>>508565055I now realized that the Jews were the leaders of Social Democracy. With
that revelation, the scales fell from my eyes. My long inner struggle was at
an end.
In my relations with my fellow workers, I was often astonished at how
easily and often they changed their opinions on the same questions –
sometimes within a few days, and sometimes even within a few hours. I
found it difficult to understand how men who were reasonable as
individuals suddenly lost this ability as soon as they acted as a mass. This
phenomenon often tempted me to despair. I argued with them for hours, and
when I succeeded in bringing them to what I considered a reasonable way
of thinking, I celebrated my success. But the next day, I found that it was all
in vain. It was disgusting to have to begin all over again. Like an eternal
pendulum, they would swing back to their absurd opinions.
All this was understandable. They were dissatisfied with their lot and
cursed the fate that hit them so hard. They hated their employers, whom
they looked upon as the heartless administrators of their cruel destiny. They
often used abusive language against public officials, whom they accused of
being completely unsympathetic to the situation of working people. They
conducted public protests against the cost of living, and paraded through the
streets in defense of their claims.
All this, at least, could be reasonably explained. But impossible to explain
was the boundless hatred against their fellow citizen – how they disparaged
their own nation, mocked its greatness, reviled its history, and dragged the
names of its most illustrious men through the gutter.
This hostility towards their own kind, their own native land and home,
was as irrational as it was incomprehensible. It was deeply unnatural.
One could temporarily cure this malady, but only for a few days or some
weeks. But upon later meeting those were converted, one found that they
were the same as before.
