Sticks, Stones and Words : Language: Racist, sexist and anti-Semitic statements are closely related cousins that can do great harm and can’t be undone. Witness the Nazi slogan that fed the fires of Holocaust.

Someone makes comments that criticize, implicitly or explicitly, a group of people. The comments and their source are labeled anti-Semitic, racist or sexist. Next come “clarifications,” if not retractions or denials. If the remarks were actually made, it is claimed that they were misconstrued, misquoted or taken out of context. The person to whom they are attributed is no anti-Semite, racist or sexist--so goes the defense.

Yet people are hurt and damage is done. Such exchanges breed suspicion that can spin a vicious circle of mistrust.

An illustrating episode involves columnist Patrick J. Buchanan. “There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East,” he recently announced, “the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States.” Volatile remarks are no strangers to Buchanan’s pen or tongue, but this one drew more than the usual charges of foul.

For one, New York Times columnist A. M. Rosenthal confronted what he called Buchanan’s “nastiness” and “ugliness.” Buchanan responded with accusation. Rosenthal’s “sustained venom,” said Buchanan, charged him with “ ‘anti-Semitism’ and a ‘blood libel’ against the Jews.” Buchanan portrayed himself as the victim.

He argued that the charge of anti-Semitism is often wrongly used by Jews “to frighten, intimidate, censor and silence; to cut off debate; to so smear men’s reputations that no one will listen to them again; to scar men so indelibly that no one will ever look at them again without saying, ‘Say, isn’t he an anti-Semite?’ ”.

Buchanan’s defense was more offense. His case and others like it raise nagging questions.

Anti-Semitism, racism and sexism, though not the same, are cousins--members of the same hate-filled family. And although people are not interchangeable parts, we can imagine that Buchanan might have been someone else under fire for allegedly racist or sexist remarks about blacks, Asians or women. But when is a remark, person or group anti-Semitic, racist or sexist? How can we tell the difference between this and legitimate criticism?

An answer, or at least some insight, comes from two important historians.

Stanford University’s Gavin I. Langmuir, a leading scholar on the subject, defines anti-Semitism as “the hostility aroused by irrational thinking about ‘Jews’.” A detailed look at his definition also clarifies racism and sexism.

There are three key components. Anti-Semitism (or racism or sexism) involves 1) irrational thinking 2) about Jews, (or blacks or Asians or women) and the combination 3) arouses hostility.

Irrational thinking is fueled by unsupported, pernicious generalization. Take, for instance, an allegation such as: the Jewish “amen corner” has too much control over American foreign policy in the Middle East.

What does “too much” mean? Who or what comprises the Jewish “amen corner”? What is the evidence, if any, for such a charge and what about evidence to the contrary? Insisting on testable answers to such questions provides a start for differentiating statements that are anti-Semitic, racist or sexist from legitimate criticism.

Of course, irrational thinking takes many forms, and it alone is not sufficient to constitute anti-Semitism, racism, or sexism. But it does contribute insofar as it targets people stereotypically--for example, “blacks are lazy” or “women are weak.” Anti-Semitism, racism, and sexism thrive on the implicit or explicit denial of individual differences among the members of such groups. Blindness to such diversity is a marker for illegitimate criticism.

The arousal of hostility toward Jews is Langmuir’s third and most telling mark of anti-Semitism. Insofar as irrational thinking--characterized by pernicious generalization and stereotypical falsification--encourages hostility against its target, anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, or some other cousin can be found at work.

One need not consciously intend anti-Semitism, racism or sexism to do or say things outside legitimate criticism. “You will know them by their fruits,” as the Christian New Testament wisely puts it.

Heinrich von Treitschke, an influential 19th-Century German, is the other historian worth noting here. “Die Juden sind unser Ungluck, “ he generalized irrationally, perniciously and stereotypically: “The Jews are our misfortune.” Treitschke died in 1896, but a generation later his claim became an omnipresent Nazi slogan. It helped to arouse hostility to such an extreme that millions of Jews were put to death at Auschwitz, Treblinka and Adolf Hitler’s other killing centers.

Cruel, even deadly--that’s what words can be. Had there been no slogans like Treitschke’s, hostility toward Jews would never have been aroused to the genocidal form it took in the Holocaust.

Words bear watching. Words can kill. Using them with greater care could diminish the ethnic and racial tensions that do violence to the bond that holds us Americans together: respect for the basic equality and rights of diverse individual persons.