That quote appears in a May 6, 1934 NYT article so beautifully written that I searched the Times website to find more by its author, Lansing Warren. I found the obituary published in 1987, when he died at the age of 93:
In 1926, Edwin L. James, the Paris bureau chief of The New York Times, hired him...
In November 1942, Mr. Warren and his wife were arrested by the Nazis, along with other American correspondents, consular officers and Red Cross workers. The Warrens were held in Lourdes and later in Baden-Baden, Germany. To stave off boredom, the prisoners organized a ''university'' in which some taught and others studied. Thanks to a sharp memory and a few English books, Mr. Warren taught English literature. He studied Italian.
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43 comments:
Liberals just love fascism. And dead Jews.
I think today's left in America would like to remove all opposition and that Gertrude would approve. They've already got a leader with the Peace Prize who thinks that elevates him to king with multitudes of loyal subjects.
Jumping to concussions again.
Gertrude Stein says that death is also "peace," but you would hardly consider it "good."
@Rusty Gertrude Stein was Jewish and her caustically humorous remark was not pro-Hitler.
Lansing's piece is truly beautifully written in a style now relegated to a few remaining magazines like The Atlantic. Even most contemporary mag writers have lost the ability to turn a phrase.
You can read the article in two ways: one, as quite complimentary, the other as a chilling expose of a woman's dark motives revealed by her words.
More context would be nice, but I suspect Stein spoke in that fashion, probably from the French, from whom she "gains mental excitement." I like that part.
Wikipedia: "Of Jewish parentage, Stein collaborated with Vichy France, a regime that deported more than 75,000 Jews to concentration camps, of whom only 3 percent survived the Holocaust.[98][103] In 1944, Stein wrote that Petain's policies were "really wonderful so simple so natural so extraordinary".
Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism" documents thoroughly how much praise American and European Progressives heaped on first the Fascists in Italy and then those in Germany.
Stein didn't say anything that President Wilson's supporters and FDR didn't also say in a more enthusiastic manner
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
@Rusty Gertrude Stein was Jewish and her caustically humorous remark was not pro-Hitler.
7/27/14, 8:46 AM
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In the same vein..'They make it a desert and call it peace'.
And Margaret Sanger was a huge fan of Hitler's eugenics...
I always enjoy the tidbits in obits.
p.s. My Jewish roommate at NYU would love to emphasize his liberal ideas and I would note to him that taken to extremes they would equal Nazi ideas. Sadly
Miss Stein may have liked her excitements but that color line! we don't need to cross that, oh no. I suspect that she and Mrs Slee would have agreed about the good uses of contraception and euthanasia.
Hopefully, Lansing Warren wasn't corrupted by any contact with the Columbia School of Journalism.
Ann, are you sure she was not pro-Hitler? Serious question.
The best quote from Ms. Stein's interview in the NYT was this one, "Intellectuals are not suited to directing of government. They are deterred by a mental obliquity."
To stave off boredom, the prisoners organized a ''university'' in which some taught and others studied.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn describes precisely the same setup among the educated political prisoners in the Gulag. Those who had deep knowledge of various subjects lectured on them, and the whole cell benefited.
"Ann, are you sure she was not pro-Hitler? Serious question."
I said the remark is not pro-Hitler. Commenters didn't seem to understand it very well!
This reminds me of the Peace Prize received by President Obama for, well, being himself. And, look at the world now, as contrasted to when he was elected. Is is more peaceful? And, is it headed in the right direction?
Israel is in Gaza fighting house to house with Hamas. The Russians have essentially taken part of the Ukraine, and are working at taking more of it. And, its surrogates are so bold as to be using the credit cards of the victims of that 777 that they shot down recently. Al Qaeda is threatening Baghdad, and the Taliban resurgent in Afghanistan. Libya is falling apart, along with much of Central America. The Chicoms are threating much of east Asia with their imperialism. And, American military officers are getting pink slips while engaged in combat in Afghanistan, as Obama shrinks our military to 1930s levels. This is the standard against which Stein's suggestion should be compared.
Liberals just love fascism. And dead Jews.
Not really -- they just find Jews so much more sympathetic and dramatically compelling lining up meekly for the cattle cars ("Schindler's List") than pounding their enemies like cheap veal ("Operation Protective Edge").
Stein was a collaborator, which probably helped with her time in France after the surrender to Germany.
"Gertrude and Alice, who were both Jewish, escaped persecution probably because of their friendship to Bernard Faÿ who was a collaborator with the Vichy regime and had connections to the Gestapo, or possibly because Gertrude was an American and a famous author. Gertrude's book "Wars I Have Seen" written before the German surrender and before the liberation of German concentration camps, likened the German army to Keystone cops. When Faÿ was sentenced to hard labor for life after the war, Gertrude and Alice campaigned for his release. Several years later, Toklas would contribute money to Faÿ's escape from prison."
Sort of like George Soros.
Perhaps von Choltitz should have obeyed Hitler's order to raze Paris. I'm sure Stein would have appreciated the delicious irony of the murder of her fellow Vichy collaborators.
I noticed that each of these words have individual character irrespective of the significance of their distinct combination.
If the NYT had writers like Lansing Warren today I would subscribe to it despite the ideology.
" Ann Althouse said...
"Ann, are you sure she was not pro-Hitler? Serious question."
I said the remark is not pro-Hitler. Commenters didn't seem to understand it very well!
7/27/14, 10:30 AM"
It's not their fault, today's writing style is just more blunt and far less nuanced. Lansing's type of writing requires one to read and re-read to get the meaning.It's just not the style for people who glance at headlines or excerpts.
She really knew how to collect art. On all other matters, her judgement was suspect and has not been validated by time. Still, her art collection would today be worth billions.
I laughed at this:
The Germans have no gift at organizing.
She was an impossible creature, a practical intellectual. I admire and agree with some of her insights, but she wasn't right about everything.
Maybe it was different in 1934, but nowadays one doesn't use delicate irony when referring to Hitler.......Hitler didn't have, at any time, any supporters among the left. But it was a different story with Mussolini, Lenin, and Stalin. These men were not just supported but actively idolized by left wing intellectuals.......Stalin, in 1934, had committed far greater crimes than Hitler, but none of those crimes registered in the conscience of leftists. Stalin and Hitler were not existential enemies but rather codependents in a doomed marriage. Hitler was a uniquely evil man but he was the foam on top of a wave celebrated by the left.......If you drew a Venn diagram,you would see far more overlap between Hitler and Stalin than between Hitler and Alf Landon, so stop with this Hitler was a conservative crap.....
Reaction to Jews make no sense until you factor in an unconscious expectation that Jews are "chosen people"....chosen to sacrifice their lives for the rest of the world.
Silly rabbits cannot conceive of a killer Jew like King David. It offends their sense of entitlement.
Christians have it easy. We only have to pray for the peace of Jerusalem...and pass them the ammunition like Nixon did in the key moments following the perilous sneak attack from two fronts on 1973 Yom Kippur.
Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Bruce Hayden -
"Israel is in Gaza fighting house to house with Hamas. The Russians have essentially taken part of the Ukraine, and are working at taking more of it. And, its surrogates are so bold as to be using the credit cards of the victims of that 777 that they shot down recently. Al Qaeda is threatening Baghdad, and the Taliban resurgent in Afghanistan. Libya is falling apart, along with much of Central America. The Chicoms are threating much of east Asia with their imperialism. And, American military officers are getting pink slips while engaged in combat in Afghanistan, as Obama shrinks our military to 1930s levels."
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McCain and other neocon scum want to send US troops to Ukraine, back into Iraq in large numbers, invade Syria, attack radicals in Lebanon at the behest of or "special friend". Reintroduce large numbers of "heroes" back into Afghanistan, which years ago eclipsed Vietnam as our longest war. Something about neocons working with Samantha Powers and Susan Rice and invading Burma and the Congo with large numbers of "heroes" in the name of human rights.
The same warhawks urge large numbers of heroic US soldiers to go to Libya, as Libya is falling apart. And to my knowledge, McCain and others still want to invade Somalia and "surgically bomb" Iran - also at the behest of "America's Special Friend."
Now I support a strong military, and I think meeting China with strength and having the capacity to stabilize our nearby neighborhood - Central America - without powers 6,000 miles away meddling (that is only America's prerogative) make sense.
But you can understand why after 13 years of pissing away USA blood and treasure - Americans really want a respite from any neocon or liberal hawk war mongering??
Right now I think a large majority would happily pay for placing McCain in a senior citizens home in Vietnam and for a one-way ticket to Kenya for Obama and his family..
Ann Althouse said...
@Rusty Gertrude Stein was Jewish and her caustically humorous remark was not pro-Hitler.
m stone said...
Wikipedia: "Of Jewish parentage, Stein collaborated with Vichy France, a regime that deported more than 75,000 Jews to concentration camps, of whom only 3 percent survived the Holocaust.[98][103] In 1944, Stein wrote that Petain's policies were "really wonderful so simple so natural so extraordinary".
You were saying?
William said...She really knew how to collect art.
I think it's her brother Leo who gets most of the credit for the art collection.
Intellectuals on the left certainly did embrace Hitler. Martin Heidegger, Thomas Mann are just a couple.
There’s a good piece in the New Yorker from 2012 about the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s failure to fess up about Stein’s collaboration with France’s pro-Nazi Vichy government: Why Won’t the Met Tell the Whole Truth About Gertrude Stein?
Came across this tidbit in it with regard to the Stein quote Althouse posted:
"Yes, clearly there is irony here, a characteristic Stein provocation (although Stein seemed less ironic when she praised Pétain’s emphasis on 'peace' in 'daily living'; she exclaimed that he had 'achieved a miracle' in signing an armistice with Hitler, and enabled the French 'to make France again.' She admired Franco, hated F.D.R., and in 1937 told a journalist that Hitler 'is not the dangerous one. You see, he is the German romanticist.')."
I have a first edition of "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook," which Gertrude wrote. She and Alice lived in Southern France during World War II. The book is part cookbook and part memoir. I had never read the book when I first acquired this copy.
The book would be charming were it not for the context in which it was lived and written. Gertrude and Alice, being celebrities and also uncritical of the French and German Nazis, lived as if there were no holocaust going on. Surely they knew of the deportations and it's hard to believe they were not aware of its consequences.
I read the book with growing revulsion, and have since had a very unfavorable view of Gertrude Stein. She was not blind and she was not pro Hitler. She was simply detached and self centered.
A view of Stein that reflects my own can be read in this article by Emily Greenhouse in the New Yorker on May 4, 2012.
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/gertrude-stein-and-vichy-the-overlooked-history
Lydia beat me to it on the Greenhouse article plus she knows how to do links.
How do you do them, Lydia?
David, this explains how to do the links. Hope it helps.
And the article you link to is different from the one I linked to; I think mine was a follow-up to your much fuller one.
Seems like the NYT needs a "LoL" tag to help its readers understand Stein and 1934.
I found her bullshit regarding the 1924 immigration act interesting. In 1934, America was accepting 100,000 immigrants a year, plus those from Canada and Mexico. That's plenty of competition. And that's leaving aside her BS idea, that a country needs immigrants to "compete" and provide "New ideas". We got of plenty of new ideas from Europe before and after WW II, just by using books and newspapers.
I don't agree with Althouse, because the evidence suggests that Stein really was a fascist. She did work for the Vichy gov't. I don't understand how you can translate and publish hundreds of pages of Marshall Petain's speeches and not be compromised.
There's also the question of why she wasn't deported to Germany from France during the war when so many others were. They almost all died. Why was she spared? It wasn't hard to find her. Did she save herself by collaborating? What happened?
This is nasty stuff to be asking, but if we are going to be fair we need to ask it. World War 2 was a clarifying event. People showed who they really were.
Livermoron said...
Intellectuals on the left certainly did embrace Hitler. Martin Heidegger, Thomas Mann are just a couple.
7/27/14, 2:44 PM
Correct, they supported Hitler until he attacked Stalin and they have been trying to deny their support ever since.
Anyone who is an apologist for Stein's political views is confused at best. Or maybe shares her evil beliefs. She was at best a Nazi sympathizer.
"In the same vein..'They make it a desert and call it peace'."
Ah, Tacitus, should be required reading.
"This is nasty stuff to be asking, but if we are going to be fair we need to ask it. World War 2 was a clarifying event. People showed who they really were."
Then why were the russian judges and accusers not hanged at Nuremberg beside the Nazis (rhetorical question I know)? Some moral clarity indeed.
Here's the quote that stood out to me, based on our own more recent experience:
"I always say that intellectuals are not suited to be the directors of government," said Miss Stein. "They have a mental obliquity. By that I mean that they are diverted by their intellects, by their ideas and their theories, from responding to the instincts which ought to guide practical rule. The best governors are always the men who respond to instinct, and in democracies this is more necessary than anywhere else."
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