Off to Iceland!
Well, Bobby Fischer has his Icelandic passport. The U.S. government can now stop persecuting him for the crime of playing chess in Yugoslavia. Fischer may be out of his mind (tha’ts almost certain, if you consider his anti-Semitism and praise for the 9-11 attacks), but he’s not out of his mind for choosing Iceland as his country of refuge. And the Icelanders, who may later regret having such an utterly crazy person wandering around in their country, have done the right thing by offering him refuge.
NOTE: I seem to have attracted a stalker, who keeps posting strange messages on this site. Whatever.
Quite frankly I do not understand this. What does Iceland gain from this? Fischer himself stated that he would NEVER return to chess. So, it is unlikely that he will play for Iceland… and even though he did, it is not like he’d be back at the top.
Now, he might want to teach his fellow Icelanders Fischerrandom…Fischerrandom is to chess what Estonian grammar is to linguistic …And THAT sounds like a threat to me. NV
I doubt that Iceland has much to gain. (And I suspect that the inhabitants of Reykjavik may suffer from having an insufferable loudmouth crackpot wandering around.) But they did the right thing. The better thing would have been for the U.S. to drop its case against Mr. Fischer. I don’t think you should lose your passport or suffer criminal prosecution for traveling someplace to play chess. I think that the position of the U.S. government (and of both Democratic and Republican administrations) is the harder one to understand.
Ward Churchill: My other ancestors were Vikings!
With anti-Semite 9-11 applauding loon Bobby Fischer effectively being given asylum in Iceland, I wonder how long it will be before Ward Churchill decides that he might be more welcome there. Maybe his magically morphing family tree will sprout Vikin…
TGP: “Fischer may be out of his mind (tha’ts almost certain, if you consider his anti-Semitism ”
I don’t want to go all Szaszian on someone for what is most likely a casual comment, but suggesting someone is “out of his mind” simply because he is (labeled as) anti-Semitic seems overmuch. Immoral, perhaps…poorly informed, possibly…holding to views developed as a result of childhood associations, maybe…a confusion on either the part of Fischer or the person making the accusation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, quite possible. But “out of his mind”?
Ross, Tom did refer to ‘his’ anti-Semitism; maybe it’s not just that Fischer does not like Jews, but that he suffers from a particularly radical form of bigotry.
I wouldn’t know myself, but that was the inference I drew from Tom’s comment.
Then, Henri, he would be immoral, or bigoted, not “out of his mind”. And he should consult an ethicist, not a travel agent or chiropracter to bring him back to his mind or better align it.
Again, my point was merely that “out of his mind” implies one must be crazy or mentally ill to be anti-Semitic; I think that’s a category error.
Ross
Ross’s points are well taken, but I do think that some term such as “crazy” (I’ll stay away from “mentally ill”) is useful in describing Mr. Fischer. (And even Thomas Szasz readily admits that there are “lots of crazy people” around; he just says that they’re not sick.)
The anti-Semitism that Mr. Fischer spouts is not of the “they wouldn’t be welcome in our club” sort (bad as that is), but of the “Organized International Jewry is out to get me,” sort. The former is an example of bad behavior, bad manners, immoral views, or the like. The latter sort of anti-Semitism is an obsession that seems in general to be immune to either moral appeal (since it’s a claim about an alleged state of affairs, viz., that the Jews run everything and are out to get one) or to factual refutation (how do you argue someone out of such a…for want of a better word…crazy view?).