WILLIAM PHILLIPS
427
period and its spokesmen.
But Hitchens uses the book to push his own peculiar line. He des–
ignates Trotsky as the central symbolic figure, and makes it appear as if
most of the New York intellectuals were defined by their relation to the
"old man," the revolutionary leader and then the leading critic of Stalin
and his regime. Thus the curve of Trotsky's life is made out to be the
paradigm for the lives and careers of the New York intellectuals.
This picture, however, is not only misleading, but it follows the
pattern of the Stalinist diatribes against the anti-Stalinists by labeling
them Trotskyists. Of course, in the Stalinist arsenal, Trotskyist meant re–
actionary and imperialist.
[n
Hitchens's arsenal, the invented Trotskyists
turn out to be mostly Jews. Maybe this is not intentional, but it is
strangely suggestive.
Among his other ideological innuendos, Hitchens pictures Lionel
Trilling as a Trotskyist who later masqueraded as a "gentleman-liberal."
He also curiously defines the problem of the intellectual in politics as one
of elites. "Should the masses or the intellectuals," asks Hitchens, "be the
proper target of enlightenment?" Apparently, the whole complex history
of intellectual responsibility and engagement boils down to this.
In addition, Hitchens distorts the Ledeen episode, making it appear
as though
Partisan Review
sold out the entire liberal heritage of the West
by considering a piece by Michael Ledeen. Hitchens falsely describes the
piece, in which Michael Ledeen discussed the process of arriving at for–
eign policies, as an attack on democracy. And he further tells a politically
accusatory story about the magazine, fed him, he says, by Norman Birn–
baum. According to this version, we postponed our fiftieth anniversary in
order to conceal our past - a past, by the way, I've written about several
times and went into fully in my memoir,
A Partisan View (1983).
Finally, the piece is spiced with politically correct observations: such
as the characterization of the "J udenrat" as being "at the service of the
empire"; a bow in the direction of the Palestinians; a few cracks against
those who supported the Gulf War, as well as a hint of Israeli interests in
the war; and an often-repeated remark about the "scale of Iraqi civilian
. casualties."
The rest of the piece is harmless but pointless.
w.
P.
