Never Again (Well, Hardly Ever)

As the so-called Greatest Generation passes from this Earth, the millions who personally experienced World War II and the Holocaust are fewer and fewer in number.  But for those of us from the generation that followed, awareness of the horrors of that war, and its concomitant atrocities, although second hand, is almost as great.  Those who grew up in the Fifties and early Sixties were bombarded with stories and images of the war -- on television, film, and in books.  To them, those who fought in the war, or more accurately those who survived it, were not abstract figures embodied, as they are today, by frail old men and women honored at holidays or at sporting events for deeds performed almost a century ago.  They were still young men and women -- fathers and uncles, mothers and aunts – for whom memories of the war were agonizingly strong and for whom the scars, both physical and emotional, remained fresh.

The world was still coming to grips with the Nazi horror, and was still just beginning to grapple with the fundamental question that it posed: how could a nation as civilized and as advanced as Germany descend into such horrific barbarism (the world had yet to learn of the atrocities perpetrated by the Soviets)?  The cry “Never again” was not an abstract slogan mindlessly chanted, as are slogans at countless “protests” today, in furtherance of some abstract theory of intersectionality.  It was the cry of a people for whom extinction was not just a theoretical possibility, but a reality that they had experienced first-hand.  The creation of Israel followed the war by only three years, and, as recounted in Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land, those who fought in the 1948 war against the Arabs held the legitimate view that the survival of the Jewish people might depend on the survival of Israel.

While, at the time, it was perhaps fashionable in the West to hypothesize whether something similar to the Holocaust could have occurred in countries other than Germany, it seemed unthinkable at the time, after the true horrors of the Nazi regime had been revealed, that the virulent antisemitism that spawned such horrors would ever be repeated.  If “Never Again” lacked any currency, it was because almost no one not Jewish seriously believed that “Again” was even a remote possibility.

It is for this reason that, to those of a certain age, the reaction of many in the West to the atrocities that occurred on October 7^th in Israel is particularly shocking.  Even for a site that was established on the premise that history repeats itself, it is unfathomable to us, as we watch politicians, cultural leaders, and members of our universities call for the extermination of the Jewish state and blame Israel for the barbaric attack on its people, to think that we are again posing the same question that was posed more than half a century ago: how could citizens of a civilized nation be so inured to evil as to condone the murder and rape of innocent men, women and children? 

A corollary to this question is:  what informs these views?  From where are people getting information that would lead them to such views.  In that regard, what is even more shocking is how those tasked with informing these citizens of the facts of the war, i.e., the press, have also been so morally compromised.  This compromise ranges from reportage that merely slants the coverage of the war by selective reporting of events or through subtle headlines, to outright lies, to the active complicity of individuals working for major news outlets in the Hamas outrages themselves.  Even if one could have imagined a recurrence of the antisemitism comparable to that which gripped Germany in the 1930s, one could not have imagined that the press, rather than challenging it and seeking to root it out, would instead be an integral part of its propagation.  This propagation is amplified by social media algorithms that seek to engage the reader rather than inform him.

The corruption of the press is hardly new.  History provides numerous examples.  Three examples come quickly to mind: Walter Duranty, complicit in Soviet crimes, and Edgar Snow, and Theodore White, who fashioned public perception of China, and more specifically, the antagonists for the control of China, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse Tung, through their reporting.  However, in some ways, the reporting on the current conflict is far worse. 

The Complicit Press

The poster child for dishonest reporting in furtherance of an immoral cause is, of course, Walter Duranty of the New York Times.  Duranty is so famous that awards for dishonest journalism have been named after him.  In particular, he is renowned for his coverage of the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s, the Holodomor, wherein millions of Ukrainians died of starvation as a result of Stalin’s collectivization policies and of his requisition of Ukrainian harvests to feed other regions of the Soviet Union.  Duranty filed reports denying that there was any starvation in the region, merely “food shortages.”  Indeed, in the fall of 1933, at a time when the Soviets were seeking recognition by the United States, Duranty served his hosts by writing that he had “just completed a 200-mile trip through the heart of the Ukraine and can say positively that the harvest is splendid [sic] and all talk of famine is now ridiculous.”  Duranty acknowledged that the previous winter had been harder, but blamed any food shortages on “passive resistance” exercised by those opposed to collectivization policies.  

“[T]oday there is no more resistance and those who cooperate with the Kremlin policy have already begun to understand, and get, its benefits.”

Less well known, but equally compromised, was his coverage of many of Stalin’s show trials.  Duranty disputed the notion that such trials were part of a process calculated to purge the Party of anyone who opposed Stalin, but instead characterized them as routine “cleansings” that occurred periodically.  He noted in one trial the absence of any evidence suggesting that the defendant had committed the treason with which he was charged, but Duranty nevertheless reported that the trial stood up. He characterized the confession of one show trial defendant as “a tale of black treason in act and intent” that was not the   “hysterical confession of a despairing fanatic, but a detailed recital of conspirative action . . . more convincing than the indictment.”

It is likely that Duranty was less motivated by political sympathy for Stalin and the Soviets than by mere opportunism.  Born in England, Duranty, after attending Cambridge, traveled to Paris where he fell in with a cult whose principal activity consisted of engaging in orgies and smoking opium.  After covering the war in Belgium and the Peace Conference in Paris, he was appointed the Moscow bureau chief for the Times. 

Duranty was amply rewarded by the Soviets for his coverage.  He was driven by a chauffeur in a Buick provided by the Soviets, and he lived in a large apartment in Moscow.  Malcom Muggeridge, who was in Russia at the same time and who reported truthfully about the Ukrainian famine, later wrote of him:

“There was something vigorous, vivacious, preposterous, about his unscrupulousness which made his persistent lying somehow absorbing. I suppose no one . . . followed the Party line, every shift and change, as assiduously as he did. In [the Soviet censor’s] eyes he was perfect, and was constantly held up to the rest of us as an example of what we should be.”

Duranty’s name has been invoked by many who analyze the press coverage of events in Israel and Gaza today.  The complicity of the press in the Hamas public relations campaign has been stark.  This complicity has included the publication of false news stories, such as when the Times uncritically reported Hamas claims that a Palestinian hospital had been struck by an Israeli rocket, killing 500 civilians.                 In fact, the rocket was Palestinian, it actually struck      the hospital’s parking lot, and it killed, at most, a handful of people.       Further, it has been widely reported that journalists acting as stringers for major news organizations such as the AP, Reuters, the New York Times, and CNN had advance notice of the Hamas raids and went along on them.

A picture of one such journalist employed by CNN and the AP being kissed by the Hamas mastermind of the October  7^th massacre calls to mind Duranty’s congratulatory meeting with Stalin, wherein the dictator summoned him to the Kremlin for an exclusive interview ant told him:

“You have done a good job in your reporting the USSR, though you are not a Marxist, because you try to tell the truth about our country and to understand it and explain it to your readers.”

Like Duranty, this journalist made his peace with evil.     

The “Narrative” Press

While the press coverage of the Israeli conflict has included outright falsehoods, far more insidious is the reportage that, while factually correct, leaves out important facts necessary to understand the event in question in order to further a so-called narrative.  Thus, we have newspapers refusing to call the perpetrators of the October 7^th massacre “terrorists, ” or referring to children held hostage in Gaza as being “detained.”  In a related example that borders on parody, CNN reported that “[a} 69-year-old Jewish man died after suffering a head injury Sunday following an ‘interaction’ with a pro-Palestinian demonstrator during dueling rallies in Southern California,” omitting that the man was killed by the pro-Palestinian protester who fatally struck him with a bullhorn. 

History is replete with men whose reputations were ruined by a false narrative promulgated by the press.   Of all the figures of the 20^th century, a case could be made that the one whose reputation was damaged the most by contemporary reporters and subsequent historians is Chiang Kai-shek.  Chiang’s image was forever set with the publication of Barbara Tuchman’s best-seller, Stilwell and The American Experience in China, which introduced Chiang to a generation of readers by the sobriquet that Joseph Stilwell, the American general sent to advise him, bestowed upon him: “Peanut.”  Tuchman’s view was consistent with that of contemporary reporters in China at the time, including White, who also was an admirer of Stilwell and edited his papers after the general’s death.  

Much has been written about Chiang’s regime’s corruption:      its incompetence, its repression, and its military failures.  However, such failures are necessarily tempered by extent of the difficulties he faced throughout his period in office.  Chiang came to power during a period of chaos and disunion.  Taking the reins of the Chinese republic established by Sun Yat-Sen, Chiang slowly established his authority over most of China (Manchuria having been occupied by the Japanese) through a combination of military victories, bribes, and alliances with various warlords throughout the country.   Thus, although the titular ruler of China, Chiang’s government was always a delicate balancing act of competing warlords whose allegiance to Chiang was continually open to question.  An example of how delicate was this balance occurred when the warlord, Chang Hsueh-liang, leader of the Fengtian clique who had aided Chiang in the defeat of the Christian General,  Feng Yu-Hsiang, later arrested Chiang in Xian in order to broker a truce between the Kuomintang and the Communists and present a united front against the Japanese.  Chiang was still consolidating his power and working on the unification of China when he was confronted by Japan after the Marco Polo Bridge incident, where local Chinese and Japan troops fired on each other.

Faced with this crisis, Chiang determined that resistance to the Japanese could no longer be postponed, even though it put his own rule at risk.  For four years, Chiang’s China fought the Japanese with virtually no help from the West.  His troops offered stiff, but ultimately unsuccessful resistance to the Japanese capture of Shanghai.  After the fall of the Kuomintang capital of Nanking,  Chiang scored a major victory against Japan at the battle of Taierzhuang, which he achieved only after reaching a truce with a major warlord rival.  When the Japanese advance resumed, Chiang ordered the breach of the dams on the Yellow River, stymying the Japanese but causing death and destruction to his own people.  Ultimately, despite all these obstacles, Chiang kept China in the war, even after his country was so weakened and war-weary that high-ranking members of his government, including the immediate successor to Sun Yat-sen, determined that reaching an accord with Japan was the best policy for China, and defected to establish a puppet government in Japanese controlled territories.  In short, throughout most of the war, Chiang was resolute in his opposition to Japan, a resolution recognized even by his rival, Mao.  Nevertheless, the narrative in influential circles was that Chiang put his own interests before China’s, and simply would not fight the Japanese.

One basis for this narrative, recounted in Tuchman’s book, concerned Chiang’s reluctance to commit Chinese troops to the defense of Burma, despite the urging of Stilwell.  Stilwell’s version, echoed by Tuchman, was that Chiang was a coward interested in self-preservation who was unwilling to risk any of his military assets.  Chiang’s version, recounted in a new book, Forgotten Ally, was that Chinese intelligence anticipated a renewed Japanese advance, and that he needed his best armies to defend Chinese interests, not those of China’s long-time antagonist, Great Britain, whose desire to reestablish its empire in the Far east was inimical to China’s interests.  Ultimately, Chiang released the troops, Stilwell was routed, and the remnants of the Chinese armies ended up stranded in India.  At the same time, the Chinese analysis of Japan’s intentions proved correct, Japan launched its offensive, and the undermanned Chinese forces suffered a devastating, and nearly final defeat.  Nevertheless, Tuchman’s narrative is the one that continues to hold sway.

By contrast, Mao Tse Tung, extolled for his alleged resistance to the Japanese, suffered little compared to Chiang and the Nationalists.  The Japanese, for eight years, barely moved from the lines that they had established near Mao when the war began.  It is indicative that Mao’s army, isolated in the western city of Yan’an, strengthened more than tenfold during the war while Chiang’s, under constant assault by the Japanese, significantly weakened.  Nevertheless, the image that reached the American public was that Mao was a fighter and that Chiang was interested primarily in self-preservation.  

The positive image of Mao was to a large extent the result of a book, Red Star Over China, by an American reporter, Edgar Snow.  Although not necessarily a Communist, Snow was a leftist who was sympathetic to the Communists in China and traveled in circles similarly sympathetic to them.  In 1936, he traveled to the western city of Yan’an to interview Mao.  The management of Snow’s visit was a tour de force for the Communists.  Isolated from the world, the Communists could orchestrate Snow’s visit.  Leaders stayed up every night to plan, to the finest detail, what Snow would see and be told the next day.  The result was a book that presented the Communists as freedom fighters and genuine reformers, spawning the myth that the Communists were believers in democracy and merely interested in land reform.  This myth would have a significant effect on American policy both during and after the war.

Snow coupled his admiration for Mao with his disdain for Chiang.  Snow’s views of Chiang were echoed by Time’s Chinese correspondent, Theodore White, who would go on to greater fame as the chronicler of presidential campaigns.  White’s hatred of Chiang permeated his reports to the United States, ultimately causing him to leave the magazine.

The lesson of Chiang and Mao is that the narrative very often proves stronger than the facts.  For all his flaws, Chiang kept China in the war against Japan despite overwhelming setbacks.  He was confronted by a superior enemy, commanded a fractious army, dealt with natural disasters, including a famine, and had at his disposal fewer resources than any of his allies.  It was to a large extent due to his determination to fight the Japanese that, weakened by years of warfare, his armies lost their final confrontation with Mao.  Nevertheless, he provided the basis for a democracy that thrives today in Taiwan, in stark contrast to the repression that continues today in China.  All of these facts are at odds with the narrative that Chiang placed his own interests above those of his country.

Coverage Today

Duranty, Snow, and White demonstrate that the actions of reporters today are not unprecedented.  Whether acting out of self-interest, motivated by sympathy for one side, or by hatred of the leader of the other (in this case Netanyahu), reporters can be swayed from reporting the truth, even, as with Duranty, in furtherance of the most malignant regime.  What is different is that reporters today adhere to the narrative even in the face of irrefutable facts that have been publicly disclosed.  Duranty was able to maintain his account of the Holodomor only because few other reporters had any access to Ukraine, and those that did, including Muggeridge and Gareth Jones, lacked Duranty’s prestige.  One can hardly imagine the New York Times of that day continuing to publish Duranty’s dispatches if journalists from around the world were also present to report accurately and social media were available to provide pictures of dead bodies in the street.  Similarly, Snow’s account was not subject to challenge because few other reporters were given his access.  The flaws in his appraisal were not revealed for years.  Similarly, White had access and a platform that were unmatched.

By contrast, the errors in today’s reporting are repeatedly revealed in real time.  Yet the revelation of these flaws does little, if anything, to temper the reporting of many news outlets which, in many instances, could have been predicted before Israel’s advance into Gaza occurred.  Thus, while news outlets of yesterday may have employed reporters who suffered from many of the same flaws afflicting reporters today – self-interest, sympathy for one side, or antipathy for the other – they appear to have had one quality that today’s outlets lack – a sense of shame.