VLVL "closed ideological minds" (232)

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 09, 2004 5:28 AM
Subject: Re: VLVL "closed ideological minds" (232)

> otto -- wrong here, it's Rob:
> >> Thus, he's to the "left" of Ho Chi Minh, which puts him in
> >> the same league as Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
> >

Otto:
> > If he's left of the Left he isn't necessarily fond of Pol Pot. I wonder
> > where you draw this conclusion from. Definitely not from the novel.
>
> Again you need to change my words to launch your attack. Rex's political
> sympathies are most definitely to the "left" of Ho Chi Minh

That maybe the case but still doesn't bring Pol Pot into the game because
Pol Pot wasn't left at all. He was a fascist. The German nazis have called
themselves "socialist" too in their party name, but that's been just for
names
sake and had no real meaning at all.

> (who, by the
> way, was indeed a communist dictator and renowned for murdering and
> otherwise disposing of political opponents and dissidents).

"disposing of political opponents and dissidents" is indeed something
Vineland is about.

Even Eisenhower had admitted that Ho Chi Minh would have been elected by the
majority of the Vietnamese people in 1956 if the US hadn't prevented the
election. While fighting the Japanese before August 1945 the USA even
supported him. He became a communist dictator of Soviet style because the
support from the Warsaw Pact guaranteed the independence of at least North
Vietnam.

> In the context,
> this does indeed place him in the same league as Pol Pot. I've not said
> that
> the novel states he is fond of Pol Pot, however; the communist takeover of
> Kampuchea and the murderous purges which followed (those "programs [and]
...
> earthly sequences of cause and effect" which Rex hopes to see come into
> existence in South East Asia) are still several years away yet.
>

I think I can follow you here. But it seems very far stretched. There's only
one argument for your thesis: Rex has proven that he's willing and able to
kill for his convictions. Just like a true Puritan.

> And I don't envisage that Pynchon is an apologist for Pol Pot or a denier
> (like Chomsky was) of the Cambodian genocide.
>
> best

As I said already I'm not especially interested in Chomsky. If he has denied
the Cambodian genocide he's been in error. But to be honest about it I blame
the USA as well for the killing fields. Without taking over the French
colonial war thirty years earlier there wouldn't have been a Pol Pot.
And I blame the UN for condemning Vietnam for ousting Pol Pot.

And Joe is of course right. Ho was primarily a nationalist and not so much
an agent of the world revolution.

Otto