Is Star Trek anti-Semitic?

Gene Roddenberry's most famous creation ‘Star Trek’ is one of the best known science fiction franchises that has ever existed and its rivalry with George Lucas' ‘Star Wars’ is equally well-known with fans passionately debating the respective merits and demerits of each for hours on end.

What is perhaps less well-known is that Roddenberry's 'Star Trek' has faced a significant amount of criticism - particularly from the academic and political left - over the alleged 'racism' of the franchise (especially the original 'Star Trek' and 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'). (1) This lead to the freakily multi-racial spin-off series 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine', which predictably didn't satisfy Roddenberry's leftist critics in the slightest. (2)

They merely adopted a new line: one of the creations of 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine' - the Ferengi - was an anti-Semitic caricature of jews. (3)

To investigate this lets take one partisan of the 'anti-Semitic Ferengi' claim.

He says:

'So what, then, of the Ferengi? Why is this alien race different from all other alien races? Because the Trek creators have drawn them in such a way that they constantly evoke anti-Semitic images and archetypes. The Ferengi seem to be inviting us to engage in arrant racism about international Jewish banking conspiracies.

The Ferengi are the Trek universe's super-capitalists, traders who would sell their own family members for a few bars of gold-pressed latinum. The utter glee with which they pursue commerce would get them through a casting call forThe Merchant of Venice; they take it a step further with the "Rules of Acquisition." Two hundred and eighty-five in number, they include proverbs such as "Once you have your money... you never give it back" (#1), "Greed is eternal" (#10), and "Let others keep their reputation. You keep their money" (#189). As instructions for living, the Rules of Acquisition are supposed to be the Talmud of Ferengi society; unfortunately, they take on the taint of the famed forged document of Jewish goals, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

Perhaps some of these overtones are unavoidable when one is creating a mercantile race in a science-fiction show. But consider these parallels: The Ferengi have an oversized body part (the ears rather than the nose). The Ferengi are often schlemiels, haplessly disrupting treaty negotiations and knocking over containers in Enterprise cargo bays. They're short. Male Ferengi lust after human women, prisoners of their desire for shiksas. And the very Jewish character actor Wallace Shawn plays the recurring role of the Grand Nagus, leader of Ferengi society. However, nobody has yet uttered the line, "Is it good for the Ferengi or bad for the Ferengi?"' (4)

Really? Well if the Ferengi have been drawn them in 'a way that they constantly evoke anti-Semitic images and archetypes' then it should probably be a bit more obvious than just a bunch of greedy aliens who love money and wealth.

After all how can it be cogent to argue that a literary creation; albeit destined for television, is meant to be a negative caricature of some group or another without explicit (and only subjective circumstantial) evidence for it?

The problem is simple: there are a finite number of roles, images and archetypes that appeal to humans because they are within the range of human experience and therefore are comprehensible to the human audience who are to consume that media product. The most effective way to elucidate the appropriate disgust reaction for your audience is to give them a negative role, image and/or archetype that is in their cultural knowledge and moreover that they know well.

That effectively means you are always going to produce a role, image and/or archetype that resembles one or more groups: who hypersensitive - or simply overwrought - individuals and/or groups will claim is an deliberate 'attack' against them and/or is in some way 'offensive'.

The nub of the issue is that there is no actual evidence that Roddenberry was deliberately portraying jews in his stereotype of the Ferengi.

In fact you could equally argue that the Ferengi are actually the stereotypical capitalist/factory owner of European socialist propaganda in the mid-nineteenth century. Since they were asserted to be solely motivated for profit and to care nothing for anything else, to actively manipulate others to get more money and utilize working class women and/or their employees as sexual slaves. (5)

The author for example claims that the 'Rules of Acquisition' are meant as a kind of Talmud as understood by anti-Semites and then claims they are a 'Protocols of Zion' (which he ignorantly claims is a 'forged document') type scenario.

Both of these are untrue as the image of Talmud in anti-Semitic propaganda was - and is - not focused on the 'earning of money', but rather on the statements and rulings regarding non-jews that are in - and derive from - it (reading Pranaitis' 'The Talmud Unmasked' would have given the author concerned a bit more of a clue), while the 'Protocols of Zion' is itself arguable. It is still focusing on one aspect of the 'Protocols' text (and only the Nilus version of it I might add) to the active exclusion of most of the rest (which focuses on the subversion of gentile society and treats the economic war as only part - not the whole - of the equation).

As to the desire to subjugate 'foreign women': that is as old of the hills and hardly is an exclusive jewish phenomenon relating to the (highly offensive) concept of the shiksa (which I note the author strangely doesn't condemn).

No: Star Trek isn't 'anti-Semitic'.

After all it has had episodes promoting the 'Holocaust' (6), has been interpreted as honoured Judaism and jewish culture by at least several jews that I can find (7) as well as a jewish/satanic plot by opponents of jews. (8)

Clearly it is very much a case of 'in the eye of the beholder'.

So how on earth can be Star Trek be anti-Semitic when it is merely a subjective opinion with no concrete evidence on the part of each individual?

It can't.

References

(1) http://thedogtagchronicles.com/2012/05/07/the-inherent-racism-of-star-trek/

(2) http://donaldearlcollins.com/2011/01/17/why-ferengi-are-jewish-the-maquis-are-latino/; http://www.kinema.uwaterloo.ca/article.php?id=126&feature

(3) Ibid.

(4) http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/0996September/Features/ferengi.html

(5) Tristram Hunt, 2009, 'Marx's General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels', 1st Edition, Henry Holt: New York, pp. 94-96

(6) https://books.google.com/books?id=O9lEaTf_ntgC&pg=PT109&lpg=PT109&dq=anti-Semitic+star+trek&source=bl&ots=SnRyKmA6DI&sig=E2FdoZpYEmX6zOYt9raULCnfCFM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=532wU8OiFoGkPcefgMAN&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=anti-Semitic%20star%20trek&f=false

(7) For example: http://www.myjewishlearning.com/hot_topics/ht/Star_Trek.shtml

(8) For example: http://ehpg.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/the-satanictalmudic-origins-of-star-trek/