Tim,
I won't suggest any literature that addresses your basic incomprehension of
the related hatreds. But hatred (racial, tribal, etc) does not seem
unnatural to me -- it seems more the anthropological rule than the
exception.  The Jews considered themselves the Chosen Race. African tribes
massacre each other. Many Koreans despise whites. The Japanese consider
themselves superior. Many whites consider blacks to be inferior. The ancient
Saxons thought the dark-skinned Britons were an inferior race. Not a modern
phenomenon by any means.  Genocide is nothing new. These feelings are
perhaps instinctual.
 
But I have not encountered anything that I would regard as racial or tribal
hatred in Pound's writings, though I've yet to read the Agresti letters and
am not very far into Pound's wartime radio broadcasts, and maybe there is
evidence of this kind of hatred to be found in the things I haven't read
yet. In one of his wartime broadcasts, Pound actually speaks out against the
physical stereotyping of the Japanese in Zukor's animated cartoons.
 
In what I have read of his, Pound's "anti-Semiticism" is
culturally/economically based.  Deuteronomy permits the Jews when
moneylending to charge interest to Gentiles only. Pound had great antipathy
for Jewish monotheism and the shame in which it shrouds the human act of
coition. There are things one might reasonably hate about Jewish culture
which have nothing to do with racial or tribal hatred, or hatred of any
individual human being who happens to have been raised as a Jew, just as one
might despise the practice of female infanticide or female genital
mutilation or the chopping off of the hands of petty thieves or the use of
the flagellum.  Some cultures are more humane than others, if not more
human.
 
Tim Romano
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Tim Bray <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, 18 Oct 1999 12:27 AM
Subject: Anti-Semitism: getting started understanding it
 
 
> As a well-read non-humanist in his 40s who has spent time in the third
> world and seen tribal hate at work, the problem I have with all the
holocaust
> literature is that it fails to address my basic incomprehension as to how
this
> could have happened.  I.e. how intelligent well-educated people (eg EP,
nuts
> maybe, smart probably, well-educated definitely) can have thought such
> silly things and done such evil things?  The tribal hate I've seen could
not
> survive in the absence of real immediate grievance (they killed my
brother)
> and the presence of a decent education (history and ethics are
complicated).
>
> So, on the assumption that people who agonize over EP know something about
> this subject, what would be a good recommendation for literature to
address
> this basic incomprehension? -T.
>
>