14
PARTISAN REVIEW
from the events of New York with a
cordon sanitaire.
But, in view of
the continuing violence, isn't it about time to tell another story; to aban–
don the epic of the victims, to speak of negotiations and of reconcilia–
tion, to celebrate those compromises that allow for ordinary daily life?
-October
8,
2001
Translated from the French
by
Edith Kurzweil
PAUL HOLLANDER
Anti-Americanism: Murderous and Rhetorical
I
was in Budapest on September I!th and learned about the attack in
a new shopping center where TV sets were tuned to CNN. Of course
I was unprepared for the news and thought that this was some kind
of docudrama using the title"Attack on America."
Once more a major historical event was totally unanticipated. Other
forms of terrorism had been discussed over the years, but not the use of
hijacked planes against buildings. The actual devastation was less dis–
turbing than the easy triumph of evil. As a social scientist, I am not sup–
posed to think of "evil" as an acceptable concept. We know that
desirable and undesirable traits are part of all human beings, that a
sharp delineation between good and evil is a primitive notion. Yet I
could not help thinking of evil, even though the use of such an archaic
concept without underlying religious beliefs is problematic. But some
phenomena compel its use, for instance the gas chambers, torture to
extract false confessions (as in the Communist show trials), the Gulag,
the lynching of blacks in the United States, as well as non-political
crimes involving gratuitous brutality and the apparent pleasure in its
display. Surely the deliberate, carefu lly planned mass murder of civilians
whose only "crime" was being Americans qualifies as an act of evil.
In contrast to the moral outrages of the past century, the latest was
not the product of some impersonal design committed in the spirit of
"obedience to authority" by people indifferently playing their roles in
an elaborate division of labor. These were a handful of highly motivated
individuals under no compulsion except by their beliefs and hatreds,
inspired by a mixture of religious-po litical ideas and a willingness to
destroy themselves for the sake of destroying thousands of others. They
