To the editors:
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Unfettered by fact or logic, Solot responds by arguing that the “ruling Conservative Party” successfully co-opted the anti-Semites “after the turn of the century.” But this was in fact a period of Conservative Party decline: from 10 percent of the vote in 1903 to 9.4 percent in 1907 to 9.2 percent in 1912. These figures suggest a less than convincing mandate for Solot’s alleged “ruling party”; they do however confirm the impression that the man simply hasn’t a clue as to what he’s talking about.
If Solot had the intellectual courage to pursue this sort of comparison, one could at least respect his position. Instead, he makes irrelevant, incongruous analogies to the confessional makeup of Israel and the meat-eating proclivities of Argentineans (his related claim that “as a whole, Americans accepted Negro slavery until the Civil War,” while at least relatively serious, unfortunately also happens to be wrong: without Northern opposition to the slave system, there would have been no sectional crisis, no Bloody Kansas, and in fact no Civil War).
Solot casts himself as a bold spirit tilting against the orthodoxy of stuffy academics. But his display of intellectual laziness and shallow moral petulance can hardly be considered a serious alternative (and much the same can be said for Goldhagen as well). Surely your readers, and the issues themselves, deserve better.
