Saving some of the best for last, more anti-Semitic recordings of Richard Nixon have been released. He had some odd opinions about blacks, too, but I don’t really understand them. And Kissinger said something he probably wish he hadn’t. After a meeting with Golda Meir, wherein she was profuse in her gratitude for U.S. aid in the 1973 war, Nixon and Kissinger discussed her request about Soviet Jews.
But moments after she left, Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were brutally dismissive in response to requests that the United States press the Soviet Union to permit Jews to emigrate and escape persecution there.
“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger said. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
“I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.”
That might read worse than it really is, but it’s still jarring. It doesn’t help that Nixon opposed amnesty for draft-dodgers because he thought they were disproportionately Jewish.
“I didn’t notice many Jewish names coming back from Vietnam on any of those lists; I don’t know how the hell they avoid it,” he said, adding: “If you look at the Canadian-Swedish contingent, they were very disproportionately Jewish. The deserters.”
He also said that all Jews were insecure. As for blacks, Nixon had some interesting thoughts that he shared with his secretary Rose Mary Woods.
“[Secretary of State] Bill Rogers has got — to his credit it’s a decent feeling — but somewhat sort of a blind spot on the black thing because he’s been in New York,” Nixon said. “He says well, ‘They are coming along, and that after all they are going to strengthen our country in the end because they are strong physically and some of them are smart.’ So forth and so on.
“My own view is I think he’s right if you’re talking in terms of 500 years,” he said. “I think it’s wrong if you’re talking in terms of 50 years. What has to happen is they have be, frankly, inbred. And, you just, that’s the only thing that’s going to do it, Rose.”
I’m not sure what Nixon had in mind, but my best guess is that he meant something like “bred in to the white race” to get rid of all their blackiness. If you have any alternate theories, please share them.
All this stuff makes me kind of miss the good old days when the Republican Party wasn’t filled with kooks.
