Dear Editor
ON ART DEAR EDITOR MORAVIA'S CHINA Alberto Moravia ("The True Believers," NL, June 17) is not a typical Westerner but his characterization of the Chinese Red Guards as "babies," his assumption...
...Mao's appeal to the regimented ranks of students—motivated by his shrewd awareness that they were ideologically preconditioned to be his trusted followers—has not changed the inward character of the feud...
...Perhaps now he will address himself to the question of how that need might be satisfied while negative home environments exist, and will surely continue to exist, in such significant numbers...
...Or even an invitation from LBJ to Abernathy to lunch at the White House...
...Instead, the Administration reacted with the old stupid fears and insistence on law and order, business-as-usual...
...Jean Garrigue...
...Nevertheless, let me encourage your efforts and thank you for that bit of intoxication...
...The stalemate between Mao and his precautious adversaries, who probably suspect that even after his death Maoism will still remain the official theology regardless of the person or persons inheriting his chairmanship, caused the Red Guard movement to grow to gigantic proportions...
...They are and will remain the integral part of any well-functioning, orthodox Communist state in theory and in fact...
...form...
...Cambridge, Mass...
...Idealists" seem more realistic in their response to current problems than those we call "realists...
...New York City Laszlo Thomas Kiss RACIAL INTERACTION In the June 3 issue Bayard Rustin ("Education in a Changing Society," NL) writes, "It is indispensible that opportunities for interaction between races be expanded...
...The prophets of doom are so eager to characterize America as an ugly blot upon the world that they shut their eyes to the prevailing mood of violence and nihilism everywhere...
...The most recent example is a relatively harmless one, but it comes out of the same mold: The invasion of television station wndt in New York on June 25 by a band of hippies...
...These "true believers" are nothing more than the fruit of an intellectually sterilized, monolithic educational system...
...Francis P. Schulter TYLER You and the majority of your readers would probably label me as an "ultraconservative," and, with my understanding of the term, I would probably accept your compliment...
...Mao and his 700 million are abstractions for the students at Berkeley, the Sorbonne, and the Free University of Berlin...
...There are many parents in many "inner cities" who must be tormented by this question...
...Th^se are not the poor demanding bread, but anchorless persons with "'identity crises" who achieve some kind of perverse "recognition" and release through acts of violence and the publicity that follows...
...I have read Tyler before but have never found anything to particularly praise or denounce...
...There are also a large number of parents who do not instruct their children in the simplest attitudes of honesty and fair play...
...Technology and police force are the two sacred intruments of Leninism...
...This explosion on the part of the "have-nots" who are more psychologically upset than materially impoverished is a worldwide situation that really deserves examination...
...What were their reasons...
...Bravo...
...But these "profound" social analysts are not interested...
...On the other hand, these students' unqualified enthusiasm for the Cultural Revolution indicates a juvenile lack of perception in judging the meaning of mass movements in a closed society...
...Here one should mention God-ard's film La Chinoise as a dreadful but explicit example of a sympathetic presentation of the commitment to violence...
...I read your magazine quite frequently, mostly for the exercise of picking out the irrationalities of your writers...
...Mao's belligerent, antidemocratic orthodoxy is a matter of lifelong record and his own published definitions are the battle cries of the various Western student movements...
...between boys who are taught to play baseball and boys who are taught to play the role of pimp for their older sisters or, sometimes, mothers...
...But the new ideology of violence that is being advocated and implemented by Western students in the name of Mao and his disciples raises a question: Shouldn't the free press make an extra effort to provide these flamboyant rebels with a more objective picture of their distant totalitarian ideal...
...Any indication of awareness and sympathy would have averted the hostility and indignation that built up...
...The problems of this society will not be solved unless and until our children are brought into a common encounter and encouraged to forge a new and more viable design for life...
...The forcible dismantling of the City and the imprisonment of Ralph Aber-nathy were only the final expressions of a prevailing White House attitude of legalistic piety and general indifference...
...The idea enchanted students in the West and induced men of such extraordinary caliber as Moravia to conclude that Mao had abandoned the use of force in subduing the dissenting mandarins of his classless society...
...As usual, the victim (in this case the educational television station) is a sympathetic and reasonable parly—more insidious to irrational people than an outright opponent...
...There is nothing new about a prominent author from the West paying a visit to the puzzling land of the last Utopia and writing a sympathetic report...
...These artificially obtuse "babies" received a license from their leader—whose cult of personality far exceeds Stalin's and whose alleged disinterest in personal power is really a kind of obscure incapacity, the result of an unexplained breakdown in his power to control Party leadership—to accuse and spread rumors about some elders of Chinese Communism whom they had never seen...
...It is the best piece I have had the pleasure of reading in your publication...
...Washington, D.C...
...However, let me express my appreciation for Gus Tyler's recent article, "A Plea For Sanity" (nl, June 17...
...As Tyler wrote, Sirhan is relevant "not as a commentary on the United States but on the state of the world...
...New York City Harry Reisner CORRECTION Due to an unseen editorial hand in that twilight interval between proof and publication, a word that I used in my review of Boris Pasternak's Letters to Georgian Friends (NL, May 20), the word "poet" as applied to Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva, was altered to "poetess...
...What the egalitarian members of these movements don't seem to realize is that their decadent fascination with this dynamic idol might all be in vain...
...That these people are affected by the Leftist mythology that society (rather than their own tortured selves) is the enemy seems unquestionable...
...While this is understandable, it also means that these students have failed to explore a vitally important subject: How the average, disciplined Chinese peasant feels about the revolutionary state which he helped to create 20 years ago, but which has not allowed him any choice since then except to uncritically accept the bureaucratic rule of the commissars...
...The station, they said, was "part of the establishment" and was composed of "phony liberals" who distorted the truth about such events as the Columbia student affair...
...In addition, many children do not find their way into these community programs at all...
...Richard J. Margolis wrote in his excellent article about Resurrection City ("Building a Ghetto," NL, June 3...
...The split within the hierarchy was to remain the private affair of the top dozen...
...This vacuum in Mao's real power became the source of the illusion that Mao had become a benevolent dictator...
...From the evidence thus far, it would seem that the assassination was touched off by motives completely unrelated to American life, for it was apparently committed by an Arab obsessed with the Middle East conflict...
...The home environments that are created by these parents have effectively negated the efforts put forth by community organizations of all sorts...
...This kind of unreal thinking, with its indictment of American society as the enemy, also tends to remove responsibility from where it belongs—on the psychopaths who commit such crimes...
...In Washington's inner city, for example, there is ample opportunity for a "common encounter" and for giving encouragement "to forge a new and more viable design for life...
...I would like it to be known that I do not favor that coventional and Non-U usage of poetess for poet...
...As a result, the crimes seem to be multiplying...
...Perhaps the rest of the issue also manifests this type of enlightened thinking, but I have not as yet read the remainder and cannot make that judgment...
...Yet the Administration demonstrated little or no understanding of what the poor were asking...
...For in the final encounter they could all be reclassified as "class aliens," who can expect no compromise from the "villagers" when the time for their ideological onslaught against the "cities" of the world will come...
...Finally, and this is most important, how can responsible parents help without running the very real risk of having their children infected by the disease they are being used to cure...
...Darrell F. Dvorak Gus Tyler's article was a welcome rational note at a time when the eager prophets of doom were once again having a field day in other publications, proclaiming America's unique penchant for violence...
...And each act of violence further strengthens the belief of the Leftist "prophets of doom" in the validity of their delusions...
...Arlington, Va...
...How can there be common encounter between children who are cared for and cherished by the elders in their families, and those who are left to roam the streets unfed and unsupervised...
...ON ART DEAR EDITOR MORAVIA'S CHINA Alberto Moravia ("The True Believers," NL, June 17) is not a typical Westerner but his characterization of the Chinese Red Guards as "babies," his assumption that Mao has not executed Liu Shao-chi because the Chairman "is not Stalin," and finally his conclusion that "Mao does not want personal power based on violence," seem like the observations of a naive tourist demonstrating proverbial credulity...
...We will see the results, I am afraid, in the reaction of the ghettos this summer...
...They took over a program that was in progress, physically attacking anyone in their way and shouting obscenities on the air...
...Rustin has eloquently stated a need which has already been recognized by parents who sincerely want to help but who are not innovators in dealing with problems of social reThe New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...New York City Tom Craig RESURRECTION CITY "The poor are asking for nothing the rest of us do not already take for granted...
...This kind of petrified behavior in reacting to urgent social problems is precisely why voters in the New York primary elected only 12 Humphrey delegates, while 62 McCarthy delegates were elected...
...They automatically assumed that Mao and his close associates would win the Party struggle, so they went ahead supporting him by mumbling such infantile slogans as the one urging scientists to recite Mao's thoughts while working on China's nuclear projects...
...One wonders how much imagination it would have taken for Lyndon Johnson to realize what an impact a visit from him to the City would have had...
Vol. 51 • July 1968 • No. 14
