IDEAS IN SEASON
Leon Wieseltier
The intellectuals of the Left were in the news this winter;
the intellectuals of the Right are always in the news, or so it seems.
Being in the news, however, is not good for the mind. Slogans are
manufactured, instead of ideas. Arguments are abbreviated, until
they are no arguments at all. This was the case with the great
disputation about communism that was occasioned by Susan
Sontag's statement at a meeting called by Writers and Artists in
Support of Solidarity on February 6 to protest the repression in
Poland. The purpose of the meeting was to make the protest in a
language that was not Ronald Reagan's. A worthy purpose,
certainly, though not everything that Reagan says is wrong. It is
difficult, in fact, to demur from the President's analysis of the Polish
situation in his Christmas speech. The same cannot be said about
those who compared the fate of Solidarity to the fate of PATCO, or
who contended (as did Gore Vidal) that even as Poland is occupied
by troops America is occupied by corporations; you demur from
such views or you are a fool. Sontag demurred. She accused the Left
of having averted its gaze from the essential character of
communism. A friend who was at Town Hall, a learned historian of
American radicalism and once a radical himself, phoned to report
that Sontag's speech was "a turning point in the history of the
American Left." He reported, too, that she was booed. She must
have done something right, I thought. When I read her remarks, I
thought again. They are an undistinguished contribution to a
distinguished cause.
Sontag's conclusion quickly became famous. (It was delivered
in the epigrammatic manner that is the intellectual's best hope for
fame.) "Communism," she said,
"is
fascism-successful fascism, if
you will." And, at once, she repeated: "Communism is in itself a
variant, the most successful variant, of fascism. Fascism with a
human face."
