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PARTISAN REVIEW
radical tradition to advance views which, as I have suggested, have
no genuine connection with that tradition. Such is the state of
liberal opinion here that any idea presented as coming from the
left is more attractive to certain intellectuals than one coming
from the right. Thus Dickstein and Brooks try to discredit the
views of their opponents by dismissing them as conservative. Al–
ready in the thirties, liberal and left anticommunists were stigma–
tized as reactionary and imperialist;
andPartisan Review
has been
branded as an organ of American imperialism by those who in–
sisted its criticism of the Soviet Union was excessive.
Parroting the line of the new pacifism, that claims there is a
new " cold war, " anticommunist spirit in the air, Dickstein and
Brooks are simply standing things on their head. What is new is
the return of the old anti-anticommunism, in the form of the
peace and the antinuclear movements. It is the old Stockholm
peace movement adapted to the current political situation, and
shifted into high gear. The "cold war" charge is another label
pinned on anticommunist liberals-for intellectuals who want
a simple formula to satisfy their radical yearnings, and to assuage
the public fear of war. A fuller statement of the position can be
found in a recent issue of
The Nation
in a tendentious piece by
Andrew Kopkind, "The New Cold War Liberals," in which
Irving Howe is the new devil.
However, to this general mood that has resurrected and mo–
bilized part of the left and has taken in a number of well-meaning
but innocent people, Dickstein and Brooks have added their own
misconceptions. Dickstein, for example, lumps all of Europe
together when he talks about the peace movement. He does not
seem to know, that, as I have indicated, France and Italy are al–
most free of the masochistic peace movement of Germany. Nor
does he understand the deterrent and bargaining purpose of the
MX, which he characterizes as a first strike weapon-ignoring the
obvious fact that the United States did not go for a first strike
when it had overwhelming superiority, or that democracies are
generally incapable of a first strike. Dickstein also, in some tor–
tuous reasoning about the difference between the Holocaust and
Gulag, manages to play down the barbarism of the Soviets. Even
if one were to grant that fascism was worse, this does not improve
Stalinism, nor does it take into account that Soviet totalitarianism,
not German fascism, is the threat today. And by using terms like
