I am not renewing my subscription. It is lapsing soon or has lapsed.
My letter:
March 27,
2016
Edward
H. Sebesta
Editors
New York
Review of Books
Dear
Editors:
I read
with interest Robert O. Paxton’s review, “The Truth About the Resistance,” of
recently published histories of the French Resistance in World War II in the
Feb. 25 2016 issue of NYRB. I found
it informative in understanding the scope and extent and reality of the French
Resistance and its history.
However,
I was somewhat taken aback by the concluding paragraph as to the larger
historical meaning where Paxton in discussing the humiliation of the French by
the occupation quotes Roger Stéphane stating that, “Perhaps it
is absurd, but it was by such absurdities that we restored our dignity as men.”
I would
state that perhaps, in 1945, in a world where the majority lived under foreign
occupying governments, a system of world colonial empires, it was understood
that the French were restoring their dignity as white men, in a world where being occupied by a foreign power was
something that happened to non-whites.
It would
have been interesting had Paxton commented on why the French after living under
a foreign occupation which they found horrific and humiliating didn’t reflect
on what their occupation of other nations and places might be like for those
they dominated. Instead there was war in Algeria, war in Indochina, by a nation
very slow to realize that colonial domination was on the way out. I guess
Paxton and the NYRB editors will always have Paris.
It is
2016 and we live in not just a long since post-Colonial world, but a multipolar
world and I, but perhaps not your other readers, need to learn to live and
think in that world. In reading this article and other articles I am realizing
that the NYRB is perhaps a form of
nostalgia for educated people.
Sincerely
Yours,
Edward
H. Sebesta
There was a reply letter from Paxton, but it really didn't make much sense. He pointed out multiple sources that many people and movements across the spectrum were racist at the time, thus documenting the point I was making. The whole story about the French Resistance, which was a good thing to have happened in history, avoids the issue that what the French found so horrible was something they were doing to many nations and peoples and they didn't perceive what they were doing as wrong because of their white supremacy.
What is missed is an important lesson on how history is constructed and how people are blinded by their ideologies.
What is missed is an important lesson on how history is constructed and how people are blinded by their ideologies.
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