LETTERS
Editors: Alfred Kazin ("They Made It," Dissent, Fall 1988) suggests that I find the legal execution of innocents "acceptable" in the implied sense of "unobjectionable," wherefore I am...
...Kazin's remark that Professor Tuttleton (not named but clearly identifiable) has 'private reasons for snapping at Jews.' " He apologizes for the "negligence" of the editors in "not checking charges of such a nature...
...We called Professor Hook quite a few things in that article: "Philosopher of the Cold War...
...an intellectual card sharp...
...I can only repeat our warning to Hook's readers of thirty-five years ago: "The sleight-of-pen involved . . . should make the reader aware that he is in the presence of a master...
...This is an adscititious misinterpretation...
...And, finally, we labelled him "an Americanoid . . . the symmetrical opposite of the term Stalinoid," and sought to give that term a precise definition...
...This conclusion is as revealing as Kazin's charge that Cockburn is a "Jew-hater," which he now quietly retracts without comment...
...Nevertheless, Chomsky, because of the high and sometimes inhuman level of abstraction on which he proceeds politically, invariably finds himself at the side of people and causes he does not agree with...
...That much, at least, is obvious...
...Plainly, Kazin's conclusion about "the issue" could only be drawn by someone whose contempt for traditional libertarian values is so profound that he cannot conceive that they could be defended...
...Fortunately for the elegance of public discourse, the term for Hook's public philosophy that has become popular is "neoconservative" rather than our awkward "Americanoid...
...A literary critic should have been able to figure that out—had he wanted to...
...Faurisson was suspended from teaching French literature at the (state) university on grounds that he could not be protected from violence, then brought to trial for "falsification of history" and condemned by the court for failure of "responsibility" and "prudence" as a historian, ignoring relevant documentation and dismissing documents with "a semantic analysis always oriented towards negation," "allowing others" to use his writings for nefarious ends, etc...
...Le Monde, July 18, 1981...
...So if you want to write about something that you like, or dislike, in or about Dissent, Please do it quickly...
...No matter what frightful things Faurisson said, Chomsky proclaimed him just a French "liberal...
...Only to a mind immersed in totalitarian doctrine could it appear that the issue was the murder of six million Jews, not the scandalous attack on the right of freedom of expression...
...That is what Chomsky does in his political writings—he scores points...
...But not when it goes against all common sense, natural human loyalties, and interests...
...Editors: Alfred Kazin ("They Made It," Dissent, Fall 1988) suggests that I find the legal execution of innocents "acceptable" in the implied sense of "unobjectionable," wherefore I am despicable...
...I have commented on them in these pages before...
...On the contrary, and I admire him not only for his originality in language studies, but for trying to stand above the ideological and nationalistic passions that dominate our era...
...In the context "acceptable" meant "predictable" or "factually correct" as the prediction of X murders in N.Y.—or the assertion that they occurred— would be...
...GORDON K. HASKELL Santa Cruz, Calif...
...To assure that there could be no possible confusion on the matter, I also reiterated my own statements that the Holocaust was "the most fantastic outburst of collective insanity in human history" and that "one has already lost one's humanity" by even "entering into the arena of argument and counterargument" on this matter (1969, and repeatedly since...
...We reserve the right to edit letters down to fit our space and to choose which shall be printed...
...Rather, I made explicit the elementary distinction between defense of the right of free expression and defense of the views expressed...
...But because we have a long "lead time" for each issue, you have to send us your letter within three weeks after getting an issue of Dissent in order to get it into the next issue...
...Anyone who reads Dissent probably knows that on the grounds of "liberty of expression" Chomsky thought that Robert Faurisson's denial of the Holocaust, his allegation that it was nothing but a Jewish plot and hoax, deserved a 384 • DISSENT forum...
...The issue of the murder of six million Jews never arose even marginally in this "virtual defense...
...The court thus effectively established the right of the state to determine historical truth and punish deviation from it, the first endorsement of the essence of the Zhdanov doctrine in the West, to my knowledge...
...Then defends its haughty abstractions on the ground that "the other side" (meaning the United States) is just as bad...
...As for Kazin's tantrum about Cockburn, like the original lie, it falls so far beneath contempt as to merit no word of comment...
...This libertarianism and proud self-emancipation can be admirable...
...a leader of "a new school of authoritarian liberalism," and a "policeman's whistle blower on the campus...
...q To Letter Writers • We welcome succinct letters from our readers...
...ALFRED KAZIN Replies: Chomsky is indignant because I expressed myself strongly—with an irony he seems to have missed—about a constant apologist for Soviet totalitarianism and terror...
...Chomsky is very far from being that himself...
...All he is really saying is that everybody is as bad as everybody else...
...The fact that he now says we called him a "Fascist" just demonstrates that his advancing age has taken nothing off his intellectual knuckleball...
...In rereading the article today, I am amazed at our literary restraint, and the care with which we demonstrated the precise accuracy of each term...
...But the massive, even "deadly," documentation he then supplies never goes into the historic and central subject of power relations...
...But a word might be in order about the accompanying editorial note, in which Irving Howe apologizes for "Mr...
...NOAM CHOMSKY Cambridge, Mass...
...q (The correspondence regarding Mr...
...q Kazin & Cockburn Editors: In the course of explaining with such grace why he is a "Cockburn-hater" (Dissent, Winter 1988), Alfred Kazin writes that in "Noam Chomsky's virtual defense" of Robert Faurisson, "the issue was just the murder of six million Jews...
...Whenever I encounter Chomsky's scorn for the country that somehow made possible his extraordinary career and supports his constant attacks on it because he is professionally what he is, I think of something I. I. Rabi said before he died—"If I had stayed in Poland I would have been a tailor...
...What They Called Hook Editors: Sidney Hook claims, in an aside to his letter in the Spring 1988 Dissent that ". . . the New International denounced me as a Fascist...
...Again and again, as in his notorious attempt to minimize the Pol Pot massacres in Cambodia, Chomsky thinks he is scoring a point by referring to greater horrors on the "other side...
...Kazin's article is now closed...
...Except that "we" are worse...
...The efforts to conceal the real issue in a flood of deceit are not without interest...
...But notice that in his present letter Chomsky thinks the Holocaust just crazy, irrational...
...In September 1980, in a letter to Lucy Dawidowicz, Chomsky equally distinguished himself when he managed to blast Russian dissidents just because he had heard that some of them supported the American presence in Vietnam...
...Letters must be kept to about 500 words, typed, double-spaced, and carry the full address and name of the sender...
...Talking about the "other side...
...The issue was not the Holocaust—that never even arose—but rather the defense of freedom against fascist/ Stalinist doctrine...
...ERNEST VAN DEN HAAG New York, N.Y...
...Letters will not be returned to senders unless they are accompanied by stamped, self-addressed envelopes...
...I can't of course claim that no one ever called him that in the pages of the NI, but if he is referring to the article in the July–August 1953 issue in which Julius Falk and I dissected the politics, logic, and literary ethics of his book, Heresy Yes, Conspiracy No, he is mistaken...
...I would not hesitate in a comparable defense (not "virtual") of Kazin were comparable circumstances to arise, despite what I think of his views, attitudes, and technique...
...We said he used the argumentative sophistication of "a street corner rabble rouser," and was an exponent of "a sanctimonious conservatism...
...I submit that anyone who can still say this is not a serious thinker politically...
...Pointedly avoided is an apology for a far more scurrilous charge about the clearly identified Cockbum, or any hint that there might have been "negligence" in this case, from which we may draw our own conclusions...
Vol. 35 • July 1988 • No. 3
