jonathon,
      my pt would be that these terms,
pre-eminently "anti-semite,"
while politically charged,
are intellectually specious.
bryan's rhetorical construction
of a set of really existing conditions
flows as natural as breathing
from the ethos of the culture in general.
so really the "racial onus" bears not on bryan
or pound/eliot/heidegger/de man...
but western civ,
ie, after all, xian civ,
not in any narrow sense
(bryan's low-brow hard-wired peasants,
or eliots' high-church'rs, 's no matter, eh?)
but as it has been created and interpreted
by the artists and thinkers, heroes and saints,
of the preceding 2k,
and, to crown the absurdity,
actuated along forms
inculcated by thee jewish bk.
 
anyway, all in gud fun, am sure no buchanan-ista,
and tho this bourgeois lib pc stuff is
pretty generally purveyed in the mid-cult,
serious folk know well
how indistinguishably loathesome
are all the races,
only given the chance
...and as, say, the crime of "israel"
has pretty much absolved us from caring, eh?
 
 
in fact bryan (as also pound) stood opposed
to the rich and powerful (at least in the x of gold campaign),
and even in the monkey trial,
he stood with the doomed little-ones,
it seems rather puny of us to attempt
dimishment of that magnificence,
with some forced reading.
 
natheless, jonathon, appreciate yer lite touch,
and the breadth of your resumen,
but which has rather the effect of
highlighting the inevitable inner dillemmas
of the engage',
as opposed to the ivory tower intellect, no?
 
bob
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan P. Gill <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thursday, September 23, 1999 10:40 PM
Subject: Re: Coded Language
 
 
>Re William Jennings Bryan:
>
>I would admit to a tiny stretch (or, as Huck might say, a stretcher), but
>not to an unconscionable one.
>
>I do regret calling WJB an anti-semite (tracking down and identifying
>anti-semites seems to be suspiciously close to tracking down and
>identifying Jews), but I stand firm on his language and ideology, at least
>around the turn-of-the-century, as an ideal example of Populist
>anti-semitism.  He presses all the buttons:  powerful international
>bankers bowing down to the golden calf of monometalism, etc.  When Bryan
>stood with arms wide and shouted "you shall not crucify mankind on a cross
>of gold," he was, of course, addressing "Christ killers."  Pound quotes
>this speech in his broadcasts.  Let us not also forget that the Bryan of
>1896 returned to haunt Pound in the form of radio--the Scopes trial of
>1925 was probably the first great public event broadcast live to a huge
>audience. I have no evidence that Pound commented directly on it, but the
>English papers available throughout Europe covered the trial quite
>closely.
>
>By the way, the Ku Klux Klan considered Bryan one of their greatest
>supporters.  It caused quite a bit of embarassment for Bryan, and prompted
>a very insincere apology.  Bryan's horrible social intolerances are, after
>a century of study by all kinds of scholars, a given.
>
>As for Buchanan, I can't say I've listened closely enough, but it seems to
>me that the Populist tradition comes hard-wired with judeophobia going
>right back to Jefferson's objections to Jews as too urban, too legalistic,
>too literal-minded.  That's what the most reliable historians (most of
>them liberals, to be sure) say.
>
>It's interesting, then, that EP doesn't seem to take advantage of this
>side of Jefferson--perhaps because his major interest in Jefferson (late
>1920s and early 1930s) did not overlap with his obsession with Jews
>(mid-1930s and onward).  It's also worth noting that Pound edits out John
>Adams's anti-anti-semitic remarks in the Adams Cantos.
>
>Jonathan Gill
>Columbia University
>
>
>
>
>On Thu, 23 Sep 1999, bob scheetz wrote:
>
>> Jonathon Gill writes:
>>
>> >...William Jennings Bryan, whose "Cross of Gold"
>> >speech is a virtual lexicon of Populist judeophobia.
>>
>> this seems rather an unconscionable stretch
>> ...like how they're presently hatcheting patrick buchanan,
>> our latter-day golden-tongued populist
>>
>>
>> bob
>>