Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Style ?Deceptive and Academese The future cultural historian of America in the middle years of the twentieth century will be derelict in his...
...but one could not but feel that she was repeating with a certain gusto arguments of "leading Indian spokesmen" which run so closely parallel to her own views...
...Lewis Gannett recently raised this vital question in the New York Herald Tribune and offered this example from a book on drinking in American colleges: "With the knowledge that there are levels of drinking behavior dominated by socio-cultural forces, other levels which can be manipulated by guidance and the tools of reason?it is possible to develop techniques for a defined purpose...
...In the view of these spokesmen, "constant denunciation of Russia and Communist China as practiced in the United States is both unrealistic in making everything look black or white, and fraught with danger of war, since denunciation, as they see it, is not conducive to negotiations...
...The latter recently contributed to the Christian Science Monitor about as slick an example of this technique as one could hope to find...
...Is it really necessary for professors, especially in the field of anthropology and sociology, to express their thoughts in English that, even to a reasonably well-educated reader, seems tortured and abstruse...
...She was describing the low esteem in which the United States is held in India...
...No one suggests that scholars should write in words of one syllable...
...Thoughtful Indians," according to Mrs...
...It is as if someone had advocated negotiation with Hitler on the basis of recognizing the Nazi Empire as permanent when it stretched from the Volga to the Pyrenees...
...But books written in such "acadamese" run the risk of being limited in understanding to an esoteric few...
...3. He can be depended on to pull out all stops in attacking any national leader, whether it be Konrad Adenauer, Chiang Kai-shek or Syngman Rhee, who has been firm and consistent in opposition to Communism...
...Our future cultural historian will probably recognize in the writings of Owen Lattimore and Vera Micheles Dean the best models of anti-antiCommunism...
...Since India has an anti-anti-Communist government, quite probably Mrs...
...Dean, recognize the dangers of Communism, but they have no use for Bao Dai, Syngman Rhee and Chiang Kai-shek...
...4. By maintaining complete silence about Soviet aggressive actions, the "anti-anti" will try to convey the impression that the danger of war lies in American defensive reactions...
...They "have no desire to see a Communist regime in Indo-China," but they don't think the United States should give military aid to France...
...no discussion of whether Soviet and Chinese Communist methods of terror at home and aggression abroad deserve "denunciation...
...The circulation of the Party elite has both cohesive and corrosive consequences...
...2. While virtuously disclaiming any sympathy with Communism, the "anti-anti" will always evince strong repugnance to any vigorous criticism of Communism and still more to any practical concrete proposal for opposing it...
...Always the same picture: lukewarm disapproval of Communism, but red-hot denunciation of anyone who is fighting its armed advance...
...No suggestion that there is any "unrealism" or "danger of war" in Soviet and Chinese Communist denunciations of the United States...
...And this, in the case of a book with valuable content, seems a great pity...
...Were these expressions really necessary: "The fragmentation of authority at the periphery serves as a guaranty that the Kremlin's manipulatory monopoly will remain undisturbed...
...In his perspective, it is always an entirely imaginary or absurdly exaggerated danger to American security...
...Dean was doing an accurate job of reporting...
...This attitude gained ground as the open expression of pro-Communist or fellow-traveler viewpoints became less popular...
...5. Blandly oblivious of the immense militant Soviet empire, which, by its very existence, is a constant cause of high international tension, the "anti-anti" will always go all-out for negotiations from scratch...
...I noted similar excesses of acadamese in what was otherwise an excellent book on the organization of the Soviet Union, sound, scholarly, well documented...
...WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Style ?Deceptive and Academese The future cultural historian of America in the middle years of the twentieth century will be derelict in his duty if he does not devote some attention to the phenomenon known as anti-anti-Communism...
...While Soviet totalitarianism offers no precise yardsticks by which its political cohesiveness can be measured, the available evidence points to an intermediate range of speculation and surmise...
...There are five main tags of identification for the anti-anti-Communist: 1. While he will sometimes state that he is not a Communist, or even that he is anti-Communist, he will never give any good reason why he or anyone else should be opposed to Communism...
Vol. 37 • July 1954 • No. 28
