Ezra Pound: 'Jefferson and/or Mussolini'

[Macrobius]

Hats off to Errigal for finding the link:

http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/7897401/pound_ezra/jeffmuss.html

It is Ezra Pound's discussion of this thesis:


The fascist revolution [in Italy] is infinitely more INTERESTING than the Russian revolution because it is not a revolution according to preconceived type.


And, of course, T.J.

He has more to say about Mr Jefferson as well in his Radio addresses, three of which are found on the web under the title 'What Did Ezra Pound Really Say?'

For example, found

here: http://www.gnosticliberationfront.com/what_did_ezra_pound_really_say.htm

or here:
http://www.geocities.com/integral_tradition/poundsay.html

Ezra Pound, besides being a poet, was a Populist and anti-Usury campaigner (hence anti-Semite), having imbibed the Social Credit doctrine of Maj. Douglas, which was quite consistently popular in the Pac Nor'west, I might add, though more in Canada than Idaho or Washington. However, we have had our share of SoCreds.

P.S. I posted this just to annoy Thomas777 because of the hatchet job on Hamilton. Actually, does Pound really have a case here? He seems too sanguine about Jefferson, and there is, in fact, a lot more to be said about Hamilton besides:--

... and T.J. went back to the States. He was the recognized opposition for twelve years while Hamilton and his pals were engaged in betraying the people, betraying them honestly, sincerely with a firm conviction that it was their duty to make the thirteen colonies into the closest possible imitation of Britain.

or


As to the ratio of property to responsibility, Ben Franklin remarked that some of the worst rascals he had known had been some of the richest. This concept has long since faded from American government and almost from the minds of the people. Hamilton didn’t believe it, or at any rate both his Hebrew blood and his Scotch blood coursed violently toward the contrary view.


Does Pound really get to bash Hamilton and pump Adams, Federalistas both, with impunity? I think he is having it both ways with that.

[Jake Featherston]

If I recall correctly, Upton Sinclair's platform was of a Social Credit character when he was nearly elected Governor of California as a Democrat in 1934 (after having peviously run as a Socialist in 1926 and 1930).

[Macrobius]

Brief aside on SoCreds

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit


Names associated with Social Credit include Charlie Chaplin, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Herbert Read, Aldous Huxley, Storm Jameson, Eimar O’Duffy, Sybil Thorndyke, Bonamy Dobrée and the American publisher James Laughlin. In 1933 Eimar O’Duffy published Asses in Clover, a science fiction fantasy exploration of Social Credit themes.

...

Robert A. Heinlein described a Social Credit economy in his first novel, For Us, the Living, and his Beyond This Horizon describes a similar system in less detail. In Heinlein's future society, government is not funded by taxation. Instead, government controls the currency and prevents inflation by providing a price rebate to participating business and a guaranteed income to every citizen.


And I don't even pretend to understand who the 'Green Shirts' are: http://www.kibbokift.org/

[Thomas777]

...

Pound seems to have slid into the lazy strictures of Fascist Anglophobia. Pound sounds like Marinetti cum Sorel and yet he wants us to believe that what happened in Italy can be conflated with the (illusory) victory of the anti-Federalists in the New World...then again, artists aren't known for their consistency in these matters I suppose.

America became a divided society when competing and irreconcilable mythologies were allowed to root and ultimately ossify into genuine political controversey. Jefferson's way led to the War Between the States...its difficult (if not downright dishonest) for a traditionalist to make the case that the anti-Feds were the stewards of the culture.