Joseph Roth - The Antichrist

‘But individuals can also err!’ said the unrighteous man.

‘When they err,’ I said, ‘their law is arbitrary. It may be that thousands or millions or even billions see this despotism as right and just. However, these thousands and millions and billions only do so because arbitrariness is disguised as justice.’

‘It is true that God proclaims His justice through the mouths of individuals. But this justice is alive in all men without distinction. They don’t know what it is called or how it will appear before it is proclaimed, but they have innate knowledge of its nature, and they have already prepared to receive it.

‘It is true, and in this respect I must admit that you’re right, in this world sometimes one expects a guest named so-and-so, but there comes another who calls himself so-and-so, and he is given the reception that has been prepared for the real guest, since his hosts don’t realize that he isn’t genuine. But the impostor always calls himself authentic, the thief honest and the murderer a lover. He who wishes to pass off a lie as the truth calls himself a truth lover. The murderer comes in the night with sweet words and begs entry. The unrighteous man speaks of righteousness — as you have, in fact, just done to me. Why don’t you say that your unrighteousness is wrong? Why do you call it right? Why don’t you say that numbers make might, instead of saying that they make right? Because you want to corrupt me!’

‘You do me wrong,’ said the unrighteous man. ‘For one of the demands of justice is that numbers should decide. If, for example, ten men are not of one mind, the issue in question is put to a vote. And if seven are for and three against, these three follow the seven.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘if ten reasonable and just men come together, then the vote is just. But if nine fools are brought together with one wise man, the wise man is right and the nine fools are wrong. A vote can only be taken among equals. And just as you cannot add together two apples and four fish so you cannot sum together the votes of two wise men and four fools. It is true that two and four are always six. But only when the numbers two and four represent objects, animals or men of the same kind.’

‘So thirty-six men can be in the right against billions?’ asked the unjust man.

‘Of course. Even one man can be in the right against billions.’

‘Then you shall be made to feel the power of the billions,’ the unjust man said menacingly.

‘And afterwards all these billions will feel the power of right!’ I retorted.

And he departed in discord because there was no other way for him to leave.

Next a weak man came to me, one of those who are today the most helpless victims of those in power, namely, a Jew.

‘I come to you,’ he began, ‘because I have just seen my enemy, the unrighteous man, go through your door. And I must tell you that the powerful are unjust. They torment the weak. They say that a majority really equals right and justice.

‘They violate and mock not only the law of hospitality but also the law of humanity.

‘The law of hospitality is itself a mockery of humanity.

‘For what kind of world is this where it first had to be established by a special law that one man is a host and another a guest? Wasn’t it God who gave us houses? And if God gave no house to a particular man, may he not reside in the house of his neighbour, which is also the house of God? Let us, however, admit this: that whoever owns a house may be proud of it and may also be proud of offering friendship. We Jews also had a home once. But for us it was written that the stranger in our house is to be treated as a fellow countryman. And all among us observed this command. Yes, we even passed on this command to the strangers. And they learned when they were with us — although they quickly forgot — to offer hospitality, which is better than receiving it.

‘Now, however, they say that we aren’t worthy of their houses.

‘Are these then their houses and their lands? Is man therefore a tree that he cannot move from place to place? And don’t we transplant trees so that they grow in other countries? At what point in time does a people begin to regard this or that country as its own? Hasn’t every people taken its land from another people? Did it buy land? If I deprive my neighbour of his property, does it become mine after ten, a hundred or a thousand years have elapsed? If the former owner returns after a certain period, do I have the right to expel him? Only He who has given also has the right to take. And since God Himself gave countries to the peoples but none to us, is it not He Himself who sends us to the various countries that belong to Him and Him alone? Have we, perhaps, sinned more than the owners of the countries? Suppose there were really hosts and guests — that God was not the only host and all men were not His guests — have we faulted more than our hosts? And isn’t a fault a fault just as a virtue is a virtue, regardless of who has faulted or who is virtuous?’

‘God has allocated the houses,’ I said, ‘and also homelessness. He has granted justice — and also injustice. He has granted reason and also stupidity. Someone who has reason, as you do, and yet demands justice on earth, is wrong. If you had a country of your own, would you accept the people who came to visit you when they no longer had a country and not require greater virtue from them than you demand of your own kind? And, if you are of the opinion that God gives houses and countries, you must also know that He alone gave your people the Law. He alone made the Jews powerless. And He alone made men unjust. Because you have suffered so much injustice do you wish to inflict still more injustice on others? When you see injustice perpetrated upon a Jew, are you pained by the injustice alone, or are you doubly pained because it is a Jew who is suffering?’

‘Both,’ said the weak man.

‘If that is so,’ I replied, ‘it might happen that you will one day become a cruel man. You carry the seed of injustice within you.

‘On what grounds therefore do you come to me and complain about it?’

The weak man left me with a sigh, but it sounded like a curse. He sighed and cursed at the same time. By this I recognized that he also, this weak man, was commanded by the Antichrist.

The ability to sigh came from God.

But the curse within it came from the Antichrist.

But then those who hate the Jews sent me one of their own.

‘I am a hater of Jews,’ he said. ‘I call myself an anti-Semite. The Jews plague the world with their breath, their businesses, their minds, their books, their songs, their pictures and their faith. They are bloodthirsty and goldthirsty. They are power-hungry and vengeance-hungry.’

‘I have no reply to that,’ said I. ‘I have seen many evil men. But their wickedness was a human wickedness, for man is weak and is inclined to be evil. Their own earthly wickedness was mixed together with just a grain (or sometimes a few grains) of that wickedness that I recognize as the hellish evil of the Antichrist.

‘But out of you, anti-Semite, there speaks the entire wickedness of the Antichrist. For you live upon the hatred that all other men in this world also know but which they don’t all act upon — hatred towards the Jews.

‘You are filled completely with this hatred and with this alone. And you have even less trouble than other zealots do in spreading your hatred among mankind.

‘For, as I have said, you find in all the people of the earth the smouldering spark of this special hatred.