I saw a thread here a while back alleging that Borges was a severely racist person. Something about not caring about slavery, hating basques etc,
Does anyone have any sources on this? It would seem to conflict with what little there is in his works of his social views. For instance, in his Universal History of Infamy, he seems to deride the racism of Billy the Kid in "The Disinterested Killer Bill Harrigan."
Any sources on his societal views?
Other urls found in this thread:
lareviewofbooks.org
elespectador.com
aboutbasquecountry.eus
elmonolector.blogspot.com.ar
en.wikipedia.org
livescience.com
en.wikipedia.org
notasomargonzalez.blogspot.com.br
twitter.com
It's just something people say. It's not true. It's born from a misunderstanding of the nuance of his politics.
They were supposed direct quotes of him affirming that blacks were better off as slaves lol
Either they're spurious or he's a racist
He came to Chile and greeted ourguy Pinochet. Just by that fact hes considered a turbo nazi by braindead illiterate commies. But thats what they do all the time, so what gives.
Also that fat red piece of shit Neruda got the Nobel over Borges, just by his ties with the communist party, which was such a joke.
>blacks were better off as slaves
Hes right you know
Take a look at this I don't think I'd take him at his word
Oops, meant the LARB article
That article is flawed, though. He was staunchly anti-communist, anti-fascist, pro-liberalism.
He once wrote an article defending the Jews of Argentina.
The article doesn't contradict that. Borges was staunchly against false certainty and the willing away of complexity, and liberalism had fewer positive claims about what's right.
The article is pretty much worthless for my purposes. The point is that Borges often expressed his sincere views.
His grandparent was killed by mestizos (gauchos) in the war. He was brought up in the English culture among higher class of Argentina, where it was pretty common to despise the lower classes.
During his youth he was part of a cultural movement that praised the 'roots of our land', the gauchos. In few words, I suspect he was a romantic, which why so many of his stories are about gauchos, 'malevos' and 'cuchilleros'. Also why he loved Chesterton and Kipling, both pretty racist by modern standard.
What I mean to say is that Borges was a living paradox in many aspects. I love him with a passion, but nobody should pay much attention to his world views.
I know for a fact he revered Sarmiento, who was extremely racist and elitist. He wrote a somewhat apologist prologue for 'Facundo', praising Sarmiento.
This Sarmiento guy was a dick, despised blacks, gauchos, indians, the low classes, etc. If America had a dick, Sarmiento would suck it dry (there's a Sarmiento monument somewhere in Washington DC). When he became president he gave a Congressional speech in which he said that poor people should not be helped by the state, that beggars were insects and that orphans were the sons of vicious parents who should not be fed.
>>What does it matter if the State leaves to die those who can't make a living due to their own defects?
Forgot to mention he was friends with Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, a known collaborationist who was invited to write many times in "Sur".
BASED
He liked the Jews alright. On the other hand I remember a lil racist remark in a short story of his, I think it was Ulrikke? Not sure, but the narrator said of a non-white female character that she "was beautiful to the point where her race allowed it". C'mon Georgie, you're better than that. Politically he was either conservative or apolitical (but I mean, he accepted an award from a foreign dictator: Pinochet). Word says he was asexual as well. In the end all he really cared about was literature.
His work always seemed apolitical to me, pretty Keatsian desu focused on the ideal rather than an earthly, dirty or political world.
A while ago I wrote a paper on Whitman and I read a brief review of Leaves of Grass by Borges where he praises it but (incorrectly) identifies Whitman as a slavery supporter. Unless he contradicts this elsewhere, I'd assume he was anti-slavery. That doesn't necessarily map to not being racist, though.
god you people need to fucking die
He was talking about the queen of the yahoos aka apemen (not sure if they're blacks or australoids or some mythical creatures). They're called tribesmen, anyway. It's from Brodie's Report.
>In another Castle lives the queen, who is not permitted to see her king. During my sojourn, this lady was kind enough to receive me; she was smiling, young, and insofar as her race allowed, graceful.
Okay, have a treat, OP.
elespectador.com
>"My grandfather used to tell me that the black slaves he owned weren't aware that their grandfathers had been sold in Plaza del Retiro by the Llavallol family, because the black doesn't have a historical memory. If [the blacks] hadn't been educated in America, they would never know they were the descendants of slaves; in some way, blacks are like children."
There's also something about him being in a literary conference where black poets said some shit.
aboutbasquecountry.eus
>"Of course I find blacks unbearable... I don't retract what I had said many times before: Americans made a huge mistake when they educated the blacks; as slaves they were like children, they lived more happily and were less obnoxious".
>"Argentinian gauchos were brutes... they didn't know how to read or write, much less who they fought for. If we remember them still, it's because educated people wrote about them"
>When Braceli mentioned he descended from Basques from his mother line: "Basque? I can't understand how someone would feel proud of being basque... Basques are even more useless than blacks, and pray consider that blacks have not been useful at anything other than being slaves"
elmonolector.blogspot.com.ar
>Braceli asked Borges to imagine he had a son, a black son at that: “Noooo… that would never happen! For that to happen, I would've needed to sleep with a black woman, and that has never happened, fortunately! […] I think nobody would be happy to have a black son, not even blacks!"
This shit is very funny.
Why? What's wrong?
god damn
Yeah, it seems to me that it would fit his character for him to hate the less fortunate races. He loved England, American, the Jews, France, China, Japan for their culture, especially the intellectual portions of their culture.
Why do Americans think every country had a fucking slavery past? There was no slavery in Argentina when Borges was born.
Because he literally supported slavery you clownwhy are foreigners so oversensitive
Did I imply somewhere that there was? OP asked what Borges thought about slavery and I gave him a statement about Borges' stance on American slavery.
OBSESSED
>as slaves they were like children, they lived more happily and were less obnoxious
Well, it's true they were less obnoxious. We can all agree on this.
Okay, shit, sorry, realized some ambiguous language. In the thing I read Borges praised Leaves of Grass, not slavery. Though I guess he praised slavery elsewhere
Well, tbf, around Latin America it is well known that Argentinians are the most racist nationality, they call every seemingly non-white person a "negro", which literally means black but they mean it as nigger. It's ill-intended.
Oh wow
>Georgie: People talk about the basque will, the basque obstinacy... and what good has it done to them? None whatsoever. They've produced execrable painters and an unberable writer such as Unamuno. The only other good thing they've produced are pelotaris (the name of the players in Basque pelota)... Look, I have basque blood too; several last names betray that origin. Nevertheless, I consider that basques have achieved nothing, nothing; they're only remarkable for being one of the most sterile countries in the world. son sólo notables por ser uno de los países más estériles del mundo.
>Braceli: Well, what can I do, Borges, I like to say I have Basque blood
>G: Really, I can't understand why people feel so proud of being Basque. I've told you already, I share that blood too, but when I list my origins, I'm very careful to forget about the Basques... Now, Valencia is a thing entirely different. Look, I remember something I wrote in one of my short stories: throughout history, Basques have done nothing except to milk cows; they've gone through the centuries milking.
I'll have to buy this book, lol.
>I love him with a passion, but nobody should pay much attention to his world views.
if this is how you treat your friends, I'd love to see what you do to your enemies
>Basque people worse than niggers
Top kek, Georgie.
An author is not your friend, nigga.
And yet "negro" is also used as a friendly nickname.
I'm well aware this country is a racist shithole. Brazilian whites are also pretty racist and Chileans are a bunch of very class-conscious elitist faggots even though their "white" women all look terrible and their Spanish is a sin against humanity, no matter which socioeconomic strata you look at.
>centuries milking
Kek
No wonder Bolaño hated Chile and its elite.
Well, I care about my family and friends but I'm fully aware of their many flaws. I just choose to ignore the bad, the same way I expect people to ignore the bad in me (as I know I'm not perfect either).
Being able to juggle two contradictory or paradoxical opinions is pretty Borgesian and, imo, the mark of high intelligence.
you're sick and need help
...
fyi even if he was, this wouldn't make his literary work better or worse in any way.
Brainlet detected. Even while reading his most abstract stories, you'll never forget even for a moment that it they came from the hand of a man who makes the kkk look liberal.
Of course I do.
And you do as well.
In fact, we can both enjoy the works of Aristotle even if he didn't believe women were fully human because they lacked in deliberative capacity without giving a thought to how sexist Aristotle was - not to mention that he also believed some of us were born to be slaves.
We can enjoy the work of most Greek authors, who did not support verbally some "mean" ideology like Borges may have done, but actually owned - and probably flogged and punished - slaves in their own houses, and were ok with the idea that some people have the same worth as objects and should be treated as such.
Should we dismiss most of the classics for this?
We can enjoy almost every author in the 1800s despite the fact that most of them would be considered racist and sexist by today's standards - many of them still held beliefs about women very similar to Aristotle's.
We can both enjoy Heidegger despite the fact that he embraced Nazism at a certain point. We can enjoy Pound and Mishima.
We can enjoy Joyce's Ulysses despite his several anti-semitic remarks.
We can enjoy all this stuff because enjoying art and beauty have nothing to do with morality.
And we can also enjoy philosophies like Aristotle's, because as rational adults we are capable of entertaining philosophical ideas without personally support everything the author says. I can think Aristotle was right about logic and wrong about women, and this would not in any way diminish my high opinion of Aristotle as one of the greatest geniuses of all times.
And I can assure you, my dear friend, that while reading the very inspiring beginning of Metaphysics alpha I am thinking of everything but the fact that Aristotle was not politically correct.
Let me guess: you come from a rich family, dont you?
Nooooooo. Noooooooo. Not RACISM. Somebody call the National Guard.
I never said it wouldn't improve the experience
>I know for a fact he revered Sarmiento, who was extremely racist and elitist
Sarmiento was much, much more than that, if “racist” and “elitist” are the first things that come to your mind when talking about him you need to read more. Also, he was only racist on his youth.
>He came to Chile and greeted ourguy Pinochet
Either the son of a wealthy and fervently "Christian" family (who cared little for the poverty of others and felt threatened by governmental reforms favoring the humble) or an uninformed citizen with a beaten-wife syndrome that keeps defending her abusive husband ("He did it because he loves me, it was for my own good. These bruises show how much he likes me.")
Pinochet is very overrated but he was a good guy for resisting Marxist international colored revolution. You have to remember the historical context and the threat it posed.
> they call every seemingly non-white person a "negro", which literally means black but they mean it as nigger. It's ill-intended
No we dont, its in the friendly way. The same way we call young people “gordo/a” (fat).
>the narrator said
Yeah, it was the narrators opinion, not borges's. Unless you need the narrators to be these virtue signaling politically correct things.
> "Christianity is about letting loafers get free shit, not about Christ, the 10000000th edition"
Go neck yourself.
>que haces cabecita negra
Come on user.
Are you all american? This racial thing puritanism is mindboggling. Borges WASNT a slavery supporter, for he never lived in a slaver country, he had an opinion on the matter, thats all. Holy shit tou people are deranged, its like you truly deserve niggers, like a sort of karma.
Argentina had slaves
Here, this is what your view of Christianity must look like:
>Coulter is a Christian and belongs to the Presbyterian denomination.[78][79] Her father was Catholic and her mother was a Protestant.[80] At one public lecture she said, "I don't care about anything else; Christ died for my sins, and nothing else matters."[81] She summarized her view of Christianity in a 2004 column, saying, "Jesus' distinctive message was: People are sinful and need to be redeemed, and this is your lucky day, because I'm here to redeem you even though you don't deserve it, and I have to get the crap kicked out of me to do it." She then mocked "the message of Jesus... according to liberals", summarizing it as "something along the lines of 'be nice to people,'" which, in turn, she said "is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity."[82]
>Confronting some critics' views that her content and style of writing is un-Christian-like,[83] Coulter stated that "I'm a Christian first and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it."[84]
en.wikipedia.org
In other words, you are only in it for wanting to continue to exist (why someone so important as you and your loved ones would simply cease to exist? That's not fair,so it must not be true; it cannot be true) after death and for feeling that any cowardly, selfish, and immoral act you commit is not that bad, becaue in the end, if you believe in Christ (more important than being a good person is to "believe in Christ") you will be saved.
The vision of a coward/arrogant person of religion.
If your definition of "racism" is "doesn't particularly like black people" then basically everyone is either racist or stupid.
>In other words, you are only in it for wanting to continue to exist
No, I am in it to serve God. (Note: God, not the whims of various retards who want more gibs.)
> feeling that any cowardly, selfish, and immoral act you commit is not that bad
Signaling your virtue to the Powers that Be won't save you from the lake of fire, bruh. Neither will "being nice".
Are you the guy from Chile?
>Signaling your virtue to the Powers that Be won't save you from the lake of fire, bruh. Neither will "being nice".
I do not know if something like a deity exists; I do not know how something can have come out of nothing or to have ever existed, and I admit that perhaps this "first cause" may be called God.
But one thing I'm sure: no human being has ever heard, seen or spoken to any "divine being," and all the religions of the world - even if containing many beauties, noble ideas, wise counsels, literary marvels, and so on. - are human creations.
And it seems painfully obvious to me that there is nothing like life after death (which does not mean that something like a Divinity does not exist).
>Signaling your virtue to the Powers that Be won't save you from the lake of fire, bruh. Neither will "being nice".
So what do you think that would "save" someone?
> But one thing I'm sure: no human being has ever heard, seen or spoken to any "divine being"
Really? How in hell can you be so sure? From here it looks like severe psychological coping issues on your side instead of a healthy rationality!
> So what do you think that would "save" someone?
Take a wild guess. I'll give you three tries.
You're mom gay
>Take a wild guess. I'll give you three tries.
You just need to believe in Christ and God?
(I really, really dont want this to be the answear: you cannot be that simple).
Also: you are not the guy from Chile, are you? Where are you from (US?)
> You just need to believe in Christ and God?
Faith is not "belief in".
Yeah, it was Brodie, not Borges.
>”negro” is the same as “cabecita negra”
Hahahaha no chill Borges wasnt fucking around hahahah
Come on, man. Things had gotten to the point of no return. The coup was the only why out. Did Pinochet over do it? Yah, but, all things considered, not by much.
stop projecting soyboy
why are Argentinians so based?
>Marxism in its classical and contemporary forms seeks to destroy the nuclear family and "bourgeois" morality
>muh opiate of the masses
so we just roll over for that user? turn the other cheek until Christianity is a footnote of history?
>I think nobody would be happy to have a black son, not even blacks!"
LMAO.
>so we just roll over for that user? turn the other cheek until Christianity is a footnote of history?
I was not talking about Christianity being bad in itself (I don't have any faith, but at it's core there are some great things to learn with Christ), but pointing out that most Christians are people who act like immoral criminals and only go to church and pray to "save themselves". Furthermore, many Christians think that is more important to "have faith in God and Christ" than to really be an example of wise and loving human being.
It started already with the Roman Polytheistic Religion machinery absorbing Christianity (since they couldn't fight it anymore). They had all the power-structure already made, and from that point on it was all about using the religion as a massive organization, with degrees of power-holders and, in time, it's own system of law-givers and warlords. It was like a giant company selling a balm-for-hurt-minds and canned-hope, and the people paid so well for this commodities that money, power and all sorts of influence flowed in like never seen before.
To this day christianity is still mostly about selling hope and a clean-counsciousness than about actually being the sort of person that Jesus admired. People aremostly weak, not strong, and to be what Christ and Buddha wanted people to be takes a great deal of effort.
An example of what I am talking about: most Christians will support a thousands times government measures that are favorable to their own business enterprises over anything that the State might do to reduce inequallity. You see this pattern in many countries, with most Christian-flag parties: they use the arguments of "savng traditional christian values" and the "noble christian family” while supporting every law that will favour the private sector, and lable every social measure (like free healthcare and free superior education, for example) as "communistic" and "demonic" and "un-christian" (the irony of ironies being that Christ himself would advise people to share and to be kind to others, especially those in need). That's one of the most un-Christ like things a regular person can do (except for killing and robbing and other criminal activities; oh, except that many "noble Christians" are prone to commit white collar crimes, crimes that, since they can only be done by people in a position of power, are not punished with so strong a hand-of-law as the crimes that lowlifes commit).
Pinochet, for example, got massive support from the Christian parties, and none of them complained about the mass killings and tortures that were commited over his rule.
If there wasn't a promise of eternal life and salvation and an infinity of happiness most people would not give a damn about Christ.
Whatch out, he has a meme word and he is not afraid of using it.
Try again, looser. I'm tall, handsome and have a beautiful whife (looks like Audrey Hepburn).
Fuck off. Sarmiento would make a modern day raging neoliberal blush with his views on the poor and the destitute.
This is what first comes to mind when I think of him.
I wish fucking retards like you would kill yourselves and stop ruining the things that I love.
every person born pre WWII was a racist by todays standard. you're brainwashed pal
Einstein
1. Shortly before moving to America, Einstein backed a campaign to defend the Scottsboro Boys, nine Alabama teenagers who were falsely accused of rape in 1931.
2. When Princeton's Nassau Inn refused to rent a room to contralto opera star Marian Anderson because of her skin color, Einstein invited the singer home as his guest. Their friendship lasted from 1937 until his death in 1955, and Anderson stayed with the Einsteins whenever she visited Princeton.
3. In 1946, Einstein gave a rare speech at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, a historically black university, where he also accepted an honorary degree. The appearance was significant because Einstein made a habit of turning down all requests to speak at universities. During his speech, he called racism "a disease of white people."
4. Einstein was a friend and supporter of African-American actor and singer Paul Robeson, who was blacklisted because of his civil rights work. The pair worked together in 1946 on an anti-lynching petition campaign. In 1952, when Robeson's career had bottomed out because of the blacklisting, Einstein invited Robeson to Princeton as a rebuke to the performer's public castigation.
5. For decades, Einstein offered public encouragement to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and its founder, W. E. B. Du Bois. And in 1951, when the federal government indicted the 83-year-old Du Bois as a "foreign agent," Einstein offered to appear as a character witness during the trial. The potential publicity convinced the judge to drop the case.
6. In January 1946, Einstein published an essay, "The Negro Question," in Pageant magazine in which he called racism America's "worst disease." Here is an excerpt from that essay.
"There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to men of white skins. Even among these there are prejudices of which I as a Jew am clearly conscious; but they are unimportant in comparison with the attitude of the "Whites" toward their fellow-citizens of darker complexion, particularly toward Negroes. The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me. I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out…
Your ancestors dragged these black people from their homes by force; and in the white man's quest for wealth and an easy life they have been ruthlessly suppressed and exploited, degraded into slavery. The modern prejudice against Negroes is the result of the desire to maintain this unworthy condition."
In the late 1930s, Anderson gave about 70 recitals a year in the United States. Although by then quite famous, her stature did not completely end the prejudice she confronted as a young black singer touring the United States. She was still denied rooms in certain American hotels and was not allowed to eat in certain American restaurants. Because of this discrimination, Albert Einstein, a champion of racial tolerance, hosted Anderson on many occasions, the first being in 1937 when she was denied a hotel before performing at Princeton University. She last stayed with him months before he died in 1955
He is the father of public school. He made FREE EDUCATION FOR EVERYONE possible and turned a 3rd world shithole into the most advanced and educated latin american country (which both populist and milicos hurried to revert). He also kicked the church out of the schools. Also
>judging early 20th century figures by today standards
My respect for Borges has skyrocketed. Holy shit.
>To this day christianity is still mostly about selling hope and a clean-counsciousness than about actually being the sort of person that Jesus admired.
>An example of what I am talking about: most Christians will support a thousands times government measures that are favorable to their own business enterprises over anything that the State might do to reduce inequallity
*whoosh
have you even read the Gospels user? Christianity has never been about temporal transformation or any progressive God-building project. If you want that go be a faggot and read some liberation theology. Stop parroting boomer democrat memes about how Jesus was the "first socialist." Not to mention that the progressive (by this I mean believing in a teleology of progress, not a bull moose progressive or socialism-lite) project has killed millions more in its attempt to bring equality like you advocate for. Go read your Jefferson Bible and stop pretending you know anything about Christianity.
All of those quotes are fake.
Here are two quotes from Borges' Essay "Two Books":
I recall certain rather undecipherable discussions that took place during the Spanish Civil War. Some people declared that they were Republicans; others, Nationalists; still others, Marxists; yet they all, in a Gauleiter lexicon, spoke of race and people. Even the men of the hammer and the sickle turned out to be racists. I also recall with some amazement a certain assembly that was convoked to condemn anti-Semitism. For several reasons I am not anti-Semetic; the principal one is that I generally find the difference between Jews and non-Jews quite insignificant, and sometimes illusory or imperceptible. But on that particular day no one wanted to share my opinion; they all swore that a German Jew was vastly different from a German. In vain I reminded them that Adolf Hitler said the same thing; in vain I insinuated that an assembly against racism should not tolerate the doctrine of a superior race; in vain I quoted the wise declaration of Mark Twain that a man's race was unimportant, for, after all, he was a human being, and no one could be anything worse.
What's your point? That I should think of him as some sort of hero first and always, instead of the elitist scum he actually was? Again, fuck off.
>Para ganar [las elecciones], nuestra base de operaciones ha consistido en la audacia y el terror, que empleados hábilmente han dado este resultado. Los gauchos que se resistieron a votar por nuestros candidatos fueron puestos en el cepo o enviados a las fronteras con los indios y quemados sus ranchos.
>Si los pobres de los hospitales, de los asilos de mendigos y de las casas de huérfanos se han de morir, que se mueran: porque el Estado no tiene caridad, no tiene alma. El mendigo es un insecto, como la hormiga. Recoge los desperdicios. De manera que es útil sin necesidad de que se le dé dinero. ¿Qué importa que el Estado deje morir al que no puede vivir por sus defectos?. ¿Los huérfanos son los últimos seres de la sociedad, hijos de padres viciosos, no se les debe dar más que de comer
Also,
>Sarmiento
>20th century figure
A product of Argentinian education, ladies and gentleman.
>For several reasons I am not anti-Semetic; the principal one is that I generally find the difference between Jews and non-Jews quite insignificant, and sometimes illusory or imperceptible.
Regardless of your opinion on Jews this is just dumb, unless you really believe the
>all humans is like the same
meme
A second quote from "Two Books"
Wells admonishes us to remember our essential humanity and to suppress out miserable differential traits, no matter how pathetic or picturesque they may be. Such suppression is in no way exorbitant; it merely demands of states, for their peaceful coexistence, what an elementary courtesy demands of individuals. Wells states that no one in his right mind views the British as members of a superior race, a more noble species then the Nazis, who are disputing the hegemony of the world with the Germans, but affirms they are the battlefront of humanity; and, if they are not that, they are nothing. And, he adds, that duty is a privilege.
So I don't think he believed all humans are the same, just that there differences are minor and unimportant.
see
what do you call this, besides just racism? because that's how I feel desu from having spent too much time working in the 3rd world
Jesus Christ what a dumbfuck you are
>supporting 70s-tier third-worldist socialism
He published a book of essays in his youth, “El tamaño de mi Esperanza”, and in the opening essay (of the same name) he argues that the only “Real” argentinians are white Spanish settlers who fought in the wars of independence, and that Italians, European immigrants, and gauchos (half Indians) should all be cast aside from the national literary consciousness of Argentina.
Considering it was written in the 20s it’s nothing absurdly shocking, but there are some very unsavoury (honestly moronic) opinions. They’re extreme enough that he (the moderate Pinochet loving Borges) later denounced everything he wrote as a youth (up to Evaristo Carriego) and had it taken out of publication.
Summing up,Ol' Georgie was your typical Argentine, except he was a brilliant writer. Nothing else to add.
>All of those quotes are fake.
Source?
Very funny: notasomargonzalez.blogspot.com.br
Fernando Pessoa was also tremendously racist, and said it would be a good thing for slavery to be brought back. Oh, and he also noticed that the participation of women in politics was a sure sign of social decay.
