[Peace-discuss] He who controls the past, controls the future

[C. G. Estabrook]

Mort--

Kauffman attacks Roth's characteristically chauvinist support for one of
the great myths of 20th-century US history -- that an innocent US,
unexpectedly attacked by Japan, responded by putting a stop to Nazism, in
order to bring the Judeocide to an end -- and therefore those who opposed
the US war were necessarily crypto-fascists and anti-Semites.

Virtually none of that is true.  You ask what Chomsky would say about
Kauffman's "scurrilous" review.  A good place to start would be Chomsky's
essay "On the Backgrounds of the Pacific War," recently republished in a
collection with an introduction by Howard Zinn.  Chomsky concluded that,
in regard to WWII, "The lack of a radical critique ... was one of the
factors that contributed to the atrocity of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as the
weakness and ineffectiveness of such radical critique today will doubtless
lead to new and unimaginable horrors."

Kauffman sketches such a critique in his review of the Roth's typically
propagandistic novel.  There are certainly things that can be argued
about, but the point is that in the manufactured consent to America's
20th-century story, no real argument takes place. (Note, e.g., the furious
defenses of Hiroshima that appear in the local paper every August.)

You say that being pro-war was the "right left" position in 1939-41
because "the world was already at war."  But you know as well as I do that
the US joined the war only because of the contest with Japan over control
of the Pacific; the US declared war against Germany only after Germany, as
Japan's ally, had declared war on the US.  The fall of France, the Battle
of Britain, and the invasion of Russia had already taken place before the
US officially joined the European war.  As in World War I, a Democratic
administration had to subvert the strong anti-war opinions of the American
people -- which after the war had to be continually excoriated as
"isolationism."

And the myth that the US defeated Nazism is false.  The Soviet Union did.  
Even after the Normandy landings to the very end of the war, the majority
of the German army was on the Eastern front.

In the years 1939-41, the US certainly didn't "forget about Hitler and the
German war machine" -- it did business with them.  Nor did the US forget
about fascism in Italy --

"...the State Department hailed [Mussolini's] 'magnificent achievements'
in Ethiopia, and his 'astonishing contributions' to the welfare of the
masses in Italy itself. FDR in 1939 wrote internally that the efforts of
the man he had called 'that admirable Italian gentleman' were corrupted by
Hitler but otherwise they were okay. As for Hitler and Sudetenland, again
the records are ambivalent. A.A. Berle, who was one of Roosevelt's chief
advisers, after the Sudeten takeover said that it was 'not alarming,' and
that it was 'probably necessary' for the Austrian Empire to be
reconstituted under German rule. The State Department -- again internally
-- was more supportive. They described Hitler as a moderate who stands, in
1937, between extremes of right and left and they said that Hitler must
win or else the masses now supported by the disillusioned middle classes
might turn to the left and that would be a tragedy..." (Chomsky again).

It was FDR's administration that was "Pro-fascist and pro-Nazi, against
the Bolshies," as you say -- as much or more than the anti-war movement,
as Kauffman points out. Remember the FBI phrase, "premature anti-fascist"?

In fact, Germany, Russia, and the US all approached the real problem of
the age -- the collapse of capitalism in the Great Depression -- by
similar means: a national socialism (which meant roughly Keynesian
economics)  brought in under the moral suasion of the Leader (Hitler,
Stalin, and Roosevelt (the German Fuehrerprinzip).  But for the US, only
the Great Patriotic War could solve the Depression, and the great fear
after 1945 was that the Depression would come back, so the war had to be
continued by other means.

You support the the American mythology about WWII by insisting that
opponents of the Roosevelt administration must have been unprincipled:
"Burton Wheeler, Gerald Nye, et al and their followers morphed into the
House Unamerican Activities Committee after the war."

But as Kauffman points out, "Nye criticized the New Deal from the Left for
its timorousness.  Nye had made his name as the scourge of the 'merchants
of death' who profited from the disastrous U.S. entry into the First World
War, and he always feared a replay."

And "...the real Burton K. Wheeler was an anti-draft, antiwar, anti-big
business defender of civil liberties: in Roth's world, this great American
-- a 'brilliant, incorruptible, courageous man,' in La Follette's glowing
tribute -- must be depicted as pro-fascist. (The closest thing to a real
live fascist in American politics in 1940 was FDR brain-truster Rexford G.
Tugwell.)"

During the Vietnam War I came to know some conscientious objectors from
WWII.  I thought then -- and still almost think -- that their position was
wrong. Being in the American military during Vietnam was immoral; I'm not
sure it was, during WWII.  But the almost-universal propagandistic
misrepresentation of the history and issues, which Roth continues,
Kauffman rightly opposes.

Regards, Carl


On Thu, 23 Sep 2004, Morton K.Brussel wrote:

> Carl,
> 
> The "excellent" Bill Kaufman sounds like a basket case to me. Being
> anti-war may be a respected and right left position today, but in
> 1939-1941 it was something quite different. The world was already at
> war. Kaufman seems to forget about Hitler and the German war machine.  
> He forgets about fascism in Italy. he forgets about the Franco fascist
> war in Spain. No, I don't think he forgets, I think it is just not
> important to his highly perverted view of history. Remember Poland,
> the Rhineland, the Gestapo, the Blackshirts, the persecution of the
> Jews.  I'm sure he knows about those things, but it's unimportant to
> him.  There may have been principled opponents to America joining the
> war in Europe, but many Kaufman cites were not, for my money. they
> were Pro-fascist and pro-Nazi, against the Bolshies.
> 
> Yes, the American First Committee I remember was a front for fascism,
> not just anti war or isolationism. They liked what Hitler was doing.  
> Antisemites rallied to them. Remember Lindberg's shaking hands with
> Hitler, accepting a medal (I think) from him. Brings to mind Rumsfeld.  
> I lived in a town where those who were rabidly anti FDR, tended to be
> antisemites, were proud to support Mussolini or Hitler (Remember the
> German American Bund?) and were, yes, against us entering the war (on
> the side of Britain or France). There was no mystery why they took
> that position.
> 
> As far as my admittedly faulty memory goes, almost everything Kaufman
> says in this review is wrong. I don't know Roth's present politics or
> mindset. Maybe I wouldn't like it if I knew. But what he seems to have
> said in his novel, as reported by Kaufman, has more truth to it than
> anything Kaufman says. Burton Wheeler, Gerald Nye, et al and their
> followers morphed into the House Unamerican Activities Committee after
> the war. After all, it was the Commies and the Jews who got us into
> the war.
> 
> Maybe, Carl, you should ask Noam Chomsky about this scurrilous review.
> 
> Maybe, I'll now read his book. I did enjoy goodbye Columbus.
> 
> MKB
> 
> On Sep 23, 2004, at 8:14 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
> > [This is review of Philip Roth's new novel, The Plot Against America, 
> > by
> > the excellent Bill Kauffman.  I read Roth with interest when I (and he)
> > was young (viz., Goodbye, Columbus and Letting Go), but in recent 
> > years he
> > has written "political" novels attacking the great evils of the age --
> > namely the New Left, the Old Left, and his ex-wife, Claire Bloom. It's
> > remarkable how many people seem to take this self-promoting jingoist
> > seriously -- and not just Americans; see
> > <http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1300982,00.html>. His
> > new book is another example of how political discussion in the US has
> > migrated to books and films, given the fecklessness of the daily press.
> > Kauffman does a wonderful job of skewering it and in the process 
> > proposes
> > a more just account of the anti-war movement of the 1930s. --CGE
> >
> >
> > 	Heil to the Chief
> > 	Philip Roth, "The Plot Against America"
> > 	(Houghton Mifflin, 400 pages)
> > 	By Bill Kauffman
> >
> > Philip Roth's The Plot Against America is the novel that a 
> > neoconservative would write, if a neoconservative could write a
> > novel...