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>for more detail: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Oh, I see. We ac

by dri_ft 2y ago

>for more detail: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Oh, I see. We actually discussed Pound about four years ago - just a little back and forth about the ABC of Reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196681 >What's your explanation of why Pound went Fascist? I'm not sure I particularly have one; I haven't read any of his longer political or cultural (i.e. non-literary) works. I just think it's silly to correlate an approach to translation that you dislike with fascism. Especially as I'm not sure it even makes sense on its own terms: I can only read your comment as 'lazy translator? Figures that he would be a fascist', but if I imagine the type of translation a fascist would approve of, the approach I picture is fastidious, fussy, concerned with fidelity to the point of stickler-ishness. (Isn't that from where we get 'grammar nazi'?) And oh, well, since you ask I'll take a shy at it: my vague sense is that he became fascist because saw a society in decline due to it becoming more and more a sham society: opulence without virtue, power without vigour, money no longer tied to actually existing goods. (Of course, all of this shades easily into antisemitism.) He saw fascism as the answer; It's easier to see in retrospect that it wasn't.

082349872349872 2y ago
Maybe I put my comment poorly because what I wrote 4 years ago is still in my head. I had had a working hypothesis that xenophilia is antifascistic. (how about comedy? Fascism produced "Lili Marleen", but did it produce any comedians?) My big Q was: if Pound was such a xenophile (as I had thought) when young, why did he turn to Fascism when older? TIL that he wasn't ever xenophilic; he only dealt with the other once it had been transmuted into the familiar and he could work it on his own terms. (thus restoring my working hypothesis) Does that make more sense? Thanks for your answer! As to his potential conclusion that fascism ("tomorrow belongs to me") was the answer to "western decline", see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24696859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24696859 Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yybY0QeZdro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yybY0QeZdro
- soundnote 2y ago
  I don't know if that works out: A lot of people on the right I know are quite xenophilic in the sense of having a deep interest in other cultures etc, though not indiscriminately so. The difference between them and much of the left is that they've come to reject oikophobia as wrong and are consciously oikophilic when it comes to their own culture and ethnicity, while the leftist configuration is oikophobic/xenophilic. (Not to say there aren't oikophilic/xenophobic people, but I feel like that's more often an unthinking stance)
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    That's an interesting hypothesis; what would be some examples of oikophobia?
    - soundnote 2y ago
      Sorry to have taken so long: There's a lot - all the "Death to America" rhetoric, white liberals being okay with other ethnicities openly advocating for their interests but whites doing so being gigabad. Generally refusing to act in the best interests of existing citizens vs. even illegal immigrants, or refusing to uphold laws out of care for the supposedly downtrodden with the result that cities turn into shitholes. celebrating old achievements of their own civilization being cringe, while celebrating those of other cultures' being lauded. This does not mean the white liberals don't act in their own interest - their policies wrt eg. black schooling are some of the most heinous works of sabotage you could imagine, but the cloak it as compassion. More graduations and admissions, but less people able to actually read or do math.
      - 082349872349872 2y ago
        Do you have any examples that are not strawmen? (I mean, they may not be strawmen to you, but they're not at all credible to me; surely we can find something which we both agree is an actual thing?)
        2y ago

by dri_ft 2y ago

082349872349872 2y ago

Maybe I put my comment poorly because what I wrote 4 years ago is still in my head. I had had a working hypothesis that xenophilia is antifascistic. (how about comedy? Fascism produced "Lili Marleen", but did it produce any comedians?) My big Q was: if Pound was such a xenophile (as I had thought) when young, why did he turn to Fascism when older? TIL that he wasn't ever xenophilic; he only dealt with the other once it had been transmuted into the familiar and he could work it on his own terms. (thus restoring my working hypothesis) Does that make more sense? Thanks for your answer! As to his potential conclusion that fascism ("tomorrow belongs to me") was the answer to "western decline", see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24696859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24696859 Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yybY0QeZdro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yybY0QeZdro

soundnote 2y ago
I don't know if that works out: A lot of people on the right I know are quite xenophilic in the sense of having a deep interest in other cultures etc, though not indiscriminately so. The difference between them and much of the left is that they've come to reject oikophobia as wrong and are consciously oikophilic when it comes to their own culture and ethnicity, while the leftist configuration is oikophobic/xenophilic. (Not to say there aren't oikophilic/xenophobic people, but I feel like that's more often an unthinking stance)
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  That's an interesting hypothesis; what would be some examples of oikophobia?
  - soundnote 2y ago
    Sorry to have taken so long: There's a lot - all the "Death to America" rhetoric, white liberals being okay with other ethnicities openly advocating for their interests but whites doing so being gigabad. Generally refusing to act in the best interests of existing citizens vs. even illegal immigrants, or refusing to uphold laws out of care for the supposedly downtrodden with the result that cities turn into shitholes. celebrating old achievements of their own civilization being cringe, while celebrating those of other cultures' being lauded. This does not mean the white liberals don't act in their own interest - their policies wrt eg. black schooling are some of the most heinous works of sabotage you could imagine, but the cloak it as compassion. More graduations and admissions, but less people able to actually read or do math.
    - 082349872349872 2y ago
      Do you have any examples that are not strawmen? (I mean, they may not be strawmen to you, but they're not at all credible to me; surely we can find something which we both agree is an actual thing?)
      - 2y ago