Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>   wrote:

>Subject: Re: Pound , Censorship and "Social Darwinism"

>Wei,
>I no longer have to hand the broadcasts edited by Doob, but there you will
>find _many_ passages to support the view that Pound's racism has a
>"scientific" eugenist component to it --  ~the best science today is
>racial~
>[I paraphrase since memory fails on the exact quotation].  He makes a
>number
>of  references in the broadcasts to the need to preserve the race from the
>downgrading of miscegenation, stating that the knowledge of animal breeding
>needs to be applied to human society.

Assuming you are correct here about Pound being against miscegenation, I am
not sure how this relates to the issue of the so-called “scientific basis”
of Pound’s racism.  What does it mean to say that the prejudice against
interracial sexual union has a “scientific basis”?  Even the stupidist
scientist knows that hybridization can often have numerous benefits for
plants and animals.

The point is that Pound was a racist, and that racism in and of itself is
irrational and unscientific.  But even if we accept the idea that certain
“pseudoscientic notions” have been used to justify racism, and that specific
notions were prevalent among Pound’s contemporaries, that is no excuse for
Pound’s RABID antisemitism.  Why do I say “rabid”?  Pound did not merely
express the view on a few occasions that some races are superior to some
others, as if it were a matter worthy of scientic consideration.  He
FREQUENTLY used the words “kike,” “yid,” “nigger,” throughout his letters,
broadcasts, and articles, and even in his poetry.  This indicates an
emotional aversion to certain races.  Because his racism is rooted in
emotions, and visceral antipathy toward Jews and Blacks (in particular) ----
and because he chooses to give into those emotions --- it makes no sense to
attribute it to “Darwinism”.  When Pound rails against a Jew because she did
not give him a loan, saying she “obstructed me, like many of her race,”
(Letter to Bryher) we don’t get any sense he is interested in social
Darwinism.  It’s personal.    When Pound refers to the US President
REPEATEDLY as “Jewsevelt,” should we think there is something about social
Darwinism that leads him to use such an epithet?  Take a close look at the
following quote from the radio broadcasts and decide for yourself.  Does it
sound “scientific”?  Is it a fair summary of the “Hitler Program”?  (Recall
that Pound says himself he read Mein Kampf, and fully endorsed its
contents).  Does the reference to “Talmudic Jews” at the end sound
scientific, or does it appear to proceed from a feeling of race hatred?

As to the Hitler program, it was (what we ALL knew, and did nothing about,
namely) that the breed’in of human beings deserves MORE  care and attention
than the breed’in of horses and wiffetss, or even the breed’in of sheep,
goat, and larger livestock.That is point ONE of the NAZI program.  Breed
GOOD, and preserve the race.  Breed thorough, that is for thoroughbreds,
conserve the BEST of the race.  Conserve the best elements.  That means
EUGENICS --AS OPPOSED TO RACE SUICIDE.   And it does not please Talmudic
Jews who want to kill of the other the other races they cannot subjugate.
(Doob, 140).

I notice that many who are speculating on this list about Pound’s racism,
and attempting to mitigate it--- or to interpret it as a “product of the
times” he lived in --- do not quote Pound very much.  We do have the famed
quote saying race hatred is a “red-herring”.  This is one of a kind, I
think.  It was quoted the last time the issue came up.  But I have yet to
hear another quote.  If we weigh that against the literally hundreds of
quotes where Pound uses words like “nigger”, “yid”, and “kike”, we are left
with a serious imbalance.  To produce the “red-herring” quote, and cite it
as proof that Pound was not a racist would be a gross commission of the
fallacy of incomplete evidence.   Also, to say that Pound helped to organize
a committee of artists, and that on the committee of artists there was a
Jew, is insufficient to prove he was not a racist.

Frankly, I am a bit shocked that some people on this list would argue that
Pound was not a racist.  Would I be wrong to say that most people on this
list admit that Pound WAS a racist?


>By the time these ideas gets to Pound,
>this "science" may be merely popular science. I cannot tell you what books
>or articles, or what correspondence, Pound had been reading on the subject
>of social engineering (though I suspect Jonathan Morse would probably have
>this information).  It may turn out that Pound read some science on this
>subject and also found many of his ideas texpressed in popularizations of
>these principles.

Yes.  It turned out that he read “Mein Kampf”, and the subject of Hilter’s
theory of race is mentioned in at least three separate Radio Rome Speeches.

>Certainly they were commonplaces.

Hitler’s ideas may or may not have been commonplaces.  But I don’t think
that excuses them, or Pound’s attempts to promote them.  If you read the
Radio Rome speeches all the way through (a very unpleasant experience, I
might add); and if you examine carefully the remarks on race, you will
probably conclude that Pound’s racism was more virulent than that of the
average Italian fascist who was present in his milieu.  Pound made racist
remarks on far more occasions than Mussolini.


>But even if these
>notions were no more than "broadly cultural" as you suggest, that only
>underscores the point I was making. I did not set out to demonstrate a
>clearly discernible paper trail, to establish "influence" to the
>satisfaction of the literary historian, though that may indeed be possible
>to do. My point was rather that Pound is not an aberration;

The point is not whether Pound was an aberration; the question is not even
whether he was a racist.  The question is WHAT kind of racist Pound was, and
how his racism should or should not affect our reading of his work.

>and yet a
>student today might easily get that impression from the manner in which
>Pound is often written about.
>

Frankly, given the amount of quality and tenor of much of the Pound
criticism I have encountered, I don’t think the average student will get an
accurate impression of the extent to which Pound WAS an extreme racist, even
for the times he lived.  This is why I have asked several times:  WHICH OF
POUND’S ARTISTIC, LITERARY, PHILOSOPHICAL, OR JOURNALISTIC CONTEMPORARIES
was HALF AS MUCH OF an anti-semite, racist, fascist, classist, or elitist
(anti-democrat) as Pound?  I have asked that question several times, and no
one has sought to address it?  Eliot, Yeats, and others had their
tendencies, but in my studies I have not been able to come across the sheer
quantities of racist material in the works of any 20th century artist which
come anywhere near to what is present in Pound.  And even if I did, why
would that excuse it?


>To demonize Pound by linking him to the harsh political acts/sins against
>mankind/atrocities/draconian measures (however one wishes to characterize
>them) of the leaders, ancient and modern, whom Pound chooses to exalt for
>some quality or qualities they possessed, gives the false impression that
>Pound was not a product of his times . . . .

Pound was a free agent who chose his associations.  He did not have to
choose to be a fascist.  He could have chosen to overcome his racist
tendencies.  Each artist solves the problem in their own way.  Mary
Wollstonecraft was way ahead of her times in socio-political matters, as
were Godwin, Shelley, Byron, and Blake.  Wordsworth and Coleridge
accomodated themselves to their times, as did Tennyson.  Carlyle and Ruskin
jumped back and forth, exalting feudal models, and occasionally championing
progressive movements.  Dickens was clearly a progressive.   The greatest
artists are not merely “products of their times,” in some way they usually
transcend and help shape them.

The political and social elements of an authors work are in one sense
important and in another sense unimportant.  Perhaps English-speaking
culture NEEDS Pound, and cannot dispense with him.  In a similar way,
Russian culture cannot dispense with Dostoevsky, inspite of the fact that he
was a sexist, an ultra-conservative, super-orthodox, and politically
reactionary.

But I don’t see how we can deny that Pound was a racist, any more than we
can deny that Dostoevsky beat his wife.


 >it suggests that his views were so
>exterme that he was on the fringes.

If you think fascism and nazism were forms of extremism, then Pound was an
extremist.  (If Pound had made only ten or tweny recorded racist remarks,
and were not a fascist, and did not voice support for Hitler, the situation
would have been different).

>But these views were common, almost
>"mainstream."  The record of these times has been distorted and purged.
>

That would need to be proven.  I do not see, when you make a full comparison
of Pound and James Joyce, for instance, come to any other conclusion but
this:  Pound was a racist par excellence, and a committed fascist; Joyce had
some elitist tendencies, but was but was not a racist (and he was basically
apolitical).  Specific comparisons have to be made.   More has to be put
forward than Truman’s denying he was a Jew.  (There is nothing wrong with
saying “that’s a lie”, it does not constitute antisemitism, anyway--- it
seems more like an assertion of the truth in a circumstance where one is
afraid that one will be targeted by anti-semites --- perhaps a subtle
distinction, but an important one none theless.   Not the same certainly as
saying the Old Testament is “Jewish poison injected into the heart of
Europe” . . .  and other such quotes).  The fact is Pound was KNOWN as an
antisemite; Truman was not.

On the issue of censorship, which seems to have been dropped, let me say
this.  In the Radio broadcasts, Pound praises the officials of the
Miniculpop (the Italian Ministry of Popular Culture) for NOT censoring
remarks about certain economic thinkers.  Of course, as Pound never says
anything negative about Mussolini, or Hitler, or fascism, there is no need
for the censorship of his remarks.  Pound implies, by his comments that
there is freedom of expression in fascist Italy, which everyone now knows
(hopefully) to be false.  Pound knew it was false too, and even as he was
promoting it.   He knew this because he had to submit his speeches to the
government censors prior to broadcasts.  (This is detailed in Carpenters
rather extensive biography).

----Wei
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