Anti-Racist Education 13: Post Modernism's Fascist Antecedents

[Duncan Coons]

Origins of Anti-Racist Post-Modernism

Since the publication of *The Closing of the American Mind*, fortuitously there
has been fresh attention to the Nazism of Heidegger, more and more widely
recognized as the most intelligent figure contributing to the post-modernist
movement. At the same time the late Paul de Man, who as a professor at Yale
introduced deconstructionism into the U.S., was revealed to have written, as a
young man in his native Belgium, pro-Nazi articles for a collaborationist
newspaper. In reading these articles I was struck by the fact that if one
suppresses the references to Hitler and Hitlerism, much of it sounds like what
one reads in advanced literary reviews today.

The lively debate around these issues has not been very helpful, for it focuses
more on questions of personal guilt than on the possible relation of
Heidegger's or de Man's thought to the foulest political extremism. The fact
that de Man had become a leftist after settling in America proves not a thing.
He never seems to have passed through a stage where he was attracted to reason
or liberal democracy. Those who chose culture over civilization, the real
opposition, which we have forgotten, were forced to a position beyond good and
evil, for to them good and evil were products of cultures.

From Alan Bloom, "Western Civ--And Me," *Commentary* August 1990

An Early Publication by a Leading Anti-Racist

Vulgar anti-Semitism readily considers postwar cultural phenomena (after the
war of 1914-1918) as degenerate and decadent because Judaized [enjuive].
Literature hasn't escaped this lapidary judgement: it is enough to have
discovered several Jewish writers under Latinized pseudonyms for all
contemporary production to be considered polluted and harmful. This conception
entails some rather dangerous consequences. In the first place, it condemns a
priori an entire literature that in no way deserves this fate. Moreover, from
the moment one agrees to assign some merit to the literature of our day, it
would be an unflattering estimation of Western writers to reduce them to being
mere imitators of a Jewish culture that is foreign to them.

The Jews themselves have contributed to this myth. Often, they have glorified
themselves as leaders of the literary movements that characterize our era. But
the mistake has, in reality, a deeper cause. The very prevalent opinion,
according to which modern poetry and the modern novel were only monstrous
outgrowths of the world war, is at the root of the thesis of a Jewish takeover.
Since the Jews have, in fact, played an important role in the phoney and
disordered existence of Europe since 1920, a novel born in that atmosphere
would deserve, up to a certain point, the description *enjuive*.

. . . . .

We could not have much hope for the future of our civilization if it had let
itself be invaded, without resistance, by a foreign force. In keeping its
originality and its character intact, despite Semitic interference in all
aspects of European life, our civilization has shown that its fundamental
nature is healthy. What's more, one can thus see that a solution to the Jewish
problem that would lead to the creation of a Jewish colony isolated from Europe
[ie. the Madagascar Plan] would not have, for the literary life of the West,
regrettable consequences. It would lose, in all, some personalities of mediocre
worth and would continue, as in the past, to develop according to its higher
laws of evolution.

From Paul De Man, "Jews in Contemporary Literature," *Le Soir* 4 March 1941;
translated in David Lehman, *Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of
Paul de Man* (New York: Poseidon Press, 1991), 269-71

.

[Rich Graves]

"Duncan Coons" <10467...@compuserve.com> writes:
>The lively debate around these issues has not been very helpful, for it focuses
>more on questions of personal guilt than on the possible relation of
>Heidegger's or de Man's thought to the foulest political extremism. The fact
>that de Man had become a leftist after settling in America proves not a thing.
>He never seems to have passed through a stage where he was attracted to reason
>or liberal democracy. Those who chose culture over civilization, the real
>opposition, which we have forgotten, were forced to a position beyond good and
>evil, for to them good and evil were products of cultures.
>
>From Alan Bloom, "Western Civ--And Me," *Commentary* August 1990

I assume you are posting this as an example of meaningless sociological
mumbo-jumbo. If you had some sort of point in mind, please elaborate, in
your own words.

-rich
[blue-ribbon disclaimer: it's called sarcasm, son, SARCASM]
censor the internet! http://www.stanford.edu/~llurch/potw2/
boycott fadetoblack! http://www.fadetoblack.com/prquest.htm