oratory: “Hitler is Germany, Germanynis Hitler.” Simone de Beauvoir andnothers report that the verbose jefe hasndone far more than simply establishingnsocial justice; he has communicated tonhis people a new sense of purpose.nRather like Ho Chi Minh, the kindlynfather of unspoiled children who, fornreasons unknown to the likes of RamseynClark, Jane Fonda, Staughton Lynd andn”Father” Berrigan, became the targetsnof American bombers. More recently,nradicals have discovered China, “a religiousnand highly moralistic society,”nUrie Bronfenbrenner opined with a perfectlynstraight face. This vast land, wenare informed, is peopled by peaceloving,ndedicated folk who have had the inestimablengood fortune to be pointed in thendirection of Utopia by a latter-day Confucius—MaonTse-tung. In the pastndecade substantial numbers of Americans,nnot all of them intellectuals, madenpilgrimages to China. Almost withoutnexception, they returned home wonderingnwhat had occasioned all the fussnabout “Red” China.nThat these Western perceptions werendecidedly at variance with reality, howevernone chooses to define it, is intuitivelynobvious, and evidence to thatneffect has always been available. How,nthen, is one to explain the stubborn refusalnof so many Western intellectualsnto recognize the truth? What is one tonmake of this collective exercise in selfdeception,nthis suppression of criticalnintelligence so impressively demonstratednwhen it is directed at Westernnsocieties? This is the thorny questionnthat Hollander set out to answer. Havingncome of age in a country—Hungaryn—in which intellectuals such as GeorgnLukacs, Bela Fogarasi and Jozsef Revain(the Hungarian Zhdanov) combinednsophisticated philosophical critiques ofnthe West with unswerving fidelity tonStalin, the question was more thannacademic.nIn an excellent chapter on the “techniquesnof hospitality,” Hollander detailsnthe elaborate lengths to which totalitariannstates go to disarm pilgrims whonare already disposed to be sympathetic.nYet hospitality alone does not accountnfor the totalitarian temptation. Hollandernconcludes that the answer to hisnquestion is to be found in the intellectualsnthemselves. This is not to say thatnhe dismisses his subjects as psychologicalnmisfits; rather, he argues that intellectualsnhave been particularly sensitivento the process of secularization, to whatnMax Weber called the disenchantmentnof the world. So long as confidence innprogress persisted, secularization wasnstandard, Khomeini is far more despicablenthan the Shah, but even while henheld the American hostages, the Ayatollahnreceived a more sympathetic hearingnthan his predecessor ever did. ThenMuslim mountebank may be a fanaticnand a judicial murderer, but his anti-nAmerican credentials are in very goodnorder.nPerhaps this is the place to enter thencustomary disclaimer. I do not suggest,nand certainly Hollander does not, thatn”… thf book i.s not so nuith tun as ir could bf. . . . Likf many I’onscTvativus. hfnsuffers, fVfn in tlu- age of Utagan. from delusions of persecution.”n— Anhur Schlcsinger, Jr.niVi’u’ York Times Book Reviewnnot an insupportable burden, but withnthe dissolution of that faith in the 20thncentury, intellectuals awoke to a worldnwithout meaning or purpose. It was thensearch for meaning and for a sharednsense of community, the latter alsonundermined by the corrosive imperativesnof modern life, that directed theirnattention to states that preached a faithnunmixed with doubt, confusion andnambiguity.nIronically then, the intellectuals havencome to hate the secular world theirncritical predecessors did so much toncreate. Indeed, as Hollander makesnclear, their unexamined faith in totalitariannstates is a function of their profoundnalienation from the West, especiallynfrom the United States. With renspect to North Vietnam, for example,nSusan Sontag confessed that “it wasnreally America ‘the strong’ that obsessednme—the contours of American power,nof American cruelty, of American selfrighteousness.”nThose states that arenmost liable to censure in radical circlesn—Taiwan, South Korea, South African—are guilty by association. “The criticismndirected at these societies,” Hollandernwrites, “derived its fervor fromnthe possibility of linking whatever denplorable conditions existed in the countriesnconcerned, in some manner, tonAmerican policies.” By any reasonablennnthere is nothing to criticize in the UnitednStates. The point is that the intensity ofnanti-American sentiment among thosenwho are, after all, quite at liberty to articulatentheir discontent with impunity,ncannot be explained by cataloguing incidencesnof injustice. Why do so manynAmerican intellectuals hate their ownncountry—far more even than they hatencapitalism — with such single-mindedness?nHollander is surely right to pointnto the impact of secularization and thenconsequent loss of moorings. But Dostoyevskynmight, perhaps, help us tonprobe deeper.nIn his own time, Dostoyevsky wasnacutely aware of the Russian iritellectuals’nhatred of their motherland andnidealization of the West or, in the casenof the Slavophiles, of prePetrine Russia.nTo be sure, czarist Russia was opennto criticism on a good many counts. Yetnthe unrelenting hostility of the intelligentsianwas not proportionate to thenevils of existing social and political arrangements.nAn extraordinary judge ofnthe complexities of human motivation,nDostoyevsky perceived that the intellectuals’nhatred of Russia was rooted innself-hatred. Having lost their faith innChristianity, they were no longer movednby the Church’s greatest contributionnto civilization—the teaching of love andnforgiveness. Unable to accept forgivenMarch/April 198Sn