attempting to understand these fears, a fear they understand even as they keep doing it.

Understanding the Golem is key for the Dissident Right to have a realistic and level-headed understanding of the Jews. For one, it is important to remember that the major blame for the creation of the Golem is not every last Jew on earth, but rather Jewish leadership, be that they call themselves the Sanhedrin or the ADL. More importantly, it does provide us a framework to understand how something can be both a Jewish creation and an eventual threat to the Jews. Communism is a great example. The Dissident Right considers communism as intrinsically Jewish, while normies retort back that the Soviet Union killed Jews. However, using the story of the Golem as a framework, the Dissident Right can offer a better explanation: the Jews lost control of their own creation. Seeing Jewish wealth, the communists decided that the Jews were capitalist pigs who needed to be swept away in the Revolution.

This plays out in the contemporary United States, too. Seeking to break the power of White Christian America, Jewish leader pushed open borders, mass immigration, and minority resentment. As it turned out, those new immigrants, especially from the Islamic word, have far fewer positive feelings toward the Jews than Southern Evangelicals. Additionally, many blacks decided that they were the real Jews and those people calling themselves Jews are imposters. To further compound this problem, blacks cannot differentiate between Jews and White people, whom they’ve been instructed to hate (mostly by Jewish institutions). Now, the Jews are beginning to see the fruit of their own policies. The Democratic Party is nearing a civil war over support for Israel, between its older and Whiter establishment and its younger and browner base. The division is not as stark with the GOP, but with the turn of younger Christians away from Zionism, the demographic trends are set for the GOP to no longer be able to count on voters who think supporting a state only slightly older than one of my aunts is a long-standing point of Christian dogma.

Horror is important because it showcases the fears of a society. 1950s America produced its nuclear films because it was the era of “duck and cover.” Every culture on earth does this, and Jews are no exception. They understand, however subconsciously, that their own creations, or at least the creations of their leadership, eventually turn on them. Much as the 1950s America created a film like Them! to understand the new horrors they faced; Jews created the story of the Golem to understand their fears of a monstrous creation that eventually turns on them. Understanding that narrative is key for the Dissident Right to respond to several objections that normies may have when they ask why a supposed Jewish creation ended up killing Jews. It also allows the Dissident Right to better understand the division between individual Jews (who may or may not be a man or woman of good will) and Jewish leadership.

The Jewish leadership created a Golem in the 1960s, and now the chickens are coming home to roost, as they always do.