Political Pilgrims by Paul Hollander

Political Pilgrims by Paul Hollander

Author:Paul Hollander
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis


These reflections recall the argument proposed earlier in this book, that the rejection of one's own society and the admiration for another one are indissolubly linked, and that rejection precedes the projection of hopes. The point may be obvious, yet we need to remind ourselves of this relationship to fully comprehend the characteristic reluctance to come to grips with the emerging realities of the new societies when they conflict with the original hopes and expectations, (Few would divorce their spouses in the knowledge that they will not be able to find a better partner. Belief in alternatives is vital for almost any form of rejection. By the same token the propaganda campaigns and vigorous censorship in so many "socialist" countries need to be interpreted less as an effort to persuade the population of the merits of the system under which they live than an effort to deprive them of the contemplation of alternatives.)

Frances Fitzgerald, another sympathizer with the Cuban Revolution (better known as a writer critical of American involvement in Vietnam), also observed that "many North American radicals who visit Cuba or live there have performed a kind of surgery on their critical faculties and reduced their conversation to a form of baby talk, in which everything is wonderful, including the elevator that does not work and the rows of Soviet tanks on military parade that are 'in the hands of the people.'"26 Jorge Edwards, a Chilean writer and former diplomat under Allende, representing his country in Cuba, also pondered the suppression of critical impulses among intellectuals:

we showed a perhaps more serious and ominous intellectual submissiveness toward Havana's dictates. The reasons for keeping silent were familiar; the fragility of the revolutionary island and the terrible power of the blockade could be compared with the solitary socialism of Stalin's years, but history had changed and we new Latin American writers, blinded by pig-headedness of youth, had not assimilated its lessons.27



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