Lee,
I urge you to read the wartime broadcasts if you haven't done so. I haven't _listened_ to them; but, insofar as I can get their tone from the printed page, there's very little incoherent ranting (one unfamiliar with Pound's use of multiple voices and idiolects would say there's a lot more of that than there actually is...at least so far ... I've only reached mid 1942) but there are certainly plenty of passages of coherent explanation.  Pound is clearly pro-American; pro-Fascist insofar as he regards Italian Fascism and its kindred manifestation of Nazism as bulwarks against Communism, which he associates with Leihkapital, materialism, slave-labor, and wage-slavery; anti-Semitic and possibly anti-Semite (the former, as I use the term, means a reasoned antipathy for aspects of Jewish culture; the later, a hatred/fear of Jews).  I leave open the question of whether hatred for Jews and opposition to miscegenation were a reasoned position, or the paranoid obsessions of a madman --leave it open for now because that question is more complicated than it may appear on its surface. (One needs to be scrupulous; I'm in no position to determine directly whether Pound's poetry remains on or is removed from the curriculum of any college or university, though I expect that, as these wartime broadcasts become more widely known, this issue will arise more and more frequently, and Pound will need a great many benevolent readers, among which group I consider myself.) I don't know enough yet about Pound's readings in eugenics, but he seem to hold the opinion that human races are like animal breeds: mixing them results in some kind of confusion in the brain, as if one were breeding a herding dog with a terrier. I know that in some quarters my giving Pound the benefit of the doubt on these sorry subjects will seem bonkers or even criminal, but judgment of culpability has to be based, in my view, on the knowledge and belief of the individual. That Pound's poetry is so ALLUSIVE makes it impossible, I think, to divorce his poetry from the ideas "outside" the poem. There is no such Clean Room to which we may safely retreat in an effort to rehabilitate the man and his work. We have to confront what is there.
Tim Romano
 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Everett Lee Lady <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, November 20, 1999 3:42 PM
Subject: Re: Pound and Fascism
 
 
> >Date:  Sat, 20 Nov 1999 07:35:00 -1000
> >From:  David Centrone <[log in to unmask]>
> >Subject:      Re: Integer vitae scelerisque purum
> >
> >An excellant book on the subject of the formation of Italian fascism is
> >Alastair Hamilton's:. _The Appeal of Fascism_.  After reading it, I'm not so
> >sure that I would characterize it as the "working class. . . at war with the
> >bourgeoisie"; many of the most pronounced supporters (against the violence
> >of the communist, syndicalist, maximalists) were the people who had actually
> >made money during the war (I).  This group included Italian Jewish people as
> >well.
> 
> Thanks for the reference.  I, for one, will certainly be interested in
> looking at this.
> 
> But since our interest in this list is with Pound, and with what we
> really mean when we say, "Pound was a Fascist," and with the question of
> whether Pound's poetry and literary criticism can be seen as a
> justification for Fascism in the same way that Nietzsche and Heidegger's
> writings can be read as a justification for Naziism....   Since this is
> our concern, the relevant question is:  What was *Pound's* understanding
> of Fascism?
> 
> And strangely enough, considering how quick we are to label Pound a
> Fascist, it seems rather difficult to find much of an answer to this in
> Pound's writings.  If one reads JEFFERSON AND/OR MUSSOLINI, one sees that
> he admired Mussolini and admired the spirit of Italy under Mussolini.
> He doesn't, however, say anything about the repressive aspects of that
> Mussolini's government except where he denies that some of them exist.
> 
> >From the conversations I heard at St. Elizabeth's, I remember only that
> he liked the idea of the Corporate State, i.e. that members of the
> legislature would represent the various business and labor interests
> instead of representing geographical regions.  (To some extent, our own
> government functions according to this same structure, inasmuch as a lot
> of the real legislative debate is carried on by lobbyists more than by
> the actual Senators and Congressmen, who could probably not function
> without the information supplied by lobbyists.)
> 
> Pound was typical of many people in that his feelings about the
> political figures he liked were based more on their words than their
> actual policies.  He liked the fact that Mussolini (and also Hitler)
> denounced munitions manufacturers, bankers, and financiers in their
> speeches.  He didn't seem to have much understanding of the fact that
> these speeches were designed merely to appeal to people like himself
> (many many people at that time shared Pound's sentiments) and were not
> a reflection of actual policy.
> 
> I will be very interested in seeing what's in Alastair Hamilton's book,
> but I suspect that the level of discussion there is far more
> sophisticated than Pound's own understanding of Fascism.
> 
> -- Lee Lady <Http://www2.Hawaii.Edu/~lady>
> 
>