Re: [tied] Re: Excerpts from Aryan Idols by Stefan Arvidsson (2006)

On 2006-10-09 05:12, mkelkar2003 wrote:

> "Most notable is perhaps that no one reacted to the fact that the
> editor of the world-leading journal for research on the
> Indo-Europeans, Journal of Indo-European Studies, Roger Pearson, had
> since the 1950's has been "one of America's foremost Nazi apologists
> and quite clearly a racist with one of the world's best web of
> contacts." Before Pearson, along with Marija Gimbutas , Edgar C.
> Polome' and Raimo Antilla, founded the Journal of Indo-European
> Studies, he had worked with Hans F. K. Gunther, who had continued to
> spread his racial doctrines after the fall of the Third Reich.
> Pearson was also chairman of the American Division of the World Anti
> Communist League and lobbied in Washington for more funds for the
> Defense, the Contras, and the UNITA guerillas. Together with Polome',
> one of the United States' leading researchers in the area of Germanic
> religion, he has also published the academic, racist journal the
> Mankind Quarterly (Arvidsson 2006, p. 304)."
>
> Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as
> Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and
> London: The University of Chicago Press.

I'm no fan of Roger Pearson, but what on earth does all that have to do
with the validity of Indo-European studies? Do you, with Arvidsson, want
to insinuate that anyone who has cooperated with Pearson in any way
(e.g. by publishing something in the JIES or co-editing the journal) is
some sort of neo-Nazi by association and can therefore be suspected of
having a neo-Nazi "false consciousness" that affects -- and compromises
-- his or her scholarly work? Such suggestions are not merely moronic;
they are also libellous: their purpose is to damage the reputation of
selected scholars not by confronting their opinions but by character
assassination. To take one example, have you read anything written by
Anttila? Do you know anything abut his political views? Has he done,
said or published anything that could be interpreted as racist? (All the
answers are NO.) I'm particularly upset by this case, since I happen to
know Raimo Anttila personally. For me, he's a living human being, not a
straw likeness of one put up by some fool as a target for mud-throwing
practice. Incidentally, being a Finn by birth, with a non-IE language as
his mother tongue, he can hardly be suspected of "Aryan idolatry".

Piotr