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Conspiracy Nation Vol. 12 Num. 39
Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 12 Num. 39
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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EZRA POUND AND ITALIAN FASCISM
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(*Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism* by Dr. Tim Redman. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN: 0-521-37305-0)
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Review by Conspiracy Nation
I feel certain that at least one reader of Conspiracy Nation will
gravely inform me that, "Ezra Pound was a fascist."
Unfortunately, this is true: Ezra Pound was a fascist. He was
also, unfortunately, anti-Semitic. He also (apparently) was not
a very good speller, but in that we begin to enter into the
deeper subtleties of Ezra Pound: Ezra Pound's chief innovation
in poetry (besides bad speller, fascist, and anti-Semite, Pound
was also a poet) seems to be his innovation of "bad spelling as
poetic device." Here you have an extraordinarily intelligent and
well-read poet who presents himself as a 19th-century country
bumpkin. Ah, but that is the great genius of Pound (it seems):
he plays with you, conning you into believing he's not too bright
when, in reality, he belongs to the upper crust of the
intelligentsia.
Of interest to readers of Conspiracy Nation will be that Ezra
Pound was also a so-called "conspiracy theorist." (Ezra Pound:
bad speller, fascist, anti-Semite, and conspiracy theorist.)
That aspect of Mr. Pound is what makes Professor Redman's
(University of Texas, Dallas) book of special interest to this
editor. Professor Redman distances himself from the
generally-perceived negativities of Pound, warning his readers,
for example, that conspiracy theories "by their very nature
cannot be verified in any ordinary sense nor can they be
'falsified'; that is, there is no evidence or testing procedure
available to show that they are not true." Perhaps Dr. Redman
hasn't heard of such conspiracies as The Gulf of Tonkin Incident,
The Bay of Pigs, The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, The
Overthrow of Salvador Allende, Watergate, The Assassination of
Orlando Letelier, Iran-Contra, etc. Or it may be that Dr. Redman
is not precise enough about exactly what he means by "conspiracy
theories." In the context of his book, it can be inferred that
Dr. Redman's general statement about "conspiracy theories" should
be taken to mean something like "the really crazy conspiracy
theories." Unfortunately, the learned professor just issues his
bland, ivory-tower pronouncement about conspiracy theories and
then moves on to other things.
Dr. Redman tries to resurrect Ezra Pound from his unfortunate
associations with fascism and anti-Semitism, to dust off the crud
to reveal the shining beauty of bad spelling. And who knows?
Maybe Pound was actually a good poet. Unfortunately, the state
of "good" poetry in the 20th century has evolved (or devolved)
into something which only 12 living persons can "properly"
evaluate. (And even they argue amongst themselves.)
All these critiques notwithstanding, Professor Redman has written
a worthwhile book, in that he succeeds in separating Ezra Pound,
the idealistic poet, from Ezra Pound, the "bad guy." (Redman
quotes George Orwell in one of his footnotes: "...the word
'Fascism' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies
'something not desirable.'") Redman shows how Pound, beginning in
circa-World War I Great Britain, a nobly concerned idealist
studying how to end the recurring brutalities of war, later moved
to Italy and got sucked into Benito Mussolini's Italian Fascism,
largely as a result of living in that mileau. Professor Redman
also stresses how Pound's anti-Semitism existed in a world not
yet familiar with the horrible Nazi death camps of World War II.
Pound never advocated mass extermination and was actually
pro-Zionist. In pre-Holocaust times, anti-Semitism had not yet
acquired its awful association with Adolph Hitler's "final
solution."
But Ezra Pound's legacy, in the popular sense, is not his poetry
but his pioneering work in the advocacy of a conspiratorial view
of how the world really operates. Professor Redman shows how
Pound often was far "ahead of his time" in his deep understanding
of economics. To this editor, also obvious is that Ezra Pound,
writing in the 1920s and 1930s, anticipates the explosion in
popularity of conspiracy literature occuring in our decade, the
1990s. In many ways, both good and bad, Ezra Pound prefigures
the vast muddle of 1990s "conspiratology." Pound's main focus is
on the economic system and on how a change in it would lead to
peace, freedom, and a more equal distribution of an already
existing abundance. He also rails against the press, which he
sees as puppets of the money power, and rants against the role
played by universities. Dr. Redman summarizes Pound's view on
the malevolent influence exercised by the money monopoly:
International usurers, in Pound's view, create wars for
their own profit, to get nations into debt, and are
continually trying to stamp out any threat to their
economic monopoly and any move toward economic justice.
They control the newspapers and the press, which in turn
maintain the ignorance of the people about economic
subjects. "The Count of Vergennes had cause to say to John
Adams: 'newspapers rule the world.'"
The conspiracy against economic knowledge is furthered in
the universities. All the textbooks written for them
during the nineteenth century, "the century of usury...
were written to maintain the domination of usury" according
to Pound.
This would explain, for example, why economics is perceived as
"boring." Mainstream economics is =purposefully= made boring by
the intellectual *apparatchiks* of the money power so as to help
conceal what is really going on.
Also noteworthy is Pound's view that the United States has been
in decline since 1863 and that the assassination of Abraham
Lincoln may have been ordered by the money monopoly. This view
is supported in past issues of Conspiracy Nation (CN), for
example CN 11.34, "Lincoln's 'Greenbacks' (And Why That Killed
Him)," where it states, in part, that
Abraham Lincoln was "the man who first proved that
government could issue its own paper money, legally,
honorably, and rightfully, and make it full legal tender
for all debts, both public and private..." Was Lincoln "a
dangerous man from the [bankers] point of view? Could they
have continued their knavery, trickery, bribery, and
destructive work... if Lincoln had lived?" (Dr. R.E.
Search)
*Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism*, like Rome, has many roads
leading away from it. Pound's ideas are tantalizing and readers
of Dr. Redman's book will find themselves wishing to pursue its
many threads. Discussion centers strongly on a few of Pound's
mentors, such as A.R. Orage, editor of the socialist newspaper
"New Age"; Major C.H. Douglas, author of such books as *Economic
Democracy* and *Credit Power and Democracy*; and Silvio Gesell,
author of the classic tome, *The Natural Economic Order*. It is
tempting to go further at this point and outline what these
Poundian mentors had to say -- what they say is earth-shattering.
Instead, a deeper reading of their ideas is seen as the better
prelude to such an outline. Conspiracy Nation is grateful to
Professor Redman for dusting off Ezra Pound, a wayward prophet
but a prophet nonetheless.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
For related stories, visit:
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/cn.html
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Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those
of Conspiracy Nation, nor of its Editor in Chief.
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