Billy,
On what evidence do you base your unequivocal statement "He knew"?  How do
we know that Pound was fully aware of the existence and nature of the
prison/forced-labor camps and extermination camps when he was writing the
broadcasts? I find it difficult to reconcile Pound's admonitions, not to
start a pogrom against 'the little Jew', with such putatively unequivocal
knowledge. Such admonitions would be outright two-faced lies and the worst
sort of fraud; but that coat does not seem to fit Pound very well.  Such
admonitions could be taken as evidence that Pound was trying to walk a
crooked line between using 'the big financier Jew' for his agitation-value,
while worrying that maybe the pogrom rumors he was hearing had some truth to
them. That intellectual self-deception would be a different sort of crime,
in my view.

To explore these sorts of nuances is, for many, like discussing whether
Pound will emerge head first or feet first from Satan's anus. That said,
discussions of Pound's racial views would be much more meaningful, I think,
if they could be removed from the plane of personal and class prejudice and
grounded instead in the eugenics movement of the first half of this century.
The evidence of how institutionalized this social-scientific movement had
become is being systematically removed from university library shelves and
forgotten.  How many colleges and universities want the world to know that
their presidents and renowned faculty were foremost among the outspoken
proponents of applied eugenics? Blame for American racism is typically
placed squarely on the shoulders of rabble-rousing demagogues.

Tim Romano



> Ian's language game may be an example of a point of view well argued, but
Pound was not an ordinary citizen, nor did he have shortened antennae. He
knew. And he did nothing. Said nothing. Except to continue his attack on
"kikes", "yids", etc. in one of the more hateful incidences of ugly
intolerance ever seen from one who sought Elysium. This argument about Pound
and politics will never be put to rest, I can see that, but it feels more
and more like it isn't something that has anything to do with Pound anymore,
except that he is wheeled out periodically in a feint that would allow
others - our comtemps - to go on grinding their own precious axes. I s'pose
I cannot escape the charge of indulging my own axes in this missive, but
common sense and great poetry begin and end by calling a table a table and a
chair a chair. No more, no less.