Playing the racist card

The New Neo Posted on by

In this post of mine about Peretz’s article on the attitude of the Presbyterian and Episcopalian church leaderships towards Israel and the Palestinians, I found this interesting comment from one of my many anonymous readers:

“nihilistic darlings”
“murderous ideologies”
“the most murderous people on the planet”

Just a few gems of some of the most over the top anti-Arab propaganda I’ve seen lately! I find it ironic that, in your attempt to point out Anti-Semitism, you let loose with anti-Arab vitriol.

The first two phrases are quotes from me, the second is from another commenter. In fact, I find it ironic that my post was most decidedly not an attempt to point out anti-Semitism, which makes me question whether “anonymous” even read the post itself with any care. But that’s a side issue.

I call the comment “interesting” because it demonstrates a trend I’ve noticed over and over again among the left and others who disagree with those criticizing Islamofascists: the playing of, not the race card, but the racist card. When in doubt, when all argument and all logic fails, when it’s not possible or when it’s merely difficult to attack an argument on the merits, the preferred approach is to call the writer a racist.

Is it racism to speak truth about a general trend among a group? If someone were to say, for example, that Ethiopians and Kenyans are overrespresented among distance runners–in fact, are probably the best runners, as a group, in the world–is that racist? It’s just a fact. Does it mean that all Ethiopians and Kenyans are good runners? No. Does it mean that the running propensities of Ethiopians and Kenyans are innate and hardwired? Not necessarily. It’s simply an observation borne out by facts–these groups are overrepresented among distance runners.

So it is for the Palestinians. There is a nihilistic strain among Palestinians, and in many other Arab cultures, that is quite powerful. Are nihilists overrepresented in Arab culture? Yes. Are all Arabs nihilists? Of course not. Are all nihilists Arabs? Absolutely not. But to call the Palestinians the “nihilistic darlings” of the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches is simply a statement of fact, and one that, in the original context in which I wrote it, was directed towards critiquing the leadership of those churches (not towards rank and file Episcopalians and Presbyterians, by the way–and would it be racist if it had been? Are all groups races? For that matter, are the Palestinians even a race? Of course not).

In addition, note that commenter “anonymous” is not particularly careful with his/her quotes and their interpretation. Yes indeed, I did write “nihilistic darlings” about the Palestinians whom the Church leadership favors–meaning, of course, the widespread support of Palestinians in general for the numerous nihilists among them. But here is the context for the quote “murderous ideologies”:

Although some in these particular churches have a history of fellow-traveling with other murderous ideologies such as Communism, Peretz rightly points out that…

To call such a comment “over the top anti-Arab propoganda” and “vitriol” is, quite simply, an absurdity. By “murderous ideologies” I think it’s quite clear that I am referring to terrorism and Islamofascism, not to Arabs or to Islam as a whole, and in this quote I’m especially applying the phrase to Communism. Hardly a race, and certainly not Arabs.

As for the final quote, “the most murderous people on the planet,” the actual quote is from this comment, and it goes like this:

Hoping to be spared the hatred of the most murderous peoples on the planet, they are ready to feed the Jews to the crocodile in the hopes they will be eaten last.

I’m not sure whether it’s important that the word is actually “peoples” and not “people.” But, once again, it’s simply a fact. As Samuel Huntington put it “Islam has bloody borders.”

Why deny it? Is it racist to say anything critical about a group, however true, however obvious, however important it is to know? If the “anonymouses” of the world had their way back in WWII, would we have had to have kept mum about the murderous ideology of Nazism, and its support among the German people?

How do I truly feel about Islam? Well, along with Dr. Sanity, I don’t much care one way or the other about it. I never really noticed it until recently. I only care about it when it’s used by murderers as an excuse to kill me and other innocent people, and to glory in such murders. And Arabs? They’re fine, never had a moment’s problem with them, until I realized that so many of them were celebrating and advocating the death of Americans, Israelis, Jews, and other westerners, and that there is something about the culture that seems to foster and support this sort of thing. It is simply an empirical fact, and if we ignore it or cover it up, we do so, quite literally, at our own peril.

Peretz’s “J’accuse”

The New Neo Posted on by

Via Dean Esmay, here’s a thought-provoking Martin Peretz article from last week’s issue of The New Republic (no subscription necessary in this case).

Peretz’s “J’accuse” is directed towards the support by the hierarchy of the Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches of their nihilistic darlings, the Palestinians. Although some in these particular churches have a history of fellow-traveling with other murderous ideologies such as Communism, Peretz rightly points out that, at least at the beginning, it was possible to be a well-meaning useful idiot and believe the ideals of Communism without seeing where it would lead. But he also rightly points out that it’s hard to see how one can ignore the fact that the Palestinians currently demonstrate:

a stagnant class structure, unproductive economic habits, an uncurious and increasingly reactionary culture, deeply cruel relationships between the sexes and toward gays, no notion of an independent judiciary, and a primitive religious mentality that gains prestige in society even as it emphasizes the promise of sexual rewards in paradise for martyrs ”” a crude myth that has served successfully as an incentive for suicide bombings not only in Israel but also in Iraq and throughout the Arab world. And no real challenge to any of these backward actualities has arisen in all of the turmoil the movement has sown.

Hardly the stuff to which the “progressive” UN-loving pacifists in the Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches ought to be drawn. So, why are they? Peretz’s conclusion is that they are reacting against something rather than towards something, and the “something” they are reacting against is Israel, through the time-honored tradition of anti-Semitism–not overt this time, but covert.

I agree that anti-Semitism is probably part of what drives them (whether they know it or not) to focus rather obsessively on the Palestinian cause, while many other far more worthwhile causes are ignored.

But I also disagree with Peretz; I don’t think anti-Semitism is their main motivation at all. I think that Peretz’s background on the left may be blinding him to the fact that becoming a Palestinian booster is voguish on the left as a whole. I don’t think it’s possible to ignore the effects of trendiness, propaganda, and above all the idea of Palestinians as impoverished third-world victims vs. the imperialist and Western Jews of Israel. Forgot the reality–for example, the number of impoverished Jewish emigrants in Israel from Arab countries themselves–the triumph of what in my previous post was referred to as “imagology” is a huge part of this belief system.

Years ago, Yeats famously wrote in “Among School Children”: Both nuns and mothers worship images. I think the Presbyterian and Episcopalian leaders are hardly immune to another sort of image-worship, that of the political, and I think that’s what is operating here far more powerfully than the latent anti-Semitism that is probably part of the mix.

Imagology vs. reality

The New Neo Posted on by

There are certain authors I keep coming back to. One of them is Milan Kundera, whom I first read and loved about twenty-five years ago, but whose works, on rereading, seem even more loaded with political and philosophical insight than I realized at the time. One can open them randomly and start reading, and find something pertinent on nearly every page.

Here’s a quote from Kundera’s 1990 work Immortality that I think bears another look. He is talking about the ascendance of imagery (which he refers to as “imagology,” meaning suggestive images and slogans) over ideology, or even over reality:

For example, communists used to believe that in the course of capitalist development the proletariat would gradually grow poorer and poorer, but when it finally became clear that all over Europe workers were driving to work in their own cars, [the communists] felt like shouting that reality was deceiving them. Reality was stronger than ideology. And it is in this sense that imagology surpassed it: imagology is stronger than reality, which has anyway long ceased to be what it was for my grandmother, who lived in a Moravian village and still knew everything through her own experience: how bread is baked, how a house is built, how a pig is slaughtered and the meat smoked, what quilts are made of, what the priest and the schoolteacher think about the world; she met the whole village every day and knew how many murders were committed in the country over the last ten years; she had, so to speak, personal control over reality, and nobody could fool her by maintaining that Moravian agriculture was thriving when people at home had nothing to eat. My Paris neighbor spends his time an an office, where he sits for eight hours facing an office colleague, then he sits in his car and drives home, turns on the TV, and when the announcer informs him that in the latest public opinion poll the majority of Frenchmen voted their country the safest in Europe (I recently read such a report), he is overjoyed and opens a bottle of champagne without ever learning that three thefts and two murders were committed on his street that very day.

Public opinion polls are the critical instrument of imagology’s power, because they enable imagology to live in absolute harmony with the people. The imagologue bombards people with questions: how is the French economy prospering? is there racism in France? is racism good or bad? who is the greatest writer of all time? is Hungary in Europe or in Polynesia? which world politician is the sexiest? And since for contemporary man reality is a continent visited less and less often and, besides, justifiably disliked, the findings of polls have become a kind of higher reality, or to put it differently: they have become the truth. Public opinion polls are a parliament in permanent session, whose function it is to create truth, the most democratic truth that has ever existed. Because it will never be at variance with the parliament of truth, the power of imagologues will always live in truth, and although I know that everything human is mortal, I cannot imagine anything that would break its power.

Kundera has described a great deal of what drives public opinion today, and how public opinion in turn shapes the perception of reality in a circular feedback loop facilitated by polling. He doesn’t mention the MSM directly here (he does get to it later), but of course it’s a big part of this loop.

I found his analysis of why it is possible for the process to work this way particularly compelling; the scale of modern life makes it impossible to know about things in the way people in a village used to know what was going on in that small arena. And so we are dependent on image shapers and the media to construct a reality for us, and we are often none the wiser that it is a distorted reality.

Kundera follows this passage with another one that discusses the ascendance of imagology over ideology. Even Kundera didn’t quite foresee the way in which sophisticated imagology (the Al Jazeera network, for example) would feed into an ancient ideology (Islamicist supremecy and supercesssionism) along with advanced techniques of terrorism, and create the mess we encounter today.

Avoiding racial profiling at all costs?

The New Neo Posted on by

This editorial is from Tuesday’s New York Times, but the attitude it expresses could have been found in almost any liberal newspaper.

Subsequent to the London subway bombings, New York has had to decide how to increase security on public transit, and so there have been random searches of backpacks and the like. The Times editorial explains:

The police officers must be careful not to give the impression that every rider who looks Arab or South Asian is automatically a subject of suspicion. They will naturally choose to search the bags of those people who appear suspicious, like those wearing bulky clothes in warm weather. But those who are selected simply because they are carrying packages should be chosen in a way that does not raise fears of racial profiling – by, for example, searching every 5th or 12th person, with the exact sequence chosen at random.

This need to avoid racial profiling at all costs, or even the appearance of racial profiling or fears of racial profiling, is puzzling. Yes, of course, it’s true that not all terrorists and suicide bombers fit the profile of a young adult Arab Moslem male–there’s Richard Reid, and the recent Somalian of the second group of London subway bombings. But there is no doubt that most do indeed fit that profile.

And of course no one is suggesting that all who do fit that profile are bombers; the vast majority are not. And yet it is folly, if not insanity, to deny that young adult Arab Moslem males are far more likely than anyone else to be suicide bombers, and that, in a more logical world, they should be subject to greater scrutiny.

In regular police work, usually a crime has already been committed when the police are doing a search. If there is also a witness who has given a description of the subject–let’s say, for example, a young white male of medium height wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and having a huge scar on his forehead–the police are not going to search every fifth person driving through a roadblock. No, they are going to look for young white males fitting the description, or else we would consider our tax money poorly spent and our police hopelessly incompetent. But such a search is not considered racial profiling, because it is based on an actual description of an actual suspect by an actual witness to an actual crime.

Racial profiling is usually done in the context of stopping cars based on the race of the driver and searching them for drugs. Even if members of certain races are statistically somewhat more likely to be dealing drugs than others, it’s not as though drug dealing and race are inextricably linked. There are no races or subsets of races, for example, that have as part of their ideology that members must deal drugs; the racial factors in drug dealing are statistical–social and perhaps economic, but hardly ideological in nature. And the need to prevent drug dealing cannot even remotely be compared to the need to prevent suicide bombings.

Which brings us to the other operative word, prevent. With backpack searches in mass transit, we are not looking to solve a crime by finding a criminal ex post facto. We are looking to prevent a crime that has the potential for mass murder. If this doesn’t justify a bit of racial profiling that acknowledges what type of person is most likely to be a perpetrator, what would?

It’s not that random searches have no place in the prevention of suicide bombings–they do. As terrorists turn more and more to those who don’t fit the traditional profile (Somalis, as in London; women, as in Palestine/Israel), the random search becomes more and more valuable, especially as a possible deterrent. It’s unlikely that the police would happen upon an actual bomber by chance in a random search, but the knowledge that such searches are occurring might act to keep any non-Arab bombers from feeling safe, and could perhaps discourage some of them from even trying an attack. So I would not be one to argue against random searches–they are one more weapon in an arsenal that needs to be varied.

But it’s not an either/or proposition. There’s no reason not to do the most reasonable thing: random searches plus racial (or, in this case, religious and even gender) profiling. It’s the only thing that makes any sense.

But political correctness often trumps common sense nowadays. The NY Times doesn’t seem to feel, in the quoted editorial, that there is even a need to explain why being careful to avoid any hint of racial profiling is more important than the need to protect people who ride public transit against a terrorist attack. The authors of the editiorial seem to think the reasons are self-evident. I, for one, would like to hear their argument, because those reasons are certainly not evident to me.

And yes, I understand the need to protect our civil rights. But we are not talking about throwing young Moslem males of Arab origin into detention camps like those that housed Japanese Americans during WWII. We are talking about subjecting them to greater scrutiny in backpack searches; not exactly the most terrible violation of a person’s rights. I like to think that, if I were a young Moslem Arab male in the US who was not a terrorist, I would understand and freely cooperate with such a need on the part of law enforcement.

Egyptians mugged by reality?

The New Neo Posted on by

There have been a number of recent demonstrations in Egypt against terrorism. Blogger Big Pharaoh describes some of the goings-on here and here.

Big Pharaoh found the experience exhilarating and empowering:

Today was a great day for me. I feel very satisfied with myself. Today I felt that I really did something against the terrorists even if what I did was not so huge and lasted for 20 to 30 minutes…We stood on the pavement facing the passing cars and held those placards. I felt as if I looked like the guy who carries the “The End is Near” sign!!

Well, carrying and displaying the “No to Terrorism” sign made me feel soooo good. At last I did something. I felt as if I was poking my finger into the eyes of an ugly terrorist. People started looking and reading what was written. A number slowed down just to read what we were displaying. Others sounded their car horns…

I predict (and certainly hope) that more and more in the Moslem and Arab world will come to see that the terrorists are their sworn enemies who do not care one whit if they blow up thousands of their own people. It appears that, drunk on their own blood lust, the terrorists may have overplayed their hand.

As I wrote on this thread of Roger Simon’s:

As time goes on, it becomes clearer and clearer that the terrorists are not as “strategic” and “smart” as some think they are. In fact, they appear to be motivated mainly by a deeply murderous nihilism. If they had just kept to killing Israelis and Americans, they might not have let the world know what they were about. But the more they commit acts such as these, the more unequivocally clear it becomes that–whatever excuses and motivations they may try to give for their actions–they are at war with all of humanity.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest primate of them all?

The New Neo Posted on by

Ever since Koko the gorilla learned a rudimentary form of sign language years ago, our concept of animal consciousness has expanded. Putting aside for a moment the debate over whether animal communication can ever constitute actual language itself–whatever you call it, it’s still pretty amazing. When Koko coined new signs such as “drink fruit” for watermelon, or asked for a replacement pet cat when hers died, it’s hard to imagine that there wasn’t something quite advanced happening in that construct we would almost have to refer to as her mind.

And then there’s the topic of mirrors, which can be used to measure an animal’s consciousness of self, or self-consciousness. According to this NY Times article, humans, apes, and perhaps dolphins have the ability to recognize their own images in a mirror, and now there is new evidence that monkeys may have some capacity to do so, too.

Dr. Frans de Waal of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta has done research that challenges the idea that capuchin monkeys only see strangers when they look in a mirror. The behavior of the capuchins indicated some awareness that the image was not a stranger, although it stopped short of showing a sense of self. The monkeys’ behavior front of the mirror varied according to their gender (I suppose that shouldn’t surprise us too much):

The female capuchins, the researchers found, avoided eye contact with a strange monkey while also making friendly overtures. But in front of a mirror their behavior was different. They looked often at their image, almost as if trying to flirt with it. The male capuchins, in contrast, were seriously bothered by their image. Unlike Narcissus, they “appeared confused and distraught by their reflections” and often tried to escape from the testing room, the Yerkes team reports.

Theories about what might cause these differences aren’t all that convincing:

The male capuchins, particularly the high-ranking ones, may be discomfited by their reflection because it fails to play by the rules of the monkey hierarchy and show them due deference. On the other hand, this realization might be expected to build up gradually in the minds of the male monkeys, making it hard to explain why they instantly perceive that the image is not a stranger…Male capuchins probably react differently from females because they take their mirror image more seriously and don’t know how to handle it, Dr. de Waal said.

But female chimpanzees, members of the ape rather than the monkey family, have no such problems. Far from being discomfited or distraught, they react to mirrors as though they’ve been waiting for one all their lives:

Give a female chimp a mirror, and one can have no doubt she knows just what it is for. The chimp will look at the two important parts of her body that she can usually never see, Dr. de Waal said. One is the inside of her mouth; the other is her rear end.

Apparently, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Child’s play

The New Neo Posted on by

Just a short while after the Afghan war ended, the articles began. They screamed “The Taliban are back;” “The Taliban are taking over;” The Taliban are currently in control of most of the country,” (or they soon will be).

So, what’s the truth? Are the Taliban like the phoenix, rising renewed in vigor from the ashes of their own seeming destruction? Or are the Taliban like the dying snake sinking its fangs into its enemies during its own death throes, as in Austin Bay’s metaphor about the Iraqi “insurgency”?

This recent article about the Taliban is a good indication that they are suffering from the sort of desperation that indicates the latter rather than the former:

Fierce fighting in recent months has devastated the ranks of the Taliban, prompting the rebels to recruit children and force some families to provide a son to fight with them, a US commander said yesterday.

The fighting has fractured the Taliban’s command structure, preventing the militants from regrouping, even though there has been an upsurge in violence, Major General Jason Kamiya, the US military operational commander in Afghanistan, said in an interview.

Despite the setback — more than 500 rebels have been killed since March — the militants are likely to step up attacks in the run-up to the Sept. 18 legislative elections, he said. ”The Taliban and Al Qaeda feel that this is their final chance to impede Afghanistan’s progress to . . . becoming a nation,” Kamiya said. ”They will challenge us all the way through Sept. 18.”

He said the rebels were desperately trying to recruit fighters to replace those killed recently, and have forced families in some areas ”to give up one son to fight.”

”They have been hit so hard, they now have to recruit more fighters. They are recruiting younger and younger fighters: 14, 15, and 16 years old,” Kamiya said. ”The enemy is having a hard time keeping its recruit rates up.”

The fact that the source of the article is the AP makes the information therein even more impressive, since the AP has hardly been known for being overly optimistic about either the Afghan or the Iraqi wars. If the AP is reporting this much, my guess is that the actual situation for the Taliban might even be worse than indicated.

Traditionally, the use of younger and younger soldiers is a sign of desperation in a military movement, the end of the road. This website of WWII Nazi posters features the following recruiting poster from a time very late in the war when the Germans were using boys hardly removed from adolescence:


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Sad, and strange.

This post began with an article about the Taliban. But, as often happens, my research on one topic led to some unexpected findings on a related, but broader subject. It turns out that, far from being exceptional, the pernicious practice of using child soldiers appears to be increasing, not just in Afghanistan but in many third world countries, especially in Africa.

I have only scratched the surface of these websites, so I can’t vouch for their content, but take a look at this one, for example. And even though I have had some disagreements with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch lately, this work reminds me of the reasons I originally joined Amnesty many long years ago (see also this, and this).

There used to be a lower limit to the age of soldiers. Strength was required–originally for hand-to-hand fighting, and later for carrying and operating the heavy weapons. The balooning use of child soldiers lately has been made possible in part because of advancements in armaments, making weapons easier to operate and carry (one example of the law of unexpected consequences, I suppose). There is also evidence that their youth makes them more likely, not less, to commit atrocities. Chilling, and sobering.

Today and tomorrow

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, I’m home. I’m thankful to have had an uneventful return trip. But today has been a very hectic and busy day getting myself reorganized–or rather, that is, beginning to get myself reorganized. So, no time for blogging today, although I plan to post tomorrow.

By the way, on the plane back to Logan they showed the movie “Fever Pitch,” supposedly a light and entertaining comedy about a rabid Red Sox fan. Being a fan myself–although I plan to take the next few decades off, now that they’ve finally won the Series–I thought I’d like it. Unfortunately, though, it was lame, unconvincing, and pretty unfunny (unless they cut all the good parts to give it that G rating). Ah, well.

Publicists for terrorists

The New Neo Posted on by

Austin Bay has written an article that is both thoughtful and thought-provoking. It covers a great deal of territory quickly and concisely, which is what Bay himself did on his recent whirlwind visit to Afghanistan and Iraq.

The article contains some evidence that Iraqization is starting to be effective, which ultimately will be the key to success in Iraq and a smaller American presence there. Bay doesn’t wonder whether the American military can do the job in Iraq, he wonders whether US public opinion and support can be sustained long enough to let them do it. It’s an excellent question, and Bay rightly notes the enormous role the press has to play in stirring up doubts.

Bay likens the Islamofascist terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere to a snake which, when attacked, uses its waning strength to strike a blow by sinking its fangs into its killer. The trouble is that many in this country don’t recognize that this particular snake is slowly dying, because its biting and thrashing look so scary at the moment. He adds:

An alarming number of [those in the US] these days betray impatience with our progress in the war on terror. It leaves you wondering if anyone in Washington–at least anyone in the Baby Boomer political class–knows what it takes to win a long, tedious, unavoidable war.

Previous generations did indeed seem to have more grit in that respect. But in this they were helped by journalists who considered it their duty to shape news in order to encourage morale on the home front, not discourage it. And these journalists, and the public, were also helped by politicians with a gift for stirring rhetoric, such as Churchill and Roosevelt. When Churchill spoke of blood, toil, tears, and sweat, the British people were willing to give those things, in part because of him.

Like it or not, we now live in an age that tends to look down with irony, cynicism, and disdain on whatever military-boosting press and politically stirring rhetoric we might be offered. And I clearly recall that in the post-9/11 weeks and months, George Bush attempted to warn us all that the war against terrorism (his euphemism for the war on Islamofascism) would be a very long and hard one, perhaps at times seeming interminable. But for whatever reason–his lack of sonorous and elegant delivery among them–many do seem to have forgotten his words and their obvious truth.

The press is proud of its post-Vietnam tendency to differentiate itself from the government and the military’s aims, and to be a sort of gadfly to them both. But, agree or disagree with the domino theory, Vietnam presented no clear and present danger to our country within our own boundaries. Now we do face such danger, although the press seems reluctant to adjust to this crucial difference.

In recent years it seems that the press has replaced its old pre-Vietnam role as willing and cooperative mouthpiece of its own government and military and instead has become the unwitting mouthpiece of the terrorists–those who would destroy that government. It’s not that the press praises the terrorists, of course; it’s simply that the work of the press has the effect of increasing public weariness and fear, which are among the terrorists’ goals. Every attack is trumpeted to the skies because it’s big news, but this means that the press is now in the business of publishing what amounts to terrorist press releases. As Bay writes:

Winning the global war against Islamicist terror ultimately means curbing the terrorists’ strategic combat power, and that means ending the media magnification of their bombs.

How to end this “media magnification?” Easier said than done; we have a free press, and we wish it to remain so. It is certainly not realistic to expect the press to stop publishing news of terrorist attacks, although one wonders whether such a voluntary blackout, if it were to actually happen, would in fact deprive the terrorists of a great deal of their power.

All we can try to do is to be watchdogs of the press. That’s part of where blogs come in–to point out the effects of publicizing terror, and to try to counter the fear, negativity, and weariness that ensues.

As one of those inspiring orators of times past, FDR, said in a different context years ago, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” It may not be the only thing, but it’s one of the main things, and it is as true of fighting terrorism as it was of fighting the Depression. Perhaps even more so.

Paul Robeson (Part III–conclusion)–a mind can be an impossible thing to change

The New Neo Posted on by

Now, for the source of the Itzhak Feffer story. It was Robeson’s son, Paul Robeson, Jr.

I could not locate the original account, but the story itself can be found at a number of websites. My guess is that it first appeared in one of the biographies Robeson’s son wrote about his father.

Here is the son’s version of the tale, complete with a few more details than Horowitz included :

Though he had been cleaned up and dressed in a suit, Feffer’s fingernails had been torn out….Though he couldn’t speak openly, Robeson later told his son that the poet indicated by gestures and a few handwritten words that Mikhoels had been murdered on the orders of Stalin and that the other Jewish prisoners were being prepared for the same fate. After the two friends said goodbye, Feffer was taken back to the Lubyanka and would never be seen alive again. …However, when Robeson returned home he condemned as anti-Soviet propaganda reports that Feffer and other Jews had been killed. Not once did Robeson denounce Feffer’s murder. Later on Robeson confided in his son Paul Robeson Jr. the details of his meeting with Feffer. He made his son vow not to make the story public until well after his death, “because he had promised himself that he would never publicly criticize the USSR.”

Robeson Jr., by the way, is an interesting figure himself. He is dedicated to rehabilitating his father’s image and legacy, so his version of the story is certainly meant to be a sympathetic one. He is sympathetic to his father in other ways as well, being a Communist Party member. Here’s Junior speaking on that subject:

[My father] wasn’t the communist in the family, I was,” he says. “He never joined any party. He, being a great artist, didn’t do that. He thought it would destroy his effectiveness. I, being a generation younger and not an artist, felt that the way to be effective was through an organization.

So, the failure to join the party was a self-serving strategy on the part of the senior Robeson, rather than an ideological hesitation. In 1952, Robeson Sr. was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize by the Soviets, in appreciation of his support. If you have the stomach for it, you can read in its entirety here his fulsome tribute to Stalin on the death of the great leader shortly thereafter. A telling excerpt from it gives some insight into the education and the formative years of Paul Jr.:

[Stalin] was clearly a man who seemed to embrace all. So kindly – I can never forget that warm feeling of kindliness and also a feeling of sureness. Here was one who was wise and good – the world and especially the socialist world was fortunate indeed to have his daily guidance. I lifted high my son Pauli to wave to this world leader, and his leader. For Paul, Jr. had entered school in Moscow, in the land of the Soviets.

Robeson did some monstrous things in the cause of Communism, but he probably was able to successfully salve his conscience–at least for a while–about the Feffer incident by a bit of artistic defiance. At some point (accounts differ as to whether this was around the time of the Feffer incident, or in a 1952 visit) Robeson did make a gesture towards Jewish solidarity while in the Soviet Union–not that this helped his friend Feffer any:

In a concert broadcast live across the Soviet Union, Robeson subtly defied Stalin’s campaign against “Jewish cosmopolitanism” by ending his set with a song sung in Yiddish, Dos Partizanenlied (also known as Song of the Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion), an act that was interpreted by many Jews listening to the broadcast as a sign of solidarity and sympathy. The Yiddish song was cut from rebroadcasts of the concert….

A side issue–although an interesting one–is the complicated role Jews played in Robeson’s life. Not only was Feffer Jewish, but Robeson’s son married a Jewish woman, as previously mentioned in Part II. And when I was researching the elder Robeson’s life, I noticed that the full maiden name of his wife (that’s Paul Junior’s mother) was Eslanda Cardozo Goode.

Cardozo? The same as the famous Jewish Supreme Court justice Benjamin Cardozo? Research leads to more research–a veritable garden of the forking paths–and here is some information on Eslanda. It turns out that Robeson’s wife’s grandfather Isaac Cardozo was indeed Jewish, and a member of the prominent Cardozo family. See here for some information on Isaac’s father and brothers, and their role in the Revolutionary War.

But back to Robeson himself. As previously stated, Robeson’s later years, after his 1961 Moscow collapse, were ones of depression and illness. He died in 1976.

What a sad and terrible tale. Outraged at the injustices he had suffered, he ended up perpetuating and defending injustices himself in the name of a cause whose deeply evil nature he could not acknowledge. It is highly possible, and even likely, that his knowledge of his own complicity caused his breakdowns, although I have no way of knowing for certain (his son, of course, thinks the CIA poisoned him).

Clearly, once Robeson had cast his lot with Communism he felt there was no turning back, no matter what horrors were committed in its name. In this he was not alone.

What is it that ultimately distinguishes those such as Robeson, who refuse to abandon the cause even in the face of incontrovertible evidence, from others who are able to renounce the cause in which they once believed? We cannot know for sure. But my guess would be that it depends partly on how deeply they need to believe (the deeper the need, the more difficult to face reality), and how much they have already compromised their own integrity in the service of that cause.

For some, perhaps the implications of having to face their own guilt are simply too great. It’s almost as though they reach a point of no return, where to admit that the betrayals they committed in the service of that cause (such as Robeson’s betrayal of Feffer) would be to face their own terrible and unbearable heart of darkness. How many people can freely accept a guilt so vast, if there is a way out through denial? Sometimes, of course, as with Robeson, even that denial is incomplete, and in the end they are not fully able to escape the consequences of their own guilt, whether they ever actually acknowledge it or not.

Remember, Feffer himself had been both a loyal Communist and a Jew. Just as much of the appeal of Communism to Robeson was its promise to deliver him what he so passionately desired, a color-blind world–so, likewise, many of the early Communists came from the ranks of secular Jews who believed and hoped with all their hearts that Communism would deliver them from the anti-Semitism from which they had suffered all their lives.

Feffer and the other Jews learned the truth too late, and they were destroyed. Robeson closed his eyes, but in the end I think the truth destroyed him in a different way.