WALTER LAQUEUR
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cians to conduct policy and to accept responsibility; it is the task of
intellectuals to oppose.
Why were there no mass demonstrations and only few editorials
against American interventionism in the early I950S? What opposition
there was came mainly from the Republican isolationists and only to a
lesser extent from the radical Left.
I.
F.
Stone, the Noam Chomsky of his
time, claimed that South Korea had attacked the North, but not many
people were willing to follow his lead. It had, of course, to do with the
lessons of the Second World War and the fact that there was a Democ–
ratic administration in Washington. Fifty years later Stone's successors
and their conspiracy theories are dominating the public discourse.
True, there were disturbing similarities between the totalitarianism of
the Left and the Right-the one party state, the lack of individual free–
dom, the propaganda and terror machine. But it could have been argued
in I948 and'49 (as it was in the I970S) that there was a profound dif–
ference between reactionary and progressive violence, that the similari–
ties were, after all, superficial and that the very concept of
totalitarianism was reactionary.
Perhaps the liberal anti-communists were led astray because they
were a little naive. However, the attitudes of the intelligentsia in Europe
were similarly "conformist" in supporting their governments- with the
notable exception of France and (in part) Italy, which beginning in I947
took a strong pro-Soviet, or at the very least neutralist, position. But
why Italy and France, and why did the British and the Germans react
differently at the time? Perhaps one has to go back in history a little fur–
ther to understand the mainsprings of post-World War II thinking.
INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICAL COMMITMENT: Political attitudes of the
intelligentsia in all major European countries and the United States were
on the whole
bien pensant
before World War
I.
Historically it is not
quite true that intellectuals were revolutionaries
par excellence
as
Schumpeter had maintained. Russia under Tsarism was the one major
exception, and it need not be explained why. But in Russia, too, the
intelligentsia did not support the Bolsheviks, and at the time of the rev–
olution of I9I7 the old intelligentsia emigrated or, with a few excep–
tions, was destroyed inside Russia .
Between the two world wars the European intelligentsia was split
between Left and Right, and the same was true for the United States. In
most countries, certainly in Central and Eastern Europe, the Right was
stronger: The Nazis emerged as the leading party in university elections
in Germany well before they achieved a predominant position in the
