Totalitarianism and Moral Indignation

Abstract

There are two different aspects in what has become the Paul de Man scandal. One of them relates to what de Man did and wrote in the early 1940s in occupied Belgium; the other to what American academics and journalists have done with these early writings in the late 1980s, once they became public knowledge. These are two entirely different matters, and I will make a point of treating them separately. About the first aspect there is not too much to say except to refer to the description of the facts to be found in Edouard Colinet's contribution to Responses, a clear account that considerably helps to introduce some common sense in a matter which has been the locus of all kinds of vociferous and hysterical distortions. The facts are clear enough. Paul de Man was not either a fascist or an anti-Semite. Before the war he was linked to the Cercle du libre examen, in which no rightist students participated, and concerning his publishing in Le soir during the occupation, all witnesses agree that it was no act of ideological identification, but resulted entirely from his need to ensure a livelihood for his family. As for the only anti-Semitic piece that he wrote during his period of collaboration with Le soir, Colinet asserts the following: