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interests. He cannot make this argument without adopting an attitude
very much like the one he wants to excuse.
A third type of apology accepts the meanness of Pound's senti–
ments, but tries to diminish their importance by attributing them to a
loss of control. William Chace adopts this method in
The Political
Identities of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot:
At times it seems merely that Pound is enraged at a certain general
mode of thought and behavior but must, in accordance with his
habitual procedures, give it a special designation-here "Hebrew."
It
is as if Pound, suddenly realizing that he, adamant against abstrac–
tions, was using abstractions, decided to obscure that fact by a sudden
infusion of intemperance.
Here, anti-Semitism does not indicate a central flaw in Pound's
argument so much as that argument erupting into intemperance.
Chace's position differs from the "aberration" type of apology in that
Chace feels that Pound's anti-Semitism "may be evaluated most
productively as an altogether logical corollary
to
his philosophic and
aesthetic principles, not as an inexplicable divergence from them. " But
Chace steps into a contradiction when he says 9f Pound's April 30,
1942
broadcast ("Don't start a pogrom," etc.): " There is perhaps only a
clinical explanation for such utterances. They issue from an anger
gone far beyond reason, from a desperation grown extreme." Chace
makes a dangerous equation between reason and moderation.
If
Pound's anti-Semitism is truly "an altogether logical corollary to his
philosophical and aesthetic principles," would those principles have
been more reasonable if Pound's statement of them were more moder–
ate? Would the doctrines with which Pound suffuses his poetry have
been less pernicious if Pound's vitriolic anti-Semitism had not sur–
faced?
If
we take Pound's anti-Semitism seriously we must understand
it as indicating a central flaw in his theoretical framework which takes
its toll on almost every aspect of his work.
The point of confluence of anti-Semitism, fascism and Social
Credit, occupies the center of Pound's thought. Although they some–
times occur simultaneously, these three concepts are not superficially
connected. While anti-Semitism is a component of many fascist
movements, Mussolini himself was not overtly anti-Semitic. There was
no official Jewish persecution in Italy until
1938
when the first anti–
Semitic laws were passed. Even then, the laws were resented by many
Italian fascists as a symbol of Mussolini's domination by Hitler.
Douglas consistently claimed to champion democracy and to be
