Reviewing Daniel Swift’s The Bughouse, a biography of Ezra Pound’s later years, Adam Kirsch examines the dangerous ideas of the American modernist poet and traitor, and argues that they not be ignored:

Pound lived in Italy throughout the fascist period, and he was an ardent admirer of Mussolini, in whom he saw a reincarnation of the Renaissance patron-warlords he wrote about. During World War II, Pound—still a U.S. citizen, although he had lived in Europe since 1908—made numerous propaganda broadcasts in English on Rome Radio, aimed at convincing American soldiers of the perfidy of capitalism, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Jews, among other targets.

This made him a traitor, and at the end of the war he was captured by a band of Italian partisans and turned over to the U.S. army. He was imprisoned at Pisa, first in a cage, then in a tent; and it was in these piteous conditions that he wrote the lines [later included in one of his major works, The Cantos] that sound so much like an apology. . . . Perhaps all his fantasies of poetry hand in hand with power were just so much “vanity,” [these verses seem to imply]. Yet it was hard to give up the fantasy, and [the poetry he wrote at the time] also contains some of his most virulently anti-Semitic and pro-fascist verse. . . .

Swift [also] draws the reader’s attention to the toxic legacy of Pound—the racist drivel he continued to write during his [postwar] incarceration, and the white-supremacist disciples who formed another contingent of visitors to the mental hospital [to which an American court had sentenced him to live for the remainder of his life]. While Swift is on the whole quite sympathetic to Pound as a man and a poet, his portrait does not shy away from Pound’s essential ugliness—his petty, banal prejudices, his monomania, his conspiracy theorizing, his admiration of violence and oppression. . . .

In the 1930s, enough people did share Pound’s anti-Semitism and fascism that [those ideas] became world-historically important, rather than individually disturbing. [That is why] his case calls for stringent judgment. . . .

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.