"fascistic disposition" paragraph

[jbor]

on 14/5/03 3:49 PM, Otto wrote:
 
> Nobody is a shitty writer only because some readers don't get the full
> meaning of the writing.

This was Paul Nightingale's argument too, that people who don't read it your
way are deficient as readers. If Pynchon meant to refer to 9/11 then he
wouldn't have described it as "the moment enemy bombs begin to fall". (Note
the way the use of the present tense in the sentence situates this as a
hypothetical or generic proposition rather than as a specific event which
has happened.) If a reference to 9/11 was intended, then it is "shitty"
writing. 

> In times of war (and we're at war right now) it's the general rule that
> the truth is the first victim.

World War II was a military war waged across the globe by many nations over
a 6 year period. An estimated 15 million soldiers died. 35 million
civilians. A generation lost. The current world situation is vastly
different. 

> Do you really believe you have to tell me the meaning of the word Blitzkrieg?

You asked what "altering the landscape" had to do with the Blitz. It's what
the dropping of German bombs on London did to the city and the surrounding
area - it altered the landscape. You seemed to be disputing this fact. The
Blitz was a time when actual "bombs" fell on London, "altering the
landscape".   

> I still don't see how the images apply to the Blitz specifically and not to
> a country attacked in general (thus including 9/11)?

I've stated time and again that there are more general ramifications in the
paragraph. Our disagreement is simply about whether the paragraph refers
specifically to the Blitz and the British politics during WW II, or whether
it refers specifically to 9/11 and American politics since 2001. You're
setting up a false binary, a straw man argument.

> But I think you did not accept this binary opposition of 'homeland security'
> versus 'civil liberties', what to me is the heart of the matter and, what I
> believe, is something he wants to point out to. Reading 'homeland security'
> in a post-9/11-text by Thomas Pynchon or any other postmodern writer makes
> my ears ring. 

The words "homeland security" aren't anywhere in the text. Like Barbara,
you're rewriting it to make it say what you want it to say.

> Which is why I like Pynchon in his non-fiction texts who remains critical
> without taking sides, which is the real definition of 'dissident Left'.

I don't know if anyone would agree with this definition. It's not the
definition of "dissident Left" which Pynchon offers. Orwell certainly took
sides on issues. Being critical without taking sides, and without proposing
any constructive alternatives, is what I'd call being a fence-sitting crank.

You seem to be arguing that your opinions and definitions are "real", mine
aren't, and that historical evidence is irrelevant. The very point that
Pynchon is making in the Foreword is that Orwell was concerned that a
democratically-elected "'Socialist'" government (Attlee's in 1945-51) would
turn into a fascist regime.

He also doesn't make any significant distinction between Stalinism and
Nazism (or British Labour!) in this respect:

      What is clear from his letters and articles at the time he was
    working on _1984_ is Orwell's despair over the postwar state of
    "Socialism". What in Keir Hardie's time had been an honorable
    struggle against the incontrovertibly criminal behavior of
    capitalism toward those whom it used for profit had become, by
    Orwell's time, shamefully institutional, bought and sold, in too
    many instances concerned with maintaining itself in power. And
    that was just in England - abroad, the impulse had been further
    corrupted, in immeasurably more sinister ways, leading at length
    to the Stalinist gulags and the Nazi death camps. (x-xi)

It's interesting that there's none of that hedging from earlier in the essay
in this particular paragraph (eg. "incontrovertibly criminal behavior", "had
become", "in too many instances"). Pynchon certainly wears anti-capitalist
sentiments on his sleeve here!

best  


> 
>> In real terms, this
>> "left of the Left" category which Pynchon invents, in the period from
>> WW II to now, has generated some of the most destructive and
>> heinously cruel totalitarian regimes the world has ever seen, and
>> some of the most despicable tyrants: Stalin, Pol Pot, the Gang of Four,
>> the Ceausescus, Saddam, Mugabe, Kim Il-Jong ... The list is a long one.
>> 
> 
> None of these I would call really "left" or "socialists" -- the usage of the
> term socialist in official statements is very wide. It appears even in the
> name the German fascists had given to their party NSDAP: National Socialist
> German Workers Party -- nothing could be more wrong than 'socialist' and
> 'workers'. If those tyrants you mention were "Left" they were only
> "official" and not at all "dissident Left" which is the term Pynchon applies
> to Orwell on p. 9:
> 
> "Orwell thought of himself as a member of the "dissident Left," as
> distinguished from the "official Left," meaning basically the British Labour
> Party, most of which he had come, well before the Second World War, to
> regard as potentially, if not already, fascist." (ix)
> 
> To my knowledge there hasn't been a democratic socialist state anywhere on
> this planet yet. Allende has been stopped very early.
> 
> And, on the other side the 'liberal democracy' USA has fought a murderous &
> criminal war in Vietnam, is guilty of financing & promoting terrorism &
> totalitarianism in Latin America in various cases, all done in order to
> prevent foreign countries from becoming socialist. Does this speak against
> liberal democracy in general? I don't think so.
> 
>> Further, isn't this whole Left (= "good") versus Right (= "evil") one of
>> those constructed binaries which you're always banging on about? It's so
>> often used (not by you, please note) by these self-defined "dissidents" as
>> a rhetorical tactic to discredit and dismiss opposing points of view
> without
>> engaging with them, and likewise to label and marginalise the opponents of
>> their, similarly self-defined, "party line", that it seems little
> different
>> from the sort of propaganda and attempted coercion which they're always
>> accusing elected governments and the media of indulging in. Opportunities
>> to consider and debate every case, every issue, on its independent merits,
>> and
>> for elected officials to offer a "conscience vote" when one is warranted,
>> are far more likely to occur in a liberal democracy and within an elected
>> parliament than under any other political system.
>> 
> 
> I agree to the last of course, and I think that "Left is right and Right is
> wrong, better decide which side you're on" is as wrong as "right or wrong,
> my country" and both sayings are absolutely the doublespeak Orwell was
> critical about, on one hand that pseudo-"socialism" that invents excuses for
> Stalinist gulags or alike if it serves the official party line, on the other
> hand that proto-fascism that declares everything as allowed as long as it
> serves the national interest. But I wonder if we liberal democrats aren't
> guilty of the same doublespeak too in accepting that there are good (ours)
> and bad (those of the tyrants of the world) weapons of mass destruction. And
> I'm feeling uneasy about Guantanamo, the partly suspension of the legal
> system as a wartime necessity.
> 
> What Churchill's measures mean, what 'homeland security' means to me (and I
> believe to Pynchon too) is that in order to fight the totalitarian enemy
> effectively you have to become a little bit like that enemy, take some of
> his 'qualities' and there's always the danger that something remains when
> the raids are over. And with modern technical possibilities there's the
> danger that some of the meaning of the word 'freedom' might be gone forever.