Thursday, December 12, 2019

No, the KGB didn't kill Camus

That's despite a new book, based on old journal gleanings from Czech poet and translator Jan Zábrana, claiming exactly that.

Giovanni Catelli claims the KGB rigged the car of Camus' publisher to crash in 1960 because of his comments after the Hungarian uprising.

This ignores MULTIPLE countervailing items.

Start at the tail end. The accident wasn't really regarded as suspicious at the time, contra a 1978 biographer.

Go to the front end. Camus was openly anti-Communist in the writing of "The Rebel" way back in 1951. So, why would the KGB not be pissed off until 1957?

Now, insert meat in between.

Why would it take three years to kill Camus if the KGB were that upset? (Or nine years, in my counterblast?) Why would it target his publisher's car rather than going for something more direct, as the KGB then already had the expertise at doing? Or, pre-KGB, note the ice ax in Trotsky's skull.

And, indeed, wouldn't the KGB want something that, while not pinnable on it, might have a hint more of connection to it than the fatal car crash did? (Maybe the KGB paid the other driver in the James Dean crash?)

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