COMMENT
STALINISM OF THE RIGHT.
According to a recent ·piece in
The Wall Street Journal,
the
New Republic
has been moving right, and
this was seen as part of a trend among magazines of opinion.
Partisan
Review
as well has been accused of becoming more conservative.
I won't presume to speak for the
New Republic,
but I have found
its political views mixed, which would indicate an open and flexible
editorial policy. For example, the
New Republic
supported Mondale,
defended Israel, and came out against "Star Wars." As for
Partisan
Review,
for which I can speak - I hope with some objectivity.- I think
the characterization depends on outworn usage of the terms left and
right , and is quite misleading. To compound the confusion,
Partisan
Review
also has been attacked for being too radical, and in one in–
stance I have been denounced (by Joseph Epstein) for not being suf–
ficiently patriotic. Unfortunately, there is a long tradition - into
which such charges fit - of political polemics that is not much con–
cerned with questions of truth or accuracy.
The sin of moving right is, of course, an invention of the left,
and often has nothing to do with the classic meaning of either right
or left. These days it is usually applied to anticommunists, to sup–
porters of Israel, to those who believe the Russians and the Cubans
are trying to spread themselves in Central America, and, generally,
to those who think the United States must be sufficiently armed to
resist Soviet military might . In short, the charge includes those who
are not taken in ,by anti-American, pacifist, or neutralist ideology.
Nor do those who accuse us of moving to the right take account of
our continued criticism of reactionary ideas and policies. It is true
that in the last few years our political emphases have shifted, but
that is because the political situation has changed. In the last decade
the ideology of pacifism and neutralism has reached staggering pro–
portions, in a way somewhat reminiscent of the thirties when fellow
travelers and liberals were taken in by pro-Soviet propaganda, and
the media and the universities were literally swamped with illusions
and lies about the promise of communism. There is, however, this
difference today: few illusions remain about the nature of the Soviet
Union; nevertheless most left intellectuals, the left and liberal pro–
fessors in the universities, and a number of media pundits, have
been receptive to ideas that question the need to resist Russian ag–
gressions and machinations . Even a part of the Democratic Party
and Congress, itself, have been affected by the incessant propaganda
