We are trying to understand the nature of Pound's anti-semitism: WHAT he
meant when he said things about Jews and usury and international capital and
money systems and the decline of nations and European culture and western
civilization and barbarians, and WHY he said such things. As I read his
postings, Jonathan Morse would have us understand Anti-Semitism as a
pervasive historical phenomenon: if we seek to understand Anti-Semitism in
all of its manifestations, we'll come to understand where the Poundian
variety fits in. Not an unfair representation of his view, I think.
Moreover, he seems to hold the view that, if we understand a few basic
concepts about the formation of social prejudices and a few others about
Abnormal Psychology, we'll come to understand the subconscious fears and
impulses that will cause a person, even a individual of the likes of Ezra
Pound, to be swept up in the same flood with the hoi polloi.  Not an
unreasonable view for a sociologist or a student of "social history".
 
However, that sociological/psychological approach must be balanced with a
careful analysis of what Pound actually said and did and his _express_
reasons for those words and deeds. Readers interested in Pound must take
care to try to distinguish his ideas --to the extent that Pound's writing
makes it possible to do so--  from the mass hysterias. To what extent do
Pound's published writings make it possible to distinguish his opinions from
the unthinking prejudices of the Lumpenproletariat? Though some might
consider the effort to find this out an expense of spirit in a waste of
shame, it is, anyhow, the question in front of me, for I see that question
leading to an even more important one about the survival of the Individual
Intellect in the Scientific Age.
 
Tim Romano
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