Michael,
I don't know why, and prefer not to make guesses. Several weeks ago I suggested here that one might take  as a sort of repudiation Pound's admission " that I lost my center fighting the world" in that his admission seems to be an allusion to these famous lines from Yeats's poem "The Second Coming":
 
Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
 
Though Dan Pearlman would not admit any distinction in degree of anti-semitism, I don't think he really can mean that. A country club's board of directors deciding to not admit Jews, while doing something repugnant, were not culpable to the degree that an SS officer who exultantly herded Jews into a cattle car was culpable. Dan P. may see these manifestly different acts as existing along a continuum or as symptoms of the same social illness, avatars of the same devil. But I think it important to refine our understanding of the nature of Pound's anti-semitism as accurately as possible, the nature of his support for Hitler and Mussolini's fascisms, even if that may seem at times like medieval hair-splitting in light of the genocide. We must refrain  from the understandable tendency to make categorical, lumping sorts of judgments -- this was "suburban prejudice" or Pounds bogey was of the superego not the id variety or all anti-semitism is the same-- for they will serve only to obscure our view of the intellectual and political forces that shaped Pound's 'speech acts' in whatever medium and genre. We'll have a clearer notion of Pound's thought if we study the public discourse of the eugenics movement. Doing so, we'll see how Eugenics, Confucius, the ideas Pound took away from Western Europe's middle ages, and Fascist ideology formed an integer in Pound's mind. If I were to write a book on this, its working title would be _Splendor? It all coheres_.
 
Tim Romano
 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Michael Springate <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, November 29, 1999 12:45 AM
Subject: Re: Getting things all mixed up
 
 
> Tim
> 
> I would like an answer to this question.
> 
> In your mind, why is it that Pound never clearly and publicly repudiated
> the huge pogrom that, manifestly, did take place, a pogrom initiated and
> executed by the very individuals and groups that he had publicly,
> repeatedly and emphatically supported?
> 
> Michael
> 
>