No conquest, just appeasement
This week the American Broadcasting Corporation decided to postpone - and even to consider cancelling - a projected mini-series on a hypothetical Soviet occupation of the United States, entitled Amerika. This was partly because Moscow had warned that its showing would entail 'unfortunate' consequences for ABC.
'Unfortunate' is, in such contexts, a wonderfully sinister word. On this occasion, however, the implied Soviet threat seems to have been nothing worse than a refusal to allow the ABC news programme, World News Tonight, to be broadcast from Moscow during February.
ABC had hoped to time these broadcasts in order to attract higher ratings in the dull winter months. No very great journalistic advantage in the type of interviews they were allowed to conduct was promised, however.
ABC therefore had an opportunity to demonstrate its attachment to high principle. It could declare that it would not submit to the censorship of a foreign government for the sake of profit. There can be little doubt that if the US government had made such a threat, that is exactly what ABC would have done. ABC would have known that it could bully the American government into backing down. It felt no such assurance vis-a-vis the Kremlin. Accordingly an ABC executive prudently announced that the corporation, already anxious about Amerika's spiralling costs, would naturally take the Soviet protest into consideration when deciding whether to cancel the programme.
The entire incident might almost have come from the first episode of Amerika, which describes how the US gradually falls victim to a bloodless Soviet takeover. All the elements of appeasement are present: the indiarubber flexibility of liberal principles, the lucrative appeal of economic detente which persuades Western business not to offend politically and, finally, the curious lack of real indignation at ABC's conduct.
To be sure, there has been criticism - notably an eloquent protest from the education secretary, William Bennett. But those Europeans who imagine the US to be permanently throbbing with anti-communist fervour would be unnerved by its mild quality. Underlying this moderation is the anti-anti-communist view that, though the appearance of knuckling under to Soviet pressure is, well, 'unfortunate', ABC has after all only decided not to do what it shouldn't have been doing in the first place.
This found expression in a New York Times editorial which condemned Amerika as 'conspicuously feeble . . . nonsense . . . dumbness squared . . . rubbisn . . . (and) absurd.' Since I have not seen Amerika, which has not yet been made, I cannot say if that view is a reasonable one. But the idea of Amerika, at least, is not conspicuously feeble. Thete is a well-established literary tradition in which a hypothetical furute illuminates current political trends.
This tradition includes Jack London's The Iron Heel, several novels by HG Wells, notably The Sleeper Wakes, Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, Huxley's Brave New World, and, of course, Nineteen Eighty-Four. By coincidence, it also includes a recent book describing life in a future Soviet-occupied America: What To Do When The Russians Come, by Robert Conquest and Jo Manchip White.
Conquest and Manchip White have put the known consequences of earlier Soviet occupations into a form satirising that literary expression of American self-improvement - the 'how to' book.
This arranged marriage of form and content produces some wonderfully funny straight-faced advice. People will be too busy queueing to have much time or energy for mowing so they are counselled to use their lawn profitably 'by keeping chickens and, perhaps, a pig.'
Maoists and Trotskyists are warned that flight is their only sensible course. But members of the Ku Klax Klan can expect a brighter future in the red dawn. 'Those who have specialized in anti-Semitism and have any journalistic or demagogic flair may come to some arrangement, and be retrospectively proved not to have been KKK men at all.'
This last point particularly enraged a Soviet reviewer who indignantly declared that 'the lampoonists should know that the 'white cloaks' do not even dream of greater freedom than they already have in today's America'. Shrewdly interpreted, this supports the authors' argument. The paperback version is now advertised with the recommendation: 'Filthy slime' (Izvestia).
I looked up the advice given in the book to television journalists: 'We suggest that you acquire some appropriate skill such as bookkeeping,' say the authors kindly. It is understandable that, starting with such a bad prognosis, ABC executives should not want to irritate anyone unnecessarily.
'Unfortunate' is, in such contexts, a wonderfully sinister word. On this occasion, however, the implied Soviet threat seems to have been nothing worse than a refusal to allow the ABC news programme, World News Tonight, to be broadcast from Moscow during February.
ABC had hoped to time these broadcasts in order to attract higher ratings in the dull winter months. No very great journalistic advantage in the type of interviews they were allowed to conduct was promised, however.
ABC therefore had an opportunity to demonstrate its attachment to high principle. It could declare that it would not submit to the censorship of a foreign government for the sake of profit. There can be little doubt that if the US government had made such a threat, that is exactly what ABC would have done. ABC would have known that it could bully the American government into backing down. It felt no such assurance vis-a-vis the Kremlin. Accordingly an ABC executive prudently announced that the corporation, already anxious about Amerika's spiralling costs, would naturally take the Soviet protest into consideration when deciding whether to cancel the programme.
The entire incident might almost have come from the first episode of Amerika, which describes how the US gradually falls victim to a bloodless Soviet takeover. All the elements of appeasement are present: the indiarubber flexibility of liberal principles, the lucrative appeal of economic detente which persuades Western business not to offend politically and, finally, the curious lack of real indignation at ABC's conduct.
To be sure, there has been criticism - notably an eloquent protest from the education secretary, William Bennett. But those Europeans who imagine the US to be permanently throbbing with anti-communist fervour would be unnerved by its mild quality. Underlying this moderation is the anti-anti-communist view that, though the appearance of knuckling under to Soviet pressure is, well, 'unfortunate', ABC has after all only decided not to do what it shouldn't have been doing in the first place.
This found expression in a New York Times editorial which condemned Amerika as 'conspicuously feeble . . . nonsense . . . dumbness squared . . . rubbisn . . . (and) absurd.' Since I have not seen Amerika, which has not yet been made, I cannot say if that view is a reasonable one. But the idea of Amerika, at least, is not conspicuously feeble. Thete is a well-established literary tradition in which a hypothetical furute illuminates current political trends.
This tradition includes Jack London's The Iron Heel, several novels by HG Wells, notably The Sleeper Wakes, Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, Huxley's Brave New World, and, of course, Nineteen Eighty-Four. By coincidence, it also includes a recent book describing life in a future Soviet-occupied America: What To Do When The Russians Come, by Robert Conquest and Jo Manchip White.
Conquest and Manchip White have put the known consequences of earlier Soviet occupations into a form satirising that literary expression of American self-improvement - the 'how to' book.
This arranged marriage of form and content produces some wonderfully funny straight-faced advice. People will be too busy queueing to have much time or energy for mowing so they are counselled to use their lawn profitably 'by keeping chickens and, perhaps, a pig.'
Maoists and Trotskyists are warned that flight is their only sensible course. But members of the Ku Klax Klan can expect a brighter future in the red dawn. 'Those who have specialized in anti-Semitism and have any journalistic or demagogic flair may come to some arrangement, and be retrospectively proved not to have been KKK men at all.'
This last point particularly enraged a Soviet reviewer who indignantly declared that 'the lampoonists should know that the 'white cloaks' do not even dream of greater freedom than they already have in today's America'. Shrewdly interpreted, this supports the authors' argument. The paperback version is now advertised with the recommendation: 'Filthy slime' (Izvestia).
I looked up the advice given in the book to television journalists: 'We suggest that you acquire some appropriate skill such as bookkeeping,' say the authors kindly. It is understandable that, starting with such a bad prognosis, ABC executives should not want to irritate anyone unnecessarily.