Page History: The Resonance Differential
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Page Revision: Tuesday, 27 November 2018 12:24
The Resonance Differential
The Protracted Conflict
JAMES BURNHAM
LET US suppose that a group of
officers stages a successful coup
and assumes control of the government
in, well, let us call the nation Ruritania.
They took this action, their spokesmen declare, because the old regime
had fallen into the hands of Marxists,
Communists, atheists, and criminal adventurers who were oppressing the
population, wrecking the economy, endangering national security and independence, destroying law, order, and
morality, and heading toward a Sovietstyle totalitarian dictatorship.
Let us further suppose that after a
year of rule by this military junta the
situation in Ruritania is as follows:
1) The junta has announced that it
will continue to exercise the supreme
power for “at least three to five” more
years—and that its governing role will
not be affected by the outcome of any
elections that may be held.
2) The Communist Party, Socialist
Party, and other leftwing organizations
have been outlawed.
3) Leftist and liberal newspapers and
magazines have been suppressed. Public
expression of leftist and liberal opinion
is forbidden. Attempted gatherings by
leftists or liberals are broken up by
leftwing militants.
4) Several thousand citizens have
been jailed without warrants or formal
charges. None of these prisoners has
been brought to trial.
5) Many thousands of citizens have
taken refuge in other countries.
6) The rate of domestic inflation has
risen to one of the highest levels in the
world.
7) Unemployment has tripled.
8) A single union organization has
been created, to which all workers are
required to belong.
9) Strikes have been defined as “economic sabotage” and “counterrevolutionary.”
Assuming these as the features of
the Ruritanian situation, let us now ask
what sort of attitude and response
there would be in other nations.
There would be thousands of meetings, conferences, demonstrations,
speeches, editorials, columns, sermons,
student sit-ins, petitions, pamphlets, and
TV specials denouncing the Ruritanian
fascist officers and their infamous violations of all human, civil, and politicalrights. Eloquent addresses in the name
of the suffering Ruritanian workers and
peasants would thunder through UN
halls. Open letters from writers, artists,
professors, and clergymen would appeal
to the conscience of mankind. Ad hoc
committees would spring up in a dozen
countries to demand sanctions against
the fascist Ruritanian government, and
severance of diplomatic relations. Economists would explain how Ruritania’s
economic disasters reconfirmed the
decline of capitalism. Professorial chairs
at the top universities would be offered
Ruritanian escapees, and their lecture
fees would triple. Amnesty International
would condemn the mass torture of
Ruritanian dissidents. Murray Kempton, Anthony Lewis, Garry Wills,
Harriet Van Horne, and Tom Wicker
would have a collective fit. A special
issue of Time would give In Depth
coverage of terror in ruritania. lack
Anderson would reveal that CIA had
financed the Ruritanian generals.
A Turn of the Prism
Given the Ruritanian situation as I
sketched it, all this and plenty more
would be as certain as the sun’s rising.
It will doubtless have occurred to
readers of this page that my Ruritania
is not as purely fictional as the Ruritania known and loved by theater
audiences. By making one small shift
in the prism through which we are
looking—interchanging, thereby, Left
and Right—Ruritania is perceived to
be, in every feature and detail I have
enumerated, Portugal of the year just
past.
With this prismatic shift to Portugal,
however, the attitude and response in
other nations is something else again.
There hasn’t, in fact, been much of any
attitude or response since those ecstatic
early weeks when all the world hailed
the advent of the Carnation Revolution.
I stress that I write here with entire
sobriety and literalness. Except for a
minor fringe sector, the global public
opinion apparatus—media plus intellectuals, preachers, professors, college
students, politicians, etc.—has not been
upset about what has been going on in
Portugal, or even interested: the same
apparatus that worked itself into a
frenzy over the regime of the Greek
colonels, which had many similarities,
though it was milder and considerably
more successful in economic matters.
The Opinion Fulcrum
The public opinion apparatus is in a
state of resonance to the emanations of
an assault (real or alleged) from the
Right on liberty, democracy, civil and
human rights, standard of living, etc.,
but out of resonance to the emanations
from an otherwise identical assault
from the Left. Public opinion somehow
can’t tune in the latter’s wave length.
It is ridiculous to keep arguing about
whether the media (together with the
other reverberators of public opinion)
are biased. They are so organically and
totally biased that they are not aware
of their bias, any more than a healthy
man is aware of his breathing and heart
beat.
There is one way of perceiving, feeling, judging, and responding to acts of
the Left; another way, to the same acts
sprung from the Right. But we may
narrow the beam of our searchlight. It
is not just the Left and Right as large,
rather vague entities that determine the
response. Closer examination shows
that one small, simple factor is decisive:
Does the regime suppress the Communist Party? If it does, then—whatever
else its conduct and characteristics—it
belongs with the Bad Guys and will in
due course get the standard treatment
from public opinion. And it will get
the treatment cubed if it is at the same
time friendly to the U.S.
Specifically: If the Portuguese military regime should tomorrow—it is not
quite inconceivable—suppress the Portuguese Communist Party, then the day
after tomorrow a global campaign,
comparable in scale and ferocity to
those mounted against the Greek
colonels or now in operation against the
Chilean military junta, would begin.
There is something of a mystery in
these interrelationships. Perhaps,
though, it is not as mysterious as we
might prefer to find it.