"The word ‘terror,' like everything else about the sixties, was overheated. No one was arrested or imprisoned or executed; no one was even fired from a job 1/
(though there were undoubtedly some who lost out on job opportunities or on assignments or on advances from book publishers they might otherwise have had). 2/
The sanctions of this particular reign of "terror" were much milder: one's reputation was besmirched, with unrestrained viciousness in conversation and, when the occasion arose, by means of innuendo in print. 3/
People were written off with the stroke of an epithet—‘fink' or ‘racist' or ‘fascist' as the case might be—and anyone so written off would have difficulty getting a fair hearing for anything he might have to say. 4/
Conversely, anyone who went against the Movement party line soon discovered that the likely penalty was dismissal from the field of discussion. 5/
Seeing others ruthlessly dismissed in this way was enough to prevent most people from voicing serious criticisms of the radical line and—such is the nature of intellectual cowardice—it was enough ... to prevent them even from allowing themselves to entertain critical thoughts. 6/
The ‘terror,' in other words, could at its most effective penetrate into the privacy of a person's mind. 7/
But even at its least effective, it served to set a very stringent limit on criticism of the radical line on any given issue or at any given moment. A certain area of permissible discussion and disagreement was always staked out, 8/
but it was hard to know exactly where the boundaries were; one was always in danger of letting a remark slip across the border and unleashing the ‘terror' on one's head. Better, then, not to take a chance.” 10/
From Norman Podhoretz’s Breaking Ranks. An editor/friend just sent me that. Still relevant.
(Are we allowed to quote Podhoretz?)
