[lbo-talk] Re: Know your enemy

[andie nachgeborenen]

Oh, I don't doubt that Strauss and the Straussians had/have racist attitudes. As did some of the Frankfurters, btw, Adorno had similar views about jazz and African-American-inspired popular music. But there is a difference between gaving racist attitudes and being driven, centrally, by racism. Strauss' ideal is Platonic.  As Plato explains The Noble Lie in The Republic (and btw Bloom is one of the few Plato scholars to discuss this!), the Lie is that social hierarchies are due to the varying "metalltic content" (Gold, Silver, Copper) of kinds of people, who thereby get sorted into different classes (Rulers, Guardians, Workers). There is in reality no basis for this sorting because talent and skilli is randomly distributed among all people, including women But, Plato thinks, society is best off if it is hierarchical, so the rulers have to tell the metals lie (and believe ikt) to persuade everyone of this. Plato's ruling elite included women, a fairly startling departure for an Athenian of his day.  I think that Strauss, Bloom, et all, whatever their incidental prejudices may have been, hada  view of thsi sort. They though that jazz and rock were savage jungle music, they thought that blacks, like most people, were basically ignorant beasts of burden, and women mainly breed cows, but they were happy to welcome any blacks and women who satisfied their standards of culture into the ruling circle of the knowing. jks


>
> ``It's also not constructive to reduce all politics we hate to racism.
> Straussianism is not racist at the core, taht it, it does not turn on
> the notion of race. It is elitist and antidemocratic -- isn't that bad
> enough?'' Justin

It would be interesting to do a study of what Strauss and his students think
about race. As I recall, Strauss hated rock and roll, which he referred to
as "jungle music" -- a rather suggestive phrase. Allan Bloom inherited the
master's disdain for popular music deriving from the African-American
experience and shared the general neo-con hostility to any programmatic
attempt to amelorate the condition of black life in America (i.e.,
opposition to affirmative action or scholarship focusing on the black
experience). On the other hand, if Saul Bellow's Ravelstein and other
gossippy accounts are to be trusted, Bloom did have a thing for young black
and asian men. Of course, sexual attraction to the racial other can be found
in both racists and anti-racists, so the last item may not be relevant. In
general though, I think the elitism of the Straussians often takes a racial
caste, given the simple sociological fact that the elite in our society is
overwhelmingly white and the helot class includes many people of colour.

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