H.L. Mencken Wasn’t Fond of Jews, but He Fell in Love with Zionism

While the history of American philo-Semitism is rich, and includes many of the country’s foremost thinkers, America has also had its share of prominent anti-Semites. In 1918, amid an outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in Europe that dwarfed anything we have seen recently, the great satirist H.L. Mencken wrote, “The case against the Jews is long and damning; it would justify ten thousand times as many pogroms as now go on in the world.” In 1930, Menken called Jews “very plausibly . . . the most unpleasant race ever heard of.”