Focus by Arthur Miller: A review

This is an excellent novel about the fascism operative in our daily lives. In addition to being a very good novel in the formal sense, great suspense and characterization, and so on this novel gives us a very useful political portrait of a certain community psychology. Adorno would have really enjoyed this one, perhaps he did. Miller's novel of anti-semitism in 1945 New York is an like Adorno's social research from another angle, pointing to the potential fascism in all of us, and the fact that fascism was not an exclusively German or Italian phenomenon. This is a story of anti-semitism, it is also a story about social anxiety, uniformity and bullying in American social life, in this way it is also more generally a story about belonging in the land of the rugged individual.

This is a novel about belonging. It is an excellent uncovering of the type of sociality that exists in the American suburbs. One may remark that no Christian Front arose to purge the nation of Jewish people and democracy, the soldiers did not come home and join the fascist party to overthrow the government; this remark would be factual, but not honest. If we look at American history, in the immediate postwar period, Miller's prediction is correct in a number of ways. First, the people about whom he writes in this novel, the contours of their sociality formed the basis for the McCarthyist putsch, the surge of right wing populism that has utterly decimated America. Anti-communism, with some downtoning of the anti-semitism, became the Christian Front of the postwar period, the crucial difference is the relation to political institutions, the Christian Front was an extraparliamentary right wing group. McCarthy, Hoover and Nixon that group were an institutional group, they did not overthrow the government, instead they became the government.

Miller is to be commended for setting his novel in the North. It would have been far too easy for him to set up yet another purgative demonization of the southern states as an aberration compared to the sensible and tolerant 'progressive society' yankee north. Yes, the south had a large amount of racism at that time; however, Miller challenges us to also accept the fact that the same thing was going on in the north, albeit in a different way. Barthes would call this an inoculation whereby some reduced form of an evil within the system is admitted in order to justify or excuse a more basic, and more substantial evil. Miller will give us no vaccines against the fascism in the American suburb. He lets us know that it is a sickness, he treats us like adults telling us the frightful diagnosis in full, he tells us that something must be done.

Miller, in this novel shows us a very serious problem, and also opens up a path toward health. What is his suggested course of action? When Newman, the main character, goes to the police in the end of the book he must submit to the nomination of the mob in order to be recognized. The police are also present at the fascist rally. Finklestein tells Newman that the only way the police to intervene in their favor, against the fascist impulse, is if they can bring together a delegation from the community to complain and demand action. However, and this is the crucial point, the community is too intimidated, and the fascists are too well organized for that to be a viable possibility. What is the option that seems plausible? Direct action, if the people who are not fascists meet the fascists as they try to bully and stand toe to toe with their threat of violence, unafraid of busting some heads, the fascist ranks will open up and more people will be willing to oppose them.

This is another reason that we should commend Miller. He is willing to face the fact that sometimes violence in necessary in the political sphere. For too long conservatives and fascistic types have enjoyed a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence which has effectively decapitated the parties and groups struggling for equality and justice. Miller shows the radicalization of two good men, two decent men, overcoming their differences in order to bring into being a community that will not be dominated by fascisizing impulses.