reason I wrote my book The Fateful Triangle. I was so infuriated at
my inability to get one word even into the left press about Sabra and
Shatila that I figured I’d better write a book about it. (I wrote it
mostly at night, because I had no other free time.)
Somebody asked me to ask you about critiques of your work, so
let’s talk about an article by Richard Wolin in Dissent, a very
serious and scholarly journal. He wrote that your book World
Orders, Old and New is a “heavy-handed, fact-filled, citation-laden
jeremiad,” that you’re “ideologically obsessed,” that your views
coincide with those of the far right, and that you have a “long-
standing contempt for Israel.”
If that’s the most cogent criticism you can find, there’s nothing
much to talk about. I wasn’t going to respond to that article, but
some friends associated with Dissent asked me to, so I did, putting
aside the flow of insults and keeping to the few identifiable points.
Wolin’s main complaint was that I’m always saying the US is a
“totalitarian” and “fascist” country. It just so happened that articles
appeared in London and Greece at about the same time I got that
issue of Dissent. Both raised the question I’m commonly asked
overseas: Why do I keep talking about the US as the freest country
in the world? That’s what people in other countries hear. What
Wolin hears is my calling the US a totalitarian, fascist state.
He also says I use Orwellisms. That refers to my quoting a few
sentences of an unpublished article of Orwell’s that was supposed to
be an introduction to Animal Farm. Orwell pointed out that in a very
free society (he was talking about England), there are all sorts of
ways to keep unpopular ideas from being expressed.
One factor is that the press is owned by wealthy men who have
every reason not to have certain ideas expressed. He identified
education as another factor. When you go through Oxford or
Cambridge, you learn that there are certain things it “wouldn’t do to
say.” If you don’t learn that, you’re not in the system.
What can you say about being criticized for having a fact-filled,
citation-laden book? They’ve got you coming and going. If you don’t
cite facts...