Disappointing take on anti-semitism

OP again: Thanks for your comment, but "motiveless malignity" is a literary notion (and a rather convenient one at that) that may explain a fictional character like Iago but doesn't bare much relation to the real world. I love the horrifying irrationality of the avian attacks in THE BIRDS (my favorite late Hitchcock film) but we're talking about human beings here, not zombies. However prejudiced a person or group might be, he/they still are sentient homo sapiens. Their bigotry proceeds not so much out of an irrational impulse as it does out of ignorance, i.e., a lack of knowledge.

As I write this, a group of self-styled Christians in Florida is planning to burn copies of the Koran as their protest against Islam, which they regard as a religion of the devil. I doubt that any of them has ever met an actual Muslim, much less discussed with a Muslim what Islam is about and how it differs from their Christian creed. I would like to think that, if they knew more about Islam, these Christians at least would be less inclined to insult Muslims and perhaps even acknowledge that Islam per se (as opposed to "radical Islam" or "Islamofascism" or "Islamoterrorism" or some other perversion of the religion) is not the threat to Christianity and the United States that they had thought. In other words, if they actually knew enough about Islam, their prejudice would diminish and perhaps evaporate.

You think I'm thinking wishfully? Maybe. But I'm old enough to remember an America in which most white people were prejudiced regarding African-Americans. Over the past fifty years or so, many whites have changed their attitudes about black people because, once black people started achieving something like political and economic equality with whites, the whites started to realize that all the classic stereotypes regarding African-American were highly questionable, if not dead wrong, and that as individuals, the average African-American was no more depraved nor more noble than the average white guy. In other words, the whites (not all, but many) got some wisdom, some knowledge, and their ignorance did lessen.

Everyone is ignorant about a lot of things. No one knows it all, or even a substantial part of it, and too often we substitute convenient stereotypes for harder-to-get knowledge of an unknown person, group, or whatever. Some bigots may be especially deep-set and never totally abandon their prejudices, no matter what they learn otherwise; but most people aren't like that. A lack of knowledge makes a bigot; knowledge can undo bigotry (though it may take a lifetime).

CROSSFIRE would have been more instructive and more satisfying if it had explained why Montgomery believed as he did about Jews. It would have been even more interesting had Montgomery had to stand trial and wound up with a court-appointed attorney who was Jewish. I like to think that Montgomery would eventually come to see his attorney as a real human being rather than as an anti-Semitic stereotype. Had he makers of CROSSFIRE pursued the source of Montgomery's bigotry, CROSSFIRE would have been a more instructive and more enduring film. By denying Montgomery an opportunity to change his mind, the filmmakers may have made him into a monstrous, frightening character, but they also deny his humanity and, in a sense, render him a symbol, a stereotype. That's not to defend Montgomery's bigotry, but only to suggest that the rational (to Montgomery) or rationalized source of it would have been far more enlightening to pursue.

BTW, re: check out the conmments on "motiveless malignity" at http://www.shakespeare-navigators.com/othello/motiveless.html