Dan,
I admit a difference between not advocating genocide and advocating
genocide. And with regard to my hypothesis regarding Pound's motives for
wanting to dismiss Jews from the civil service: I offered the explanation
that Pound thought Jews to be, as a people, ideologically unfit to govern. I
am attempting to explicate these ideas; I am not championing them nor am I
trying to "minimize" anything.  I could turn the tables and accuse you of
"minimizing" with your fecal metaphor. The gulag's minimalism is
anti-civilization.
Tim Romano



> It seems that TR is making "distinctions without a difference."
> Whether Pound wanted to remove only Jewish bankers, or all Jews,
> it's still disgusting racism.  And to keep Jews out of the Italian
> gov't because they are presumed to be communists--again, a double
> smear, completely racist.  The very idea that Jewish bankers were
> a significant part of the bank evil is historically nonsense: the
> vast majority of major banks operating between the wars were run
> by gentiles.  Haven't we all seen too many Pound scholars trying
> hard, like TR, to minimize this evil side of Pound?  Why don't
> they learn to simply accept the fact that all of us, including
> every great man, is at least a little smeared with shit?
>
> ==DP
>
> At 08:15 AM 7/21/00 -0400, you wrote:
> >[WEI] > I myself pointed out that Pound advocated a "pogrom at the top" a
> >few weeks
> >> ago.  Perhaps you missed that  ...
> >
> >No, I saw it.  I believe it is one's obligation, when engaged in a public
> >damnation of a dead poet for crimes against humanity, not to develop
> >_shorthand_ ways of referring to the matters under discussion which might
> >prejudice the outcome.
> >
> >
> >[WEI]> So I will pose the question for you:  Is it really significant
that
> >Pound
> >> wanted a "pogrom from the top."  Pound says we should look at the true
> >> meanings of words.  What does Pogrom mean?  "An organized ande often
> >> officially encouraged massacre or persecution of a minority group, esp
one
> >> conducted against the Jews".   Whether such a pogrom is from the top,
or
> >the
> >> bottom, it is racist in the extreme, as well as being incendiary, an
> >> incitement to murder of a GROUP of people based on their race, don't
you
> >> think?
> >
> >Yes, there is a a real significance, in my view, between "pogrom" and
> >"pogrom at the top".  If I thought that Pound had intended the pogrom to
> >refer to the Jewish people as a whole, then I would have a very different
> >view of him than I do.  Moreover, does he not suggest, in fact, that
there
> >might even be a more humane way of conducting this "pogrom" -- by putting
> >the Jewish financiers in prison on an island somewhere?  He is using the
> >word "pogrom" figuratively, for rhetorical purposes.  His rhetoric, as I
> >wrote, does tend to work against his finer distinctions.  In hindsight,
we
> >understand the wider context of this  rhetoric better than Pound did.
> >
> >
> >
> >[TR] He goes on to say, in that regard, that the Jewish bankers are the
> >        Jewish people's problem.
> >
> >[WEI] Do you take him at his word on this?
> >
> >Yes and no.  To the extent that the phrase "their problem" means "a
problem
> >they must solve, whether ot not it is of their own making," I would agree
> >with Pound in one sense, and disagree with him in another. The perception
> >that the world was being sent to hell in a handbasket as a result of the
> >manipulations by a small cabal of international Jewish financiers was
> >"their" problem, in the sense that the diffuse hatred against Jews in
> >general that arose therefrom is a problem FOR THEM. The perception and
> >hatred were not of their making, and in that sense, were NOT their
problem.
> >While it was certainly in their own interests as a people to solve that
> >problem, as a dispersed, minority polity, they were unable to do so.
Today
> >there is Israel.
> >
> >
> >[WEI] >He also said, while in Italy, that he
> >> approved of the 1942-43 rules which denied all Jews the right to serve
in
> >> the government.  If Jewish bankers were the only problem, and if they
were
> >> only the Jews problem, then why did Pound (a non-Jew) spend so much
time
> >> speaking about Jews; why did he support the sacking of all Jews in
gov't
> >> positions in Italy (most of them non-bankers); and why does he use the
> >> racial epithets (kike, yid, etc) so indiscriminately, and so often?
> >>
> >
> >I have understood Pound's desire to remove all Jews from civil service in
> >the context of his anti-communism. Pound wants a sweeping ideological
purge.
> >I refer you to his frequent remarks about the Old Testatment, the hebrew
> >scriptures, being the record of a semi-barbaric tribe of herdsmen,
> >unsuitable, as a moral doctrine, for a modern civilized society. Pound
saw
> >the worldview of contemporary Jews as amenable to communism. Yes, the
> >anti-Jewish slurs are designed for rabble-rousing, to use resentment and
> >hatred as an engine of social and political change....but ideological
> >change, not genocide.
> >
> >Regards
> >Tim Romano
> >
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