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LIONEL
ABEL
the facts as we know them, and we have no right
to
deduce a judg–
ment of them from our speculations about the modern world-not even
from our most personal response to it; not from rage or despair at
what has happened already, and not from fear of what is ahead.
(Editors' note: Since Mr. Macdonald's piece came in as we were going
to press, Mr. Abel has had to comment on it separately.)
Why does Dwight Macdonald want to turn what began as a
debate into a barroom brawl? I never attacked Miss Arendt's character,
so Mr. Macdonald is not really answering me when he implies that I
myself have a bad one. Perhaps I have. But I never thought of
Partisan
R eview
as a Sunday School; neither did I think of it as a saloon. I am
not sure from the tone of his piece what Mr. Macdonald, formerly one
of its editors, thinks
PR
is now.
About this piece of Mr. Macdonald's:
in
the single instance in which
he argues seriously, citing facts as evidence, he argues not against me
but against Miss Arendt. In trying to disprove Miss Arendt's view that
the German people had some responsibility for Hitler he shows what
we all know: that when he has facts, he can argue. But for the rest
of his piece, on the main theses of Miss Arendt's book, theses which he
insists he supports, Mr. Maodonald relies entirely on abusive cracks
against Miss Arendt's critics-me especially.
So
why should I answer him? No, I will use the space remaining
to me to meet his friend Miss McCarthy's arguments, for she, unlike
him, gave some. I must confess that when I first read her piece against
me, I thought her mind was a famine; but now I see that to Dwight
Macdonald it must have seemed like a feast. Perhaps I dismissed some
of her points too summarily.
On the subject of the Jewish C.ouncils:
In reply to my criticism
of Miss Arendt for not having treated the mass executions of Jews in
Russia, Miss McCarthy argued: the answer is Eichmann, her point
being that Eichmann was not concerned in these Russian killings which
had no relation to his problems of transport or logistics.
But whatever Eichmann was concerned with, Miss Arendt had to
be
concerned with the ease with which Jews were killed in Russia,
where there was no Jewish leadership. For since Miss Arendt held that
the J ews were weakened by their leaders (Mr. Macdonald and Miss
McCarthy evidently concur), the mass execution of leaderless Jews in
Russia is a fact she was bound in all conscience to evaluate. So Miss
McCarthy's argument for Miss Arendt on this point is not a very good
one. It is made still less valid by the fact that Miss Arendt in her book
